Sophie Desroches*, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Véronique Bissonnette-Maheux, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Annie Lapointe, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Marilyn Dugrenier, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Audrée-Anne Dumas, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Sharon E Straus, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Marie-Pierre Gagnon, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Véronique Provencher, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Track: Research Presentation Topic: Blogs, Microblogs, Twitter Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2014-05-16

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Background: The use of social media such as blogs in healthcare allows reaching a large proportion of the population with diverse sociodemographic characteristics, while also facilitating communication and interaction between health professionals and the public. In the field of nutrition, healthy eating blogs provide dietitians an opportunity to share nutrition knowledge, to engage with their readers and help them improve their dietary behaviors. Recent studies suggest that perceived usefulness, ease of use and characteristics of blogs design and layout are factors that could positively influence readers’ intention to use them. However, specific characteristics that make a blog easy to use and useful from potential users’ perceptions have yet to be explored.
Objective: To explore women’s perceptions about the characteristics of healthy eating blogs contributing to their usefulness and ease of use for improving their dietary behaviors.
Methods: Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with women aged 18 years and older and living in the Quebec City metropolitan area. Four healthy eating blogs written in French by a dietitian and having as their main objective the promotion of a healthy diet were explored during the interview. To explore characteristics of the blogs contributing to perceived usefulness and ease of use, women were questioned about the healthy eating blogs’ layout and design features, which refer to tools such as keywords or search tabs. Then, preferences about the visual features including images, colors or text fonts were assessed. We also sought information about the content and the functional characteristics specific to blogs such as the presence of recipes or the nature of the interaction with the dietitian or with fellow blog readers. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, coded and analyzed with NVivo 10 software by two individuals independently.
Results: Thirty-three women (mean age 44 ± 17 years) completed the study. The most useful content characteristics identified by women were recipes, hyperlinks and references. Most participants reported that the possibility of interacting between blog readers and the dietitian-blogger could bring closeness and create a virtual connection that would be helpful for improving their dietary behaviors. As for characteristics that would make a blog easy to use with regard to the navigation and search tools, women mentioned they preferred when posts were archived by subject and predefined keywords and that a search tab must be an integral part of the blog layout and design. Overall, the following preferences were noted: a colorful blog with images that reflected the subjects discussed in the post; posts that are well structured, and included subtitles, defined paragraphs and large font size.
Conclusions: Our study identified components of healthy eating blogs that are most likely to increase potential users’ perceived ease to use and usefulness of this type of social media as a means to improve their dietary behaviors. Our results provide guidance for the development of a healthy eating blog that will be used in a future study aiming to assess the impact of healthy eating blogs on women’s dietary behaviors.