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Correlates of Information Seeking Behaviors and Experiences Among Adult Cancer Survivors in the USA

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Abstract

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.

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Funding

This study was supported (in part) by the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), a component of the National Institute of Health (NIH) under Award Number UL1TR0030117. Dr. Davis’ effort is supported by a diversity supplement granted by the National Cancer Institute (3R01CA176838-04S1 Hudson PI). Drs. Hudson, O’Malley, and Ms. Bator effort is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes for Health under award number R01CA176838 (Hudson SV (PI) and the Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA072720.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Stacy N. Davis, Denalee M. O’Malley, Alicja Bator, Pamela Ohman-Strickland & Shawna V. Hudson

  2. Rutgers, School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Stacy N. Davis, Pamela Ohman-Strickland & Shawna V. Hudson

  3. Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Stacy N. Davis, Denalee M. O’Malley, Pamela Ohman-Strickland & Shawna V. Hudson

  4. Department of Health Behavior, Society, and Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Stacy N. Davis

  5. Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Denalee M. O’Malley, Alicja Bator & Shawna V. Hudson

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  1. Stacy N. Davis
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  2. Denalee M. O’Malley
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  4. Pamela Ohman-Strickland
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Correspondence to Stacy N. Davis.

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Davis, S.N., O’Malley, D.M., Bator, A. et al. Correlates of Information Seeking Behaviors and Experiences Among Adult Cancer Survivors in the USA. J Canc Educ 36, 1253–1260 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01758-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01758-6

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