The Information Needs of Chinese Family members of Cancer Patients in the Online Health Community: What and Why?

Ma, Dan; Zuo, Meiyun; Liu, Liu

doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102517

Cited by 25 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…In information science, we can find inspiration for approaches to studying information needs. Ma and Zuo (2021) explore the information seeking behaviour of Chinese family members of cancer patients, and among other interesting findings, they find that stressful events give rise to questions which prompt information seeking behaviours. Similarly, Soroya et al (2021) explore the information behaviour and identify the characteristics of individuals more likely to feel information overload and information anxiety during health crises.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Information seeking for coping with cancer: a systematic review

Petersen

Jensen

Frandsen

2021

AJIM

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PurposeInformation seeking can be used to make sense of a situation or solve a problem. Information seeking can be considered a coping strategy when facing illness, crisis or other life-changing events. Cancer is a globally occurring, life-threatening disease, and this review aims to provide an overview of the existing literature on the active information seeking behaviour of cancer patients specifically focussing on how active information seeking serves as a coping strategy.Design/methodology/approachThis study adheres to current guidelines for conducting systematic reviews and consequently, thorough literature searches were conducted in four databases: Medline, Embase, CINAHL and Scopus which resulted in 7,179 publications. Following a careful screening process, this systematic review identifies 14 studies on the use of information seeking to cope with cancer.FindingsThe included studies consist of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to analysing the use of information seeking to cope with cancer. The included studies have focussed primarily on demographic factors, the impact of affect, information needs, sources and coping strategies.Research limitations/implicationsA number of research gaps within library and information science are identified. Bringing research in this field into information science could allow for a greater understanding of information literacy, the use of existing information and the process of information searching when using information seeking to cope with serious illness.Originality/valueThis systematic review focusses on how information seeking serves as a coping strategy for cancer patients and provides an overview of the recent literature.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Information seeking for coping with cancer: a systematic review

Petersen

Jensen

Frandsen

2021

AJIM

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“…Most of the studies from the perspective of platform function have explored the benefits that OHCs can bring such as reducing urban-rural disparities 3 and providing information or emotional support. 10 – 12 The literature related to information content focuses on issues such as mining new knowledge from the content 13 , 14 and ensuring information quality. 15 The last category of literature related to users includes studies of physicians and patients, where the motivation of participation, individual characteristics, and physician-patient interaction are the most frequently discussed topics.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of physician promotion on the online healthcare community: Using a difference-in-difference approach

Hsu

Chiu²,

Wang³

et al. 2022

DIGITAL HEALTH

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In this study, we use a difference-in-difference approach to explore how physician promotion, the advancement of a physician's offline reputation, affects patient behavior toward physicians in online healthcare communities; this allows us to explore how patients interpret the signals created by physician promotion. The study sample was collected from over 140,000 physician online profiles after 25 months of continuous observation, with 280 physicians who were promoted at month 13 as the treatment group and a control group obtained by propensity score matching. Our results show that a physician's promotion causes more patients to choose that physician, makes patients willing to give more psychological rewards, and makes them tend to give that physician a higher online rating. This implies that patient behavior is susceptible to the signal of physician promotion because the quality of the physician is unlikely to have changed significantly in the short term. These findings extend prior research on reputation in online communities and have crucial implications for theory and practice.

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“…Personal experience, recommendation, suggestion, and feedback are all behaviors associated with information support ( Zhao et al, 2020 ). Individuals can benefit from the informational support of others, especially when the support is related to the stressful events they are experiencing ( Ma et al, 2021 ). In OHCs, the act of providing and exchanging information related to medical technologies and medical procedures, such as illness (diagnosis, prescription, treatment, and records while being treated), hospitalization, enrolment, and others, is referred to as informational support ( Wang et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Research Model and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why should I consult? The impact of social support on patient consultation in online healthcare communities

Liu

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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The COVID-19 epidemic put the traditional healthcare system and offline consultation method under strain. Patient consultations through online healthcare communities (OHCs) provide patients and physicians with a more convenient and secure route. Based on the social support theory, this study explores the impact of three dimensions of social support from physicians—information diagnosticity, source credibility, and emotional support—on patient consultations in OHCs and their moderating effect on patients’ compliments. We utilized Python Spiders to retrieve data from Haodf.com and gathered 2,982 physician reports. The model uses OLS regression with fixed effect estimations. The results show that these three dimensions of social support are positively impacted by consultation. Furthermore, patients’ compliments weaken the positive relationship between the three dimensions of physicians’ social support and patient consultations. This study contributes to the literature on social support theory in OHCs by exploring the physicians’ social support dimension and its impact on patient consultation. Moreover, this study makes practical contributions to physicians and platform administrators in OHCs.

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The Information Needs of Chinese Family members of Cancer Patients in the Online Health Community: What and Why?

Cited by 25 publications

References 62 publications

Information seeking for coping with cancer: a systematic review

Information seeking for coping with cancer: a systematic review

Impacts of physician promotion on the online healthcare community: Using a difference-in-difference approach

Why should I consult? The impact of social support on patient consultation in online healthcare communities

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