Table 2.

Interview questions and prompts used to guide the semi-structured interviews

Participants’ experience of stomach or bowel problems

How would you describe your stomach or bowel problems?

How serious do you think your stomach or bowel problems are?

How does having stomach or bowel problems make you feel?

What do you think causes your stomach or bowel problems?

Can you tell me about how you deal with your stomach or bowel problems?

What would help you to deal with your stomach or bowel problems better?

Can you tell me about any ways your lifestyle may have changed because of your stomach or bowel problems?

Neutral prompts used during the think-aloud interview

What are you thinking now?/What are your thoughts about this page?

Can you tell me more about that?/Why is that?

How are you feeling?/How do you feel about that?

Why did you do that?/Why did you click on that?

That’s really interesting/That’s really useful, thank you

Participants’ experience of using ‘Gut Instincts’ and the Internet

How did you feel about using this website?

How would you decide whether to use this website for the first time?

How would you decide whether to use this website again, for a second or a third time?

How do you feel about the information and advice on this website?

How do you think the website could be improved?

What didn’t you like about it?

What did you like about it?

What was missing from this website?

If there were a number of websites like this one, how would you decide which one to use?

When do you think using this website would be helpful?

When do you think using this website would not be helpful?

Can you tell me about any experiences you’ve had using health-related websites?