Ankur Barua, Rohit Kumar Verma, Kho Xin Xuan, Lee Mun Ying, Lee Yee Ling, Seba David, Sami Abdo Radman alDubai, Hematram Yadav

Abstract

Background: Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking website is recently associated with a number of newly emerging public health problems. With this background, we would like to conduct a study among undergraduate students of various health care professions to determine the association between Facebook usage and its health effects. Materials and Methods: A Cross-sectional study will be conducted at a reputed private university in Malaysia involving 377 undergraduate students of Pharmacy, Medicine and Dentistry to study the association between association between Facebook usage and its health impacts. The sample will be selected by Stratified Random Sampling technique and data collection will be conducted for 3 months (1st August 2014 to 31st October 2014). A self-developed, expert validated, pre-tested and self-rated questionnaire will be used for data collection. The data collected will be tabulated and analyzed by using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 18.0 for Windows. Baseline data on categorical variables will be presented in the form of proportions and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Comparisons between two categorical variables will be done by using the Chi-square test. Odds Ratio and its 95% CIs will be used to study the strength of association between the exposures and outcomes. Multiple Logistic Regression analysis will be conducted to remove the confounders. In this study, p-value <0.05 will be considered as statistically significant. Results: Data collection is under process. Details of results are awaited.