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, M = 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.

Assessing the impact of the public nutrition information environment: Adapting the cancer information overload scale to measure diet information overload

“…A strength of this study was the diverse sample, reflecting an ethnically diverse, low income, low education, and rural population. The diverse community sample used in this study addresses an important limitation that surrounds previous information overload work, the potential bias and inequalities introduced by only sampling highly educated, Caucasian participants [21,23,24,52]. However, a corresponding limitation is that the study did not randomly sample from the U.S. population as a whole and therefore may not be generalizable nationwide.…”

Antecedents and Consequences of Information Overload in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The model of information overload [ 19 , 20 ] explains the nature of information overload by relying on the limited cognitive capacity of human beings, which hinders the proper processing of information-namely, encoding, storage, and retrieval. According to Lang [ 21 ], cancer information needs large amounts of cognitive resources for individuals to understand and store the information in memory because of its highly arousing and complex content.…”

“…As for the influence of socio-demographics, studies have shown relatively consistent results. Generally, those who are older [ 7 , 20 ], less educated [ 6 , 7 , 9 , 22 ], and of lower socioeconomic status [ 8 , 9 ] perceive greater information overload. People in poorer physical and mental health conditions also tend more to suffer from information overload [ 7 , 9 ], and trait anxiety also successfully predicts information overload [ 2 , 6 ].…”

“…Although information overload is often considered to be a by-product of the information-seeking process in a saturated media environment [ 9 , 20 ], not many studies have examined the influence of media use on information overload and additionally, the results have been inconsistent across studies. For example, regarding information about diet and nutrition, Ramirez and Arellano Carmona [ 23 ] showed that the perception of information overload was prevalent among Mexican-American females and this was mostly attributed to media presentations, in which the effects of too much and contradictory information are compounded.…”

Students' Experiences of Seeking Web-Based Animal Health Information at the Ontario Veterinary College: Exploratory Qualitative Study

“…Multiple studies suggest that HIO may be related to seeker health information literacy (HIL) [21,26]. HIL is defined as the degree to which individuals can obtain, process, understand, and communicate about health-related information needed to make informed health decisions [18,27]. HIL pertaining to health content delivered by means of the internet is termed electronic health information literacy (EHIL) [28,29].…”