Women Go to Web for Health Info

Michele Galindo of Austin follows a Web site's exercise video. Men use the Internet less often for health purposes. (By Jack Plunkett -- Associated Press)

Even on the Internet, men are less likely than women to ask for driving directions. They are also less likely than women to seek out health-related information -- for themselves or others, according to findings presented Sunday at the American Psychological Association conference in San Francisco.

The findings were based on an analysis of four Internet usage surveys conducted between 2000 and 2004 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In 2004, for example, 82 percent of women who answered a phone survey replied yes to the question "Have you ever searched [the Web] for health-related issues?" compared with 75 percent of men. Researchers Phyllis Schumacher, a math professor at Bryant University in Rhode Island, and Janet Morahan-Martin, a Bryant University psychology professor, said that difference was too great to be chalked up to chance alone. In 2000, the gap was wider: Sixty-three percent for women, 46 percent for men. Five hundred people or more took part in each year's survey.

According to the researchers, women were also generally more likely than men to belong to online medical support groups or to search for health information on behalf of a child or elderly parent. In the 2001 survey, though, men were more likely than women to search for health information on behalf of their spouses.

Schumacher and Morahan-Martin said the findings were consistent with women's role as the health gatekeepers in most families.

"Women are more proactive in seeking out a physician when there is a problem, and here, seeking information goes hand in hand with that," Morahan-Martin said.

Driving directions and religion were the only other areas in which women's Internet usage dominated that of men, according to the report. The findings have not been submitted for publication.

-- Lindsay Minnema