Özet:

The purpose: This study was conducted to measure the relationship between the perception of health of individuals and the behavior of health search.

Method and Method: In the research, the quantum research design has been used and is characteristic. As a data collection tool, the internal consistency ratio developed by Diamond and his friends (2007), which was translated into Turkish by Kadıoğlu and Yıldız(2010) and reliability tests were conducted by the internal consistency ratio developed by the Health Perception Measurement and Kiraç(2019) and validity reliability was made and the internal consistency ratio of the Health Search Behavior Measurement was used by the internal consistency ratio of 0.75. In this context, 633 individuals who live in Turkey have been reached using the easy sample method. In addition, the study used identificative analyses such as frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation as well as t test, one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) and Pearson Correlation analysis in independent groups.

The findings: Of the 633 participants, 61(386) were women and 39(247) were men. 52.9(335) of the participants assessed their health well; 27.2(172) percent assessed their average. The survey found that 16.4(104) percent of the participants were not covered by any health insurance, while 76.3(483) percent were covered by general health insurance and 7.3(46) percent were covered by private health insurance. The T-Test resulted in no significant differences in health perceptions based on the gender of the participants and whether they have chronic diseases or not. However, according to the social media uses of the participants, the scale of health perception has found a significant difference in the scale of certainty and the behavior of online health search. According to this, it is concluded that individuals who use social media have a lower insight of certainty than individuals who do not use social media and that individuals who use social media have a higher behavior of searching for health online than individuals who do not use social media. The result was that there was a meaningful relationship between the levels of self-consciousness and the importance they give to health; that there was a meaningful relationship between the behavior of professional health search and the levels of self-consciousness; that there was a meaningful relationship between the negative levels of self-consciousness. There is also a meaningful relationship between the individual’s traditional health search behavior and the control center perception at a positive low level; there is a meaningful relationship between the traditional health search behavior and the positive low level in the perception of certainty.

The result: As a result, individuals have seen significant differences in health perceptions according to their social media use conditions, age and average number of visits to the health institution in a year; gender, educational status and income level in health search behavior. In addition, a positive low-level relationship between the online health search behaviors of participants and the control center of health perception(r=0,242) and the subdimensions of certainty(r=0,214) was found. In other words, as individuals’ online health search behavior increases, the certainty health perception and control center perception also increases. From here, the movement can be interpreted as they believe that when individuals show online health search behavior they have achieved accurate and controllable results regarding the situation they are looking for. Finally, there was a meaningful relationship between health perception and health search behavior at a low level.

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