* The correlations are significant at thep <0.05 level.
** The correlations are significant at thep <0.001 level.
The comparison of the relationships between the perception of reliability and the use of health information sources is shown in Table 4. The values (bolded) in the main diagonal of the correlation coefficients matrix are the correlations between each information source’s own perception of reliability and use. The correlation coefficients in the lower left side of the main diagonal express the correlations between the perception of reliability of health information sources and the use of health information sources; the upper-right side of the main diagonal is the opposite. For example, the value 0.51 in the first column and second row of the correlation coefficients matrix was the correlation coefficient between “perception of radio reliability and television usage.” The 0.29 value in the first row of the second column, which is symmetrical, was the correlation coefficient between “radio use and perception of television reliability.” Generally, the correlation coefficients between the perception of reliability and the use of the same information sources were the highest. Although all of these correlations were statistically significant: the highest correlation among these was between the reliability perception and the use of television (r =0.63; p <0.001) while the lowest correlation was between the reliability perception and the use of newspapers/magazines (r =0.36; p <0.001).
Table 4. Correlation coefficients between the reliability perception and the use of health information sources