title: Health information seeking and scanning among US adults aged 50-75 years: Testing a key postulate of the information overload model.
abstract: Past research has found that older US adults (aged 50-75 years) exhibit high levels of cancer information overload and cancer worry; however, no study to date has examined whether these perceptions are related to information seeking/scanning. To explore this relationship, older adults ( N = 209, Mage= 55.56, SD = 4.24) were recruited to complete a survey measuring seeking, scanning, cancer information overload, and cancer worry. Most participants were high-scan/seekers (40.2%) followed by low-scan/seekers (21.1%), high-scan/no seekers (19.6%), and low-scan/no seekers (19.1%). Low-scan/no seekers had significantly higher cancer information overload compared to all other groups, consistent with the postulate that overload and seeking/scanning are negatively related. Low-scan/no seekers and high-scan/seekers both exhibited higher cancer worry severity, consistent with past research suggesting that cancer worry explains high levels of activity/inactivity.
authors.affiliation: University of Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Jakob D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.affiliation: University of Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Miao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: University of Miami, USA.
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Carcioppolo
authors.affiliation: Brigham Young University, USA.
authors.forename: Kevin K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: John
authors.affiliation: The National Cancer Institute, USA.
authors.forename: Melinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krakow
authors.affiliation: University of Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D058980:Information Literacy; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States
keywords: cancer information overload; cancer worry; scanning; seeking