Abstract

Despite the increasing number of international students in Korea, there is a lack of research on the health information-seeking behavior of international students. This study examined the health information search behavior of international students in Korea through a questionnaires and in-depth interviews adopting Critical Incident Technique. Most frequent health information needs that the participants experienced were related to Covid-19 and locating doctors/hospitals. The difficulties in seeking health information were language barriers, lack of knowledge of the Korean medical system, insufficient or overflowing information on the Internet. However, despite the language barrier, international students mainly used Korean sources (friends/family, websites, social media) for searching health information. In order to search health information on Korean websites, they used Google Translator or got help from bilingual friends/family members. The participants who have lived in Korea for a shorter period of time or who have lower Korean language proficiency tend to obtain health information through the community on social networks; whereas the longer the period of residence in Korea and the better the Korean language proficiency, the more likely to use websites. Only 28% of the participants gave positive answers to the question asking their confidence in finding the health information they needed. It is discussed how to help international students find accurate and credible health information.