Recent decades have witnessed a growing emphasis on patients as active consumers of health information. The literature about cancer-related information focuses on active and purposeful information seeking, but a great deal of exposure to cancer-relevant information may happen less purposively (termed information scanning). This article presents results from an in-depth interview study that examined information seeking and scanning behavior in the context of cancer prevention and screening decisions among a diverse sample of people living in a major metropolitan area. Results suggest that information scanning is quite common, particularly for information related to screening tests. Information seeking is rarer and occurs primarily among those who also are information scanners. Respondents report using a greater variety of sources for information scanning than for information seeking, but participants were much more likely to report that their decisions were influenced by information received through seeking than through scanning. These findings shed new light on how individuals navigate the media environment and suggest future research should examine predictors and effects of less purposeful efforts to obtain cancer-related information.

Social entrepreneurs have a dominant social mission and generate revenue to ensure financial viability. However, most research treats the extent to which social entrepreneurs actually adhere to social and economic mission as a black box. Performing higher order confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of social enterprises (N∼270), this study identifies dimensions and validates measures for understanding and delineating social and economic missions, and shows how the two constructs relate to each other. The theoretical untangling and the empirical validation of social and economic missions as distinct constructs—and multiple potential constellations of attached relative importance—opens up opportunities for quantitative hypothesis–testing research in social entrepreneurship.

The complexity of issues firms have to attend to make it impossible for CEOs to give their full attention to all issues concurrently. Drawing on the "attention-based view" of the firm, this paper opens the black box of attention allocation in for-profit social enterprises by showing how attention structures and the context in which the firm operates interplay. Utilizing empirical data on 148 for-profit social enterprises, findings show that the attention structures-other-regarding values, utilitarian identity, and resource availability-have a significant impact on the relative attention to social goals, while past firm performance as a context variable moderates these relations. Applying the principles of structural and situated attention, this paper makes an important contribution to management theory and attention allocation in for-profit social enterprises.

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The present study sought to replicate effects of the number of syndemic psychosocial health conditions on sexual risk behavior and HIV infection among a sample of high-risk African American men who have sex with men (MSM) and to identify resilience factors that may buffer these effects. We used baseline data from an HIV risk-reduction trial to examine whether a higher number of syndemic conditions was associated with higher rates of self-reported sexual risk behavior and HIV infection. Using logistic regression models, we tested for interactions between number of syndemic conditions and several potential resilience factors to identify buffering effects. Replicating previous studies, we found significant associations between numbers of syndemic conditions and higher rates of sexual risk behavior and HIV infection. Surprisingly, we also replicated a previous finding (Stall et al., 2003) that the effects of syndemic burden on HIV status fell off at the highest levels of syndemic conditions. Among a variety of potential resilience factors, two--optimism and education--buffered the syndemic effect on HIV prevalence. This is, to our knowledge, the first paper to identify resilience factors buffering against syndemic effects among MSM. It also constitutes a significant contribution to the literature regarding prevention among black MSM. These results point to the need to identify HIV-positive black MSM and provide effective treatment for them and to develop interventions addressing both syndemic and resilience factors.

This study examines the role of social media in the lives of youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Feminist Standpoint theory, which privileges the voices of marginalized communities in understanding social phenomena, suggests that youth at the margins have specific knowledge that helps us understand social media more broadly. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 females and 30 males aged 13 to 24 about their social worlds and neighborhoods, both on- and offline. The findings reveal a dynamic and somewhat concerning interplay between the geographic neighborhood and the digital neighborhood, whereby negative social interactions in the geographic neighborhood are reproduced and amplified on social media.

Background Sexual health is an important area of study—particularly for minority youth and youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Objectives The purpose of the research was to examine the sources of sexual health information associated with youth adopting sexual risk reduction behaviors. Methods Data collection took place in a small city in the Northeastern United States using cross-sectional behavioral surveys and modified venue-based sampling. Participants included 249 African-American and Latino/a youth aged 13–24. Participants reported their sources of information about contraception and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted disease (STD), such as TV/movies, parents, social media; their intentions to have sex; and condom and contraception use during their last sexual activity. Social media use, past pregnancy experience, past sexual history, age, and gender were also measured. Standard tests of bivariate association (chi-squared and F-tests) were used to examine initial associations between sexual risk reduction behavior and exposure to sexual risk reduction information on social media. Logistic regression models were used to test multivariate relationships between information sources and sexual risk reduction behavior. Results Youth who were exposed to sexual health messages on social media were 2.69 times (p < .05) and 2.49 times (p < .08) more likely to have used contraception or a condom at last intercourse, respectively. Parents, schools, or traditional media as information sources were not significantly associated with contractive use or condom use at last intercourse. Discussion Youth sexual behavior is increasingly informed by social media messages. Health practitioners should utilize social media as an important health promotion tool.

We examined the efficacy and mediation of Being Responsible for Ourselves (BRO), an HIV/STI risk-reduction intervention for African American men who have sex with men (MSM), the population with the highest HIV-diagnosis rate in the US. We randomized African American MSM to one of two interventions: BRO HIV/STI risk-reduction, targeting condom use; or attention-matched control, targeting physical activity and healthy diet. The interventions were based on social cognitive theory, the reasoned-action approach, and qualitative research. Men reporting anal intercourse with other men in the past 90 days were eligible and completed pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and 6 and 12 months post-intervention surveys. Of 595 participants, 503 (85 %) completed the 12-month follow-up. Generalized-estimating-equations analysis indicated that, compared with the attention-matched control intervention, the BRO intervention did not increase consistent condom use averaged over the 6- and 12-month follow-ups, which was the primary outcome. Although BRO did not affect the proportion of condom-protected intercourse acts, unprotected sexual intercourse, multiple partners, or insertive anal intercourse, it did reduce receptive anal intercourse compared with the control, a behavior linked to incident HIV infection. Mediation analysis using the product-of-coefficients approach revealed that although BRO increased seven of nine theoretical constructs it was designed to affect, it increased only one of three theoretical constructs that predicted consistent condom use: condom-use impulse-control self-efficacy. Thus, BRO indirectly increased consistent condom use through condom-use impulse-control self-efficacy. In conclusion, although BRO increased several theoretical constructs, most of those constructs did not predict consistent condom use; hence, the intervention did not increase it. Theoretical constructs that interventions should target to increase African American MSM’s condom use are discussed.