서울·경기지역 대학생의 인터넷 식생활 정보 이용실태

Abstract

This study was undertaken to examine the utilization of dietary information on the internet by university students in the Seoul and Gyeonggi-do area. A total of 552 university students (229 male, 293 female) were recruited, and a questionnaire-based survey was conducted. Internet usage, purpose, usage of dietary information, health concern, satisfaction and problems were investigated. The data were analyzed using SPSS (ver21.0). The result of this study was as follows. The main purpose of using internet was to search and get information (45.8%). The second highest internet search was to get dietary information (71.8%), and the primary site visited for this was the Personal Homepage or Blog (79.1%). The results of survey for ‘satisfaction level of dietary information using internet’ were as follows: 69.7% of students answered ‘Satisfied’, since it is easy to understand (34.6%). Conversely, the most common reason cited for not using dietary information in real life was inconvenience (50.8%), followed by unreliable information (17.6%). Since unreliable source (51.9%) was the major shortcoming of internet dietary information, providing accurate information is required for improvement. A positive outcome of this study was that most of the university students who were the targets of this survey were getting nutritive information by using the internet. Also, most of the students were getting information about weight control, losing weight, beauty, and high-quality restaurants, mainly through the personal homepages or blogs. However, the dietary information from these sites was not verified. Thus, many students tended to doubt the information. Hence, to provide accurate and high quality information, the dietary information provided requires to be managed well, making it more reliable for users, thus enabling to educate them accurately. This would require the website to be run by a professional organization.