Which Messengers Do Medical Students Prefer for Receiving Health Information: Development and Psychometrics of Using Health Messengers Questionnaire

Introduction: Those media messages that directly or indirectly tackle individual and social health issues are known as health messages. Individuals vary in their selection of health messengers. This research aimed to construct an instrument to measure the preferences of medical students in selecting health messengers and in the next step to validate the aforementioned questionnaire. Method This research is a descriptive survey with an approach to construct a questionnaire. The statistical population included all students studying at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2022. 500 participants were involved in the study. To determine the types of health messengers and review the texts, a group of 15 primary items consisting of the 6 components of academic sources (2 items), official news sources (2 items), mass media (3 items), internet search (2 items), messenger applications (4 items), and unofficial media (2 items) were compiled. A 4-point scale was developed the content validity of which was confirmed using CVI and CVR method and the reliability index was calculated to be 0.818. Factor analysis was also used to determine the construct validity and factor loading of each item. Results The study encompassed participants with varying university degrees. Using factor analysis, together with KMO = 0.810 and Bartlett's sphericity index P < 0.001, saturation and the suitability of the test were confirmed. Students' preferences based on factor load were social media (28.92%), official and unofficial health sources (10.76%), academic sources (9.08%), internet search (8.18%), and mass media (7.13%), respectively. Among social media, Telegram (0.760) had the highest factor load followed by WhatsApp (0.663) and Instagram (0.678). Conclusion Students prefer messengers that are free from time and space restrictions. Therefore, in order to develop health knowledge and information, mobile-based methods or enrichment of social media should be given higher priority.