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Parental Information-Use Strategies in a Digital Parenting Environment and Their Associations With Parental Social Support and Self-Efficacy: Cross-Sectional Study

Ryuta Onishi

JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, 2024

161 participants · 13 citations

Abstract

Background In today’s digital society, the acquisition of parenting information through online platforms such as social networking sites (SNSs) has become widespread. Amid the mix of online and offline information sources, there is a need to discover effective information-seeking methods for solving parenting problems. Objective This study aimed to identify patterns of information use among parents of young children in the digital age and elucidate the characteristics of these patterns through a comparative analysis of parental social support and self-efficacy. Methods An internet-based survey was administered to fathers and mothers of children aged 0-3 years. Convenience sampling, facilitated by an internet-based survey company, was adopted, and data from 227 fathers and 206 mothers were analyzed. The survey included questions on personal characteristics, frequency of use of different sources of parenting information (websites, SNSs, parenting apps, family, friends, and professionals), availability of parental social support, and parental self-efficacy. The Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) clustering algorithm was used to identify patterns in parenting information use. Results A total of 4 clusters were identified: multisource gatherers (n=161), offline-centric gatherers (n=105), online-centric gatherers (n=86), and minimal information gatherers (n=68). The availability of parental social support was perceived to be relatively higher among multisource and offline-centric…

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