Background: An accurate understanding of dietary supplements (DS) is a prerequisite for informed decisions regarding their intake. However, there is a need for studies on this understanding among the public based on validated research tools.
Objective: This study aims to assess the knowledge about DS among Polish internet users with no medical education and to identify its determinants and design an appropriate predictive model.
Methods: The study protocol was prospectively registered with a statistical analysis plan. Polish users of a web-based health service and a social networking service were administered a survey consisting of the recently developed questionnaire on knowledge about DS, the questionnaire on trust in advertising DS, the beliefs about medicines questionnaire, and several other health-related single-item measures and sociodemographic questions. The results were subjected to general linear modeling.
Results: A total of 6273 participants were included. Of the 17 yes or no questions in the questionnaire of knowledge about DS, the mean number of correct responses was 9.0 (95% CI 8.9-9.1). Health service users performed worse than social networking users by 2.3 points (95% CI 2.1-2.5) in an analysis adjusted for potential confounders. Internet users had fewer true beliefs about DS if they presented higher trust in their advertising (adjusted β=-.37; 95% CI -.39 to -.34), used DS (adjusted β=-.14; 95% CI -.17 to -.12), experienced their positive effect (adjusted β=-.16; 95% CI -.18 to -.13), were older or younger than 35 years (adjusted β=-.14; 95% CI -.17 to -.12), expressed interest in the topic of DS (adjusted β=-.10; 95% CI -.13 to -.08), reported getting information about the products from friends (adjusted β=-.13; 95% CI -.15 to -.11), and believed that medicines are harmful (adjusted β=-.12; 95% CI -.15 to -.10). The proposed 5-predictor model could explain 31.2% of the variance in knowledge about DS. The model appeared resistant to overfitting and was able to forecast most of the observed associations.
Conclusions: Polish internet users with no medical education exhibit some false beliefs regarding DS. Trusting the advertising of DS appears to conflict with knowledge about them. There is an urgent need for effective web-based educational campaigns on DS and the promotion of advertising literacy. After the proposed predictive model is externally validated, it may help identify the least informed target audience.
Keywords: Poland; advertising; beliefs; dietary supplements; education; health services; knowledge; online social networking; statistical model.
©Michał Seweryn Karbownik, Robert Horne, Ewelina Paul, Edward Kowalczyk, Janusz Szemraj. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 21.04.2021.