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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) individuals' health information seeking is an important topic across multiple disciplines and areas. The aim of this systematic review is to create a holistic view of sexual and gender minority individuals' health information seeking reported in multidisciplinary studies, with regard to the types of health information LGBTQ+ individuals sought and information sources they used, as well as the factors influencing their health information seeking behavior.

The review is based on the literature search in 10 major academic databases. A set of inclusion and exclusion criteria was applied to identify studies that provide evidence on LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking behavior. The studies were first screened by title and abstract to determine whether they met the inclusion criteria. The full texts of each relevant study were obtained to confirm whether the exclusion criteria were met. The reference lists of the included studies were manually scanned. The relevant information was then extracted from selected articles and analyzed using thematic content analysis.

A seed set of 3,122 articles published between 1997 and 2020 was evaluated, and 46 total articles were considered for further analysis. The review results show that two major categories of health information sought by LGBTQ+ individuals were sexual and nonsexual, which were further classified into 17 specific types. In terms of health information sources, researchers have reported that online resources, interpersonal sources and traditional media were frequently used. Moreover, 25 factors affecting LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking were identified from the literature.

Through evidence-based understanding, this review preliminarily bridged the knowledge gap in understanding the status quo of studies on LGBTQ+ individuals' health information seeking and proposed the potential research directions that information science researchers could contribute to this important area.

The purpose of this paper is to identify sexual health information needs and the cognitive and affective factors correlated with the best answer chosen by social Q&A users.

The study collected questions and answers regarding sexual health information on a social Q&A site, and analyzed the questions and a paired sample composed of best and non-best answers (n=480).

The main information needs of consumers are human development, sexual behavior, and sexual health. Best answers are more likely to include both cognitive (higher level of readability, risky information, social norms) and affective factors (empathy, positive/negative feelings, and optimistic information) than non-best answers.

The study illuminates the roles of social Q&A as a unique platform to discuss sensitive health topics due to the fact that consumers use such social media sites as critical complementary health information sources.

If health information providers develop information with the factors that the study suggests, not only will it be more adopted by consumers, but it will also ameliorate the quality concerns about online health information.

Previous studies only investigated the most prevalent factors, rather than the most effective ones, which have a greater influence on best answer selection. This study compares the best answers and the non-best answers to overcome the limitations of the previous studies. Above all, the study applied the persuasion concepts to address the cognitive and affective perspectives to the answer evaluations of social Q&A.

The purpose of this paper is to present two models of human cognition. The first narrow model concentrates on the mind as an information-processing apparatus, and interactions with information as altering thought structures and filling gaps in knowledge. A second model incorporates elements of unconsciousness, embodiment and affect. The selection of one model over the other, often done tacitly, has consequences for subsequent models of information seeking and use.

A close reading of embodied engagements with pornography guided by existential phenomenology.

The paper develops a phenomenology of information seeking, centered primarily around the work of Merleau-Ponty, to justify a more expansive concept of cognition. The authors demonstrate the roles of affect and embodiment in document assessment and use, with a prolonged example in the realm of browsing pornography.

Models of information seeking and use need to account for diverse kinds of human-document interaction, to include documents such as music, film and comics that engage the emotions or are perceived through a broader band of sensory experience to include visual and auditory components. The authors consider how those human-document engagements form virtual communities based on the similarity of their members’ affective and embodied responses, which in turn inform the arrangements, through algorithms, of the relations of documents to each other. Less instrumental forms of information seeking and use – ones that incorporate elements of embodiment and affect – are characterized as esthetic experiences, following the definition of the esthetic provided by Dewey. Ultimately the authors consider, given the ubiquity of information seeking and its rhythm in everyday life, whether we can meaningfully characterize information seeking as a distinct human process.

Despite societal investment in providing health information to young parents, little is known about the health information practices of young parents themselves. The purpose of this paper is to explore young parents’ health information practices in context.

This constructivist grounded theory study investigates the health information practices of young mothers and fathers (age 16-23) in Greater Vancouver, Canada. Data were collected over 16 months via individual interviews with 39 young parents (37 mothers, 2 fathers) and observations at young parent programs. Inductive analysis was iterative with data collection.

Young parent health information practices emerged, clustering around concepts of information seeking, assessment, and use, with sharing conceptualised as a form of use. Many young parents were sophisticated information seekers, and most were highly networked using mobile technology. While access to information was rarely a barrier, assessment of the large quantity of health-related information posed challenges.

These findings are not generalisable to all populations. Newly identified information-seeking practices such as defensive and subversive seeking should be explored further in future research.

Rather than focusing on quantity of information, health and information professionals trying to reach young parents should focus on fostering information literacy skills and building relationships as trusted information providers.

Young parent experiences of social marginalisation influenced their information practices and should be taken into consideration.

This first investigation of young parent information practices can guide services and resources for young parents, suggests that sharing might be conceptualised as a subset of use, and highlights new information-seeking practices by marginalised individuals, such as defensive and subversive seeking.

American sex education is continually under fire due to conflicting morals surrounding hegemonic sociocultural norms. These programs, and ultimately the students, are often victims of information inequities which leverage adult control over minors to prevent access to sexual health information. Withholding salient sexual health information infringes on intertwined tenets of human rights, such as education and information access. Spurred by recent disputes and barriers to updating unethical curricula in the states of Arizona and Texas, this chapter uses a human rights lens to explore the current information inequities in K-12 sexual education and students’ precarious positions in policy spaces. This framework demonstrates how libraries are uniquely protected spaces for intellectual freedom and the roles librarians can and should play as sexual health information providers in order to help students overcome information inequities. This chapter will provide recommendations for librarians and other educators to inform and organize advocacy as well as leverage current library operations to support adolescents’ sexual health literacy.

This article focuses on psychosocial barriers to sexual health and their implications on the design and delivery of mass media‐based public health campaigns. A family planning campaign that attempted to address barriers to seeking sexual health information and services by promoting positive attitudes toward couple's communication about sexual health care is presented. Specifically, this article reports how the campaign conducted formative research to develop audience‐centered, culturally sensitive messages, particularly with young adults, aged 18‐24 as well as Hispanic young adults (aged 18‐24); and utilized mixed‐media to effectively reach at‐risk populations.

This study aimed to examine the research hotspots and evolution paths in the field of health information behavior (HIB) in China and abroad, and conduct comparative analysis to better understand its development trajectory globally.

A keyword search of the relevant literature included in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database and Web of Science (WoS) core collection database was conducted, using the visualized analysis tool CiteSpace V for bibliometric analyses.

The common research hotspots in China and abroad can be divided into related research on HIB, research on its influencing factors and health information research. Among these, health information-seeking behavior has been the focus of domestic and foreign scholars. From the subdivision perspective, the focus of Chinese and foreign research hotspots differs. In terms of evolutionary path, the initial stage of HIB research in China and abroad revolves around health information and health information-seeking behavior, followed by the influencing factors of HIB; however, the research breakthrough point is the reverse. Then, domestic and foreign research was conducted on different types of HIBs. Regarding the selection of research objects, Chinese and foreign research objects were increasingly diversified.

This study also has several limitations. First, the literature sample only selected the literature in the WoS and CNKI databases, and there may be many HIB-related works published in other databases. Therefore, future research should include other databases. Second, in terms of language, this study selected only Chinese and English literature, but in many countries, important research results on certain topics are usually published in native language, and future research should expand the language selection. Third, this study only conducted national and institutional collaboration network analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis and timeline chart analysis.

The implication of practice can be divided into the following three points. (1) Analyzing the domestic and foreign literature on HIB and identifying highly cooperative institutions and countries in the field of HIB can reveal the research situation of HIB and help researchers establish new research networks in the future. (2) Analyzing the research hotspots and evolutionary paths of HIB at home and abroad is helpful for quickly understanding the development context of this field and grasping the emerging research directions such as HIB of people in close contact with patients, health information exchange behavior, health information avoidance behavior and health information discontinuation behavior, which can help researchers to explore the future research direction in this field, so as to determine the topic and fill the research gap. (3) Combining the analysis of HIB-related research at home and abroad is helpful for professionals to understand the characteristics and rules of HIB of users, consumers and other groups to further optimize and improve health information services.

Comparing and summarizing the research status of HIB in China and globally, and presenting the findings visually, will help researchers better grasp the research overview and hotspot changes in this field, as well as provide a follow-up reference.