Background Low health literacy is associated with factors such as not taking medication as prescribed as well as poor health status and increased hospitalization and mortality risk, and has been identified as a risk factor for decreased physical function in older individuals. Health literacy is becoming an increasingly important issue because of the increased number of people affected by cancer who must make complicated treatment decisions. Health literacy has been shown to be positively associated with quality of life (QOL), and social support has been identified as important for addressing health-related problems and reducing the relative risk of mortality in patients with cancer. However, few studies have examined the relationship between health literacy, social support, age, and QOL. Objective The aim of this study is to examine the effects of health literacy, social support, and age on the QOL of patients with cancer. Methods An anonymous, self-administered online questionnaire was conducted from March 28 to 30, 2017, in Japan on patients with lung, stomach, or colon cancer that were voluntarily registered with an internet survey company. The survey covered basic attributes, health literacy, social support, and QOL. The European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire, a comprehensive measure of health literacy instrument, was used to measure health literacy; the Japanese version of the Social Support Scale was used to measure social support; and the Japanese version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (7-item version) assessment tool was used to measure QOL. Results A total of 735 survey invitations were randomly sent to patients with lung, stomach, or colorectal cancer, and responses were obtained from 619 (82.2% response rate). Significant effects on the QOL in patients with lung, stomach, or colon cancer were observed for health literacy, social support, and age, and for the interactions of health literacy and social support and of social support and age. Health literacy, social support, and the interaction between these variables also showed a significant effect on the QOL in patients 50 years or older, but not on those younger than 50 years. Conclusions The results of this study revealed that higher health literacy, social support, and age were associated with the QOL in patients with cancer. In addition, the relationship with QOL was stronger for social support than for health literacy. These findings suggest the importance of health literacy and social support and indicate that social support has a greater effect on QOL than does health literacy, while the QOL in patients with cancer aged younger than 50 years was lower than that of those 50 years or older. Therefore, elucidating the needs of these patients and strengthening social support based on those needs may improve their QOL.

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Background Online information seeking on medical topics by patients can have beneficial effects by helping them decide on treatment options and fostering better relationships with doctors. The quality of websites and processes of seeking information online have mostly been studied, with a focus on the accuracy and reliability of websites; however, few studies have examined the relationship between other aspects of quality and the processes of seeking medical information online. Objective This exploratory study aimed to shed light on the quality of websites used for information seeking from the perspective of understanding medical information in combination with seeking it online. Methods The study participants were 15 Japanese university students with no problem using the internet. A questionnaire survey about health literacy (47 items on a 4-point Likert scale) and information navigation skills on the internet (8 items on a 5-point Likert scale) was conducted before participants engaged in online information seeking and qualitative interviews. The students searched for information on a disease and its treatment. The websites viewed were gathered from search behavior recorded by software and browser logs. Follow-up interviews were conducted to elicit explanations from the participants about the assignments and their views of online information seeking. The explanations were evaluated by 55 health care professionals on a 3-point Likert scale and then assessed based on their comments and the participant interviews. Results The mean age of the participants was 20.6 years (median 21; SD 1.06). All participants were able to access reliable websites with information relevant to the assignments. The mean ratings of the students’ explanations were 108.6 (median 109; range=83-134) for the disease and 105.6 (median 104; range=87-117) for its treatment. The inter-rater reliability were 0.84 (95% CI 0.77-0.90) and 0.95 (95% CI 0.93-0.97), indicating good and excellent, respectively. The mean of the sum of the health literacy skills was 115.1 (median 115; range=80-166) and the mean for information navigation skills was 25.9 (median 26; range=17-36), respectively. Health literacy and information navigation skills were moderately correlated (r=0.54; 95% CI 0.033-0.822; P=.04). Among the four stages of health literacy, understanding and appraising (r=0.53; 95% CI 0.025-0.820; P=.04) were moderately correlated with information navigation skills (r=0.52; 95% CI 0.013-0.816; P=.046). The participants had no difficulties operating and browsing the internet and considered medical and public institution websites to be reliable; however, due to unfamiliarity with medical terms, they had difficulties choosing a site from the results obtained and comparing and synthesizing information provided by different sites. They also looked for sites providing orderly information in plain language but provided explanations from sites that gave inadequate interpretations of information. Conclusions This study revealed interactions between searching the internet for, and understanding, medical information by analyzing the processes of information seeking online, physicians’ evaluations and comments about the participants’ explanations, and the participants’ perceptions.

This paper describes novel results on the characteristics of three-party dialogues by quantitatively comparing them with those of two-party. In previous dialogue research, two-party dialogues are mainly focussed because data collection of multi-party dialogues is difficult and there are very few theories handling them, although research on multi-party dialogues is expected to be of much use in building computer supported collaborative work environments and computer assisted instruction systems. In this paper, firstly we describe our data collection method of multi-party dialogues using a meeting scheduling task, which enables us to compare three-party dialogues with those of two party. Then we quantitively compare these two kinds of dialogues such as the number of characters and turns and patterns of information exchanges. Lastly we show that patterns of information exchanges in speaker alternation and initiative-taking can be used to characterise three-party dialogues.