Table 3.

Levels of trust in each source

Health Information Sources	Mean (SD)	“not at all” %	“a great deal” %
Specialist doctors	3.38 (0.73)	0.74	51.81
Primary care providers	3.30 (0.75)	0.65	46.72
Nurses	3.04 (0.76)	1.47	29.96
Pharmacists	2.96 (0.81)	2.87	28.07
Federal government organizations	2.94 (0.84)	5.08	27.81
Local health department	2.85 (0.78)	3.97	20.12
Dentists	2.84 (0.86)	6.25	23.76
Medical websites	2.83 (0.85)	6.54	22.19
Scientific literature	2.64 (0.95)	12.21	21.43
Family	2.61 (0.83)	7.01	15.11
Scientists	2.49 (0.91)	15.55	13.54
Books	2.43 (0.86)	13.49	10.81
Friends	2.36 (0.76)	8.72	8.50
Search engines	2.31 (0.77)	12.37	6.42
Health fairs	2.18 (0.87)	21.69	8.74
Magazines	2.10 (0.74)	18.78	3.75
Newspaper	2.06 (0.72)	20.37	2.86
Television	2.02 (0.73)	22.15	3.50
Pharmaceutical companies	1.96 (0.81)	30.83	3.40
Veterinarians	1.96 (0.92)	35.98	7.84
Radio	1.94 (0.73)	26.93	2.87
Religious organizations and leaders	1.79 (0.84)	42.82	5.59
Social media	1.72 (0.76)	43.91	3.15
Blogs or celebrity webpages	1.71 (0.81)	48.40	3.41
Other companies or corporations	1.69 (0.71)	44.18	0.95

Note. Results were weighted using the overall U.S. population weights; trust ranges from 1–4.