English

The Role of User Control in Adherence to and Knowledge Gained from a Website: Randomized Comparison Between a Tunneled Version and a Freedom-of-Choice Version.

This article is from Journal of Medical Internet Research , volume 14 . Abstract Background: Internet-delivered interventions can effectively change health risk behaviors and their determinants, but adherence to these interventions once they are accessed is very low. Therefore, it is relevant and necessary to systematically manipulate website characteristics to test their effect on website use. This study focuses on user control as a website characteristic. Objective: To test whether and how user control (the freedom of choice to skip pages) can increase website use and knowledge gained from the website. Methods: Participants older than 18 years were drawn from the Dutch Internet population (in June 2011) and completed a hepatitis knowledge questionnaire. Subsequently, they were randomly assigned to three groups: (1) a tunneled version of the website with less user control; (2) a high user control version of the website where visitors had the freedom of choice to skip pages; and (3) a control group that was not exposed to the website. Participants completed (1) a questionnaire of validated measures regarding user perceptions immediately after exposure to the website (except for the

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