How do people get the information they need to make informed decisions about health? Years ago, the problem was access to health information. Today, we have the opposite problem — there’s so much information out there and so many contradicting opinions that it’s difficult to know what sources to trust. Any uninformed person can publish his or her opinion online. Even the top medical journals sometimes hail a new wonder drug one month only to warn of its deadly side effects the next. With all of this inconsistent information bombarding us on a daily basis, we have to figure out which information to pay attention to and which to disregard.
Although health information is more accessible to the public, there is still much work to be done. That’s why the People’s Pharmacy and the Center for Behavioral Economics at Duke are teaming up to learn how people perceive information about medicine, home remedies and other health treatment options, and how this information affects health behavior. We will do this by posting online surveys on this website that relate to the health decisions people make on a daily basis. We will then post the results and share what we have learned with you. Hopefully, we will provide you with some new insights about things that can influence your decisions. (These might be things you wouldn’t expect to make a difference.)
You may recall a survey we posted back in January about home remedies. The results were interesting and led to several followup questions, which we hope to answer with this second survey. Regardless of whether you took the first survey or not, we encourage you to click on the link below and complete a brief 1 to 2 minute questionnaire. We will then report back with a summary of the results from both surveys. Thanks so much for participating in this important research, and we look forward to your comments when we share the results.
Here’s the link:http://surveydirector.qualtrics.com/SD/?Q_SDID=SD_0MLeO51dSmb6kUA
