Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Rutgers, School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
J Cancer Educ. 2021 Dec;36(6):1253-1260. doi: 10.1007/s13187-020-01758-6.
Understanding information seeking behaviors and experiences is essential for designing educational and supportive interventions to promote survivor's self-management post treatment. This study examined health and cancer information seeking, use of internet to find cancer information, and information seeking experiences among breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer survivors. Nationally representative data collected in 2017-2018 from 2 cycles of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 5, cycles 1 and 2 were merged with combined replicate weights using the jackknife replication method (n = 373). Regression analysis for three information seeking behaviors (i.e., health information, cancer information, and internet for cancer information) were modeled, including sociodemographic and clinical factors as predictors. In addition, separate regression analysis predicted three experiences of information seeking (effort, quality, and hard to understand) with sociodemographic and clinical factors. A majority of survivors (84.7%) sought health information. Factors significantly associated with seeking health information were gender (p = 0.024), education (p = 0.0021), and income (p = 0.018). Only 38% of survivors used the internet to seek cancer-related information. The only factor significantly associated with using the internet to seek cancer-related information was time since diagnosis (p = 0.0002). The factor significantly associated with difficulty understanding information was annual household income (p = 0.026). This study fills an important gap by identifying sociodemographic and cancer-related factors associated with information seeking behaviors and experiences. These findings highlight a need to tailor information for low socioeconomic status survivors to account for the lack of skills, resources, and motivation to seek information about health and cancer related topics independently.
了解信息寻求行为和体验对于设计教育和支持性干预措施以促进幸存者治疗后自我管理至关重要。本研究调查了乳腺癌、结直肠癌和前列腺癌幸存者的健康和癌症信息寻求、利用互联网寻找癌症信息以及信息寻求体验。2017-2018 年，利用健康信息国家趋势调查（HINTS）的两轮数据（HINTS 5，将第 1 轮和第 2 轮合并，并使用刀叉复制法（jackknife replication method）结合合并重复权重（n=373）。对三种信息寻求行为（即健康信息、癌症信息和互联网上的癌症信息）进行回归分析，包括社会人口统计学和临床因素作为预测因素。此外，还分别使用回归分析预测了三种信息寻求体验（努力、质量和难以理解）与社会人口统计学和临床因素的关系。大多数幸存者（84.7%）寻求健康信息。与寻求健康信息显著相关的因素有性别（p=0.024）、教育（p=0.0021）和收入（p=0.018）。只有 38%的幸存者使用互联网寻求癌症相关信息。唯一与使用互联网寻求癌症相关信息显著相关的因素是诊断后时间（p=0.0002）。与难以理解信息显著相关的因素是家庭年收入（p=0.026）。本研究通过确定与信息寻求行为和体验相关的社会人口统计学和癌症相关因素，填补了一个重要的空白。这些发现强调需要针对社会经济地位较低的幸存者量身定制信息，以解决他们在独立寻求健康和癌症相关主题信息方面缺乏技能、资源和动力的问题。
