322 Smith Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2015 Mar;128:151-8. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.01.028. Epub 2015 Jan 19.
Self-directed health information seeking has become increasingly common in recent years, yet there is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that females are more likely to engage in information seeking than males. Previous research has largely ignored the significance of this difference as both an empirical and a theoretical finding. The current study has two goals, seeking to track this sex gap over time and to test explanations for its existence. The three explanations tested are based in past findings of gendered division of childcare labor, gendered reactivity to illness, and gendered perceived risk of illness. These were tested using multiple dependent variables from both repeated cross sectional data and 2012 data from the Health Information Trends Survey (HINTS). Results show that females are significantly more likely to look for cancer information, information in general, and information over the Internet over time than males, though the gap may be closing in the case of cancer information. The three explanations also received little clear support though perceived risk of getting cancer acted as a mediator through which men may be less likely to look for cancer information. Based on this analysis it is clear that a sex gap in information seeking is present and theories of masculinity and health may hold promise in some contexts but additional explanations are needed.
近年来，自我导向的健康信息搜索变得越来越普遍，但有大量证据表明，女性比男性更倾向于进行信息搜索。之前的研究在很大程度上忽略了这种差异的重要性，无论是作为实证还是理论发现。本研究有两个目标，一是跟踪这种性别差距随时间的变化，二是测试其存在的原因。测试的三个解释基于过去发现的儿童保育劳动的性别分工、对疾病的性别反应和对疾病的性别感知风险。这些解释是使用来自重复横断面数据和 2012 年健康信息趋势调查（HINTS）的数据的多个因变量进行测试的。结果表明，女性比男性更有可能随着时间的推移寻找癌症信息、一般信息和互联网上的信息，尽管在癌症信息方面，差距可能正在缩小。这三个解释也没有得到明确的支持，尽管对患癌症的感知风险是一个中介，通过它，男性可能不太可能寻找癌症信息。基于这一分析，很明显，信息搜索存在性别差距，男性气质和健康理论在某些情况下可能有一定的前景，但还需要其他解释。
