Table 2.

Quotes from frequency theme: searching for health information is commonplace.

Participant ethnicity	Habitual searching	Intermittent searching
African American	A lot, couple times a week. Not necessarily diabetes, but always about health. Always about eating and exercising, always.	Mmm…couple times a year, just depending on what’s going on in the family.
Caucasian	Weekly. Yes. Pretty much general definition, you know then that kind of segues into symptoms. You know, not drilling down into management, but, risk factors, symptoms, starting there.	My daughter has a lot of medical problems, so I do use the Internet a lot. Basically I would just go into Google or Yahoo, type in the basic thing that I was looking for. Sometimes it would be a little overwhelming because you have all these links and you don’t know exactly where to go...For example, she has asthma, so I would type in things, like…ways to make it more tolerable, or ways to treat, alternative treatment methods, things like that. Just like a general term. On average probably two to four times a month maybe, depending on what I’m going through at the time. If I’m sick or she’s sick.
Caucasian	Quite a bit, especially lately. You know, a couple times a week at least, you know, at various times through the day, and so it’s been frequent lately.
Mexican American	There are times that people tell me “hey, there is a website.” Or some time ago, people told me that there was a talk about stem cells, that they may help diabetes. That is when I go in and look…I am not on the computer all day because I am a stay home mom. Whenever I have a chance I sit down and read. Generally it is once a week…and I also get my daughter involved.	I would say like every 2 weeks, when I get a chance I go and…search this and that.
Mexican American	Two or three days of the week or more when I feel like working at the computer.