Table 5.

Sources used for COVID-19 information search stratified by digital health literacy level for the “evaluating reliability” and “determining relevance” subscales.

Item	Evaluating reliability				Determining relevance
	Limited, mean (SD)	Sufficient, mean (SD)	P	d		Limited, mean (SD)		Sufficient, mean (SD)		P	d
Search engines (eg, Google, Bing, Yahoo!)	3.49 (0.79)	3.36 (0.86)	<.001	–0.15		3.43 (0.82)		3.41 (0.84)		.07	N/Aa
Websites of public bodies (eg, Robert Koch Institute)	3.13 (0.92)	3.45 (0.79)	<.001	0.37		3.22 (0.89)		3.35 (0.84)		<.001	0.16
Wikipedia and other web-based encyclopedias	2.03 (0.98)	2.08 (1.00)	.008	0.05		2.02 (0.97)		2.06 (0.99)		.01	0.04
Social media (eg, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)	2.38 (1.15)	2.07 (1.10)	<.001	–0.27		2.28 (1.14)		2.16 (1.12)		<.001	–0.10
YouTube	2.24 (1.12)	2.17 (1.09)	.001	–0.06		2.22 (1.10)		2.19 (1.09)		.20	N/A
Blogs on health topics	1.49 (0.76)	1.42 (0.74)	<.001	–0.10		1.46 (0.74)		1.45 (0.75)		.37	N/A
Support-communities	1.36 (0.64)	1.22 (0.53)	<.001	–0.23		1.31 (0.61)		1.25 (0.55)		<.001	–0.10
Health portals	1.56 (0.80)	1.47 (0.74)	<.001	–0.12		1.52 (0.78)		1.49 (0.76)		.02	–0.04
Websites of physicians or health insurance companies	1.81 (0.88)	1.87 (0.91)	.001	0.05		1.82 (0.88)		1.85 (0.90)		.09	N/A
News portals (eg, newspapers, television)	3.30 (0.87)	3.33 (0.87)	.04	0.04		3.33 (0.84)		3.32 (0.88)		.32	N/A

^aN/A: not applicable due to lack of significance.