Association Between Cyberchondria And Academic Smartphone Use With Perceived Academic Functioning Among Medical Students

Abstract

Background: Smartphones are part of medical education; there is concern about the use of smartphones and the resulting cyberchondria, especially amongst medical students who are regularly exposed to medical information. There has been very little research that has looked at the relationship between these behaviors and students perceived academic functioning. Objective: To assess the relationship between cyberchondria, academic smartphone uses and perceived academic functioning among medical students. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted among 218 under graduate medical students recruited through non-probability sampling, convenience sampling. Data collected through an online Google Form, which was filled out with the Cyberchondria Severity Scale-12 (CSS-12), an adapted version of the Academic Smartphone Use scale and Perceived Academic Functioning (PAF) scale. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression in SPSS 25. Result: Results indicated that there was a strong positive correlation between Cyberchondria and perceived academic functioning (r = 0.717, p < .001) and academic smartphone use with perceived academic functioning (r = 0.623, p < .001). There was a weak positive correlation between cyberchondria and academic smartphone use (r = 0.291, p < .001). Cyberchondria (B = 0.290) and academic smartphone use (B = 0.344) were significant predictors of perceived academic functioning (both p < .001) in regression analyses. Conclusion: Cyberchondria was positively and significantly related to perceived academic functioning among medical students, as were academic smartphone use. The results emphasize the importance of increasing the awareness about digital health literacy and wise smartphone usage within the medical education and indicate that perceived functioning may not be an indicator of actual academic achievement.