Factors Predicting Health Information Seeking and the Construction of a Cognitive Model: Based on the Meta-Analysis Approach
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Chang, Cheng-Ching
Abstract
Health information is any information related to medicine and health care in everyday life of individuals, health information seeking is studied within the context of “coping with a health-threatening situation,” “participation and involvement in medical decision making,” and “behavior change and preventive behavior”. Researchers are interested in understanding how and why individuals obtain health information, where they retrieve, what particular types of information they prefer, and how the health information is used. Thus, studies relevant to health information seeking (HIS) are abundant and wild spread in various disciplines—such as medicine, nursing, public health, communication, and library and information science. However, the empirical findings of factors’ predicting abailty on HIS are mixed, same factor represented totally different predicting ability within diverse context, theories or models with limited generality only applicable to specific situation. A systematic review and analysis to eliminate these controversies and develop a general theory or model of HIS is crucial. Therefore, meta-analysis was adopted in this study, empirical studies related to HIS was completely retrieved, eleven factors such as media use, ill experience, health status, self-efficacy, health literacy, seeking intention, affective responses, usefulness, easy to use, credibility, and subjective norms commonly used in HIS prediction were inducted, every factor has significant predicting ability on HIS in addition to health status and subjective norms is the highest one according to the result of effect size calculation. Variable attributed to different dimension such as sample property, study characteristic, publication attribute, and research method has moderating effect on HIS prediction, but no moderator of affective responses has been found and further study is needed. Besides, based on the result of effect size calculation, a cognitive model of HIS was proposed, factors that attributed to personal and situational dimension were used to annotate HIS. All goodness of fit were passed and most hypothesis were supported of the meta-analystical model of HIS, indicated this model is applicabile to all kinds of individuals, information channels, or subjects of health information. Since health information need leads to affective responses all the time, some empirical evidences suggested that individuals may avoiding information to prevent more negative effect. Althought this point of view has not been confirmed but people not always need more information was found in this study. HIS is highly associated with contextual factors based on the result of effect size calculation or model construction. It is much easier to modify HIS behavior of individuals by means of their friends, family members, or opinion leaders, so cultivating community belief of health life pursuit is particularly important. We can promote HIS intention through the developing of information literacy and credibility elevating of online health information as well.
Subjects
Health information
Health information seeking
Information behavior
Predicting factors
Meta-analytical model of health information seeking
Meta-analysis
SDGs
Type
thesis
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