TUESDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- An Internet site that provides emergency contraception was more likely to attract well-off, college-educated, single, urban women, according to a survey in the July issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Justine Wu, M.D., of UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., and colleagues conducted a 27-item telephone survey with 200 women who went to an emergency contraceptive Web site (http://ec.princeton.edu) and called a New York hotline to order the drugs between February and June of 2006.
Researchers found the mean age of callers was 25.4 years, 58 percent were white, 47 percent had finished college, 131 were urban dwellers, 47 percent had an income of between $30,000-$70,000 and 97 percent had high-speed access to the Internet. Most women went to the emergency contraception Web site for convenience and to avoid anticipated barriers, such as inconvenient office hours.
"Participants highly valued and even preferred the Internet as a first-line source of information, a finding that underscores the potential value of online contraceptive resources," the authors write.
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