Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Dec;36(6):1253-1260.
doi: 10.1007/s13187-020-01758-6.

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

Stacy N Davis  1   2   3   4 , Denalee M O'Malley  5   6   7 , Alicja Bator  5   7 , Pamela Ohman-Strickland  5   8   6 , Shawna V Hudson  5   8   6   7
Affiliations

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

Stacy N Davis et al. J Cancer Educ. 2021 Dec.

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.

Keywords: Cancer; Cancer information; Cancer survivors; Cancer survivorship; Information-seeking.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest/Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

References

    1. Bluethmann SM, Mariotto AB, and Rowland JH, Anticipating the “Silver Tsunami”: Prevalence Trajectories and Comorbidity Burden among Older Cancer Survivors in the United States. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 2016. 25(7): p. 1029–36. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Miller KD, et al., Cancer treatment and survivorship statistics, 2019. CA Cancer J Clin, 2019. - PubMed
    1. Rutten LJ, et al., Information needs and sources of information among cancer patients: a systematic review of research (1980–2003). Patient Educ Couns, 2005. 57(3): p. 250–61. - PubMed
    1. Halkett GK, et al., Information needs and preferences of women as they proceed through radiotherapy for breast cancer. Patient Educ Couns, 2012. 86(3): p. 396–404. - PubMed
    1. Fletcher C, et al., The information needs of adult cancer survivors across the cancer continuum: A scoping review. Patient Educ Couns, 2017. 100(3): p. 383–410. - PubMed

Publication types