Does Lockdown Affect Online Health Information-Seeking Behaviour of COVID-19 Preventive Measures among Indonesians? A Google Trends Analysis

Abstract

The government’s policies to respond to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic may influence the community’s health-related behaviours, including the information-seeking behaviour. This study’s primary objective was to compare the popularity of online searches among Indonesians using related terms relevant to COVID-19 preventive measures before and during/after the first Jakarta’s partial lockdown. Identification of primary search terms was conducted based on WHO’s public advice and Indonesian MOH’s relevant information. Three selected terms related to commercial commodities were “masker”, “hand sanitizer”, and “vitamin” and two terms associated with a healthy lifestyle were “cuci tangan” and “jaga jarak”. Term variations for each primary term were identified and checked for the highest hits using google.co.id website, limited to all searches, country: Indonesia, and between 30 January and 4 October 2020. The primary terms were entered into Google Trends to retrieve the term popularity during the period of 30 January-9 April 2020 and of 10 April-30 September 2020, representing the period before and during/after the first Jakarta’s partial lockdown. The results show that “masker” and “vitamin” remained the two most popular terms before and during/after the lockdown. The term “jaga jarak” reached its highest peak three days before the lockdown and then decreased and levelled off afterwards. Only two search terms resulted in statistically significant differences of popularity across all 34 Indonesia’s provinces before and during/after the lockdown, namely “vitamin” (p<0.001) and “cuci tangan” (p=0.001). The term “vitamin” was less popular during/after the forced lockdown, with mean difference d - 13.7 (95% CI -17.8, -9.6), while “cuci tangan” gained more popularity, with d 10.8 (95% CI 4.8, 16.7). In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the community’s health information-seeking behaviour about the preventive measures for the on-going pandemic can be affected by the government’s action to force a lockdown