Abstract
Objective: To assess the prevalence and the associated factors to the habit of researching health information on the internet among elderly users of Primary Health Care (PHC). Methods: Cross-sectional study carried out in the north of Rio Grande do Sul with application of questionnaire containing sociodemographic, health and behavioral characteristics. Statistics included description of the sample and calculation of the prevalence of the outcome with 95% confidence interval (CI95). The verification of associations between outcome and predictor variables were performed by Poisson Regression. In the bivariate analysis, the crude Prevalence Ratios (PR) and their IC95 were calculated, while in the multivariate, with robust variance for clusters, the adjusted PRs and their IC95 were calculated. Results: In the sample (n=403), the prevalence of the outcome was 19% (CI95 15-22), with a significant difference in relation to gender (PR=2.14; 1.29-3.55), color skin (PR=1.82; 1.04-3.19), income (PR=1.61; 1.08-2.42), education (PR=4.04; 2.48-6.59), time since the last medical appointment at the PHC (PR=2.55; 1.61-4.04) and alcohol consumption (PR=0.46; 0.32-0.68). Conclusion: Approximately one fifth use the internet to research about health. Thus, it is important that health professionals pay attention to this behavior, aiming to guide the PHC users in the proper use of the tool.