Research indicates that when people seek health information, they typically look for information about a specific symptom, preventive measure, disease, or treatment. It is unclear, however, whether general or disease-specific theoretical models best predict how people search for health information. We surveyed undergraduates (N = 963) at a large public southeastern university to examine health information seeking in two incongruent health contexts (sexual health and cancer) to test whether a general model would hold for specific topics that differed in their immediate personal relevance for the target population. We found that the planned risk information seeking model was statistically a good fit for the data. Yet multiple predicted paths were not supported in either data set. Certain variables, such as attitudes, norms, and affect, appear to be strong predictors of intentions to seek information across health contexts. Implications for theory building, research methodology, and applied work in health-related risk information seeking are discussed.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 August 2019.
All research outputs
#7,701,142
of 28,165,812 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Health Communication
#542
of 1,435 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#92,293
of 317,408 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Health Communication
#12
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,165,812 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,435 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.2. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 317,408 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
