The Health Information Seeking Behavior of Pregnant Women Referring to Health Centers in Bushehr in 2020

Introduction: Teaching health information seeking skills to pregnant women will cause improving their health awareness and their ability in self-care and preventive health behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine the health information seeking behavior of pregnant women referring to Bushehr health centers were performed Methods:  The present descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study were conducted in 2020 among pregnant women referring to health centers in Bushehr, Iran. The sample size was 306 people who were selected using Coincidence class sampling. Data were analyzed using a standard Health Information seeking Behavior Questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS software version 24 and Chi-square and Fisher tests. Results:  Findings showed that 25% of pregnant women had desirable information-seeking behavior, and 75% had undesirable information-seeking behavior. According to the results, there is a statistically significant relationship between the education level of pregnant women and their health information behavior (P-Value = 0.04). Furthermore, inappropriate information behavior in women who had no history of abortion was 72.1%. And, in women with a previous abortion was 77% and in women with a history of more than one abortion was 93.3% (P-Value = 0.039). Conclusion:  The results showed that most of the pregnant women referred to Bushehr health centers had inappropriate information-seeking behavior. Since inappropriate information-seeking behavior leads to incorrect information or lack of access to information, training information retrieval skills and consequently empowering pregnant to seek health information is recommended.