To Evaluate of Effective Factors on the Use of Social Network Sites in Health Field by Rehabilitation Students

Background: Students often use Social Network Sites and are willing to share information and communicate with teachers, colleagues and patients. Despite the increase in the application of the Social Network Sites as a tool for obtaining health knowledge, few studies have been conducted to evaluate the production and share of health information by rehabilitation students, especially in Iran. The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of the Social Network Sites for obtaining health related information by rehabilitation students. Methods: This cross sectional study was performed on 268 rehabilitation students of Semnan University of medical sciences in Iran, in 2015. The census method was used and the sampling method was not used in this study. The questionnaire was developed by the researchers that measured the attitudes of the students in relation to accessibility, usefulness and the use of the Social Network Sites. Results: The findings show the study subjects gained a low score (mean<4) in accessibility and usefulness. There were significant relationships between the participations’ demographic characteristics and the use of the Social Network Sites (P<0.001). Results showed that accessibility (B=0.538, P<0.001) and usefulness (B=0.802, P<0.001) of the Social Network Sites had a significant and direct relationship with the use of them. Conclusions: It is concluded that, the Social Network Sites had not been formally introduced to students and the students did not consider the Social Network Sites as an appropriate educational resource. Hence, they cannot be used as a resource of health information through sharing various cases of health information.