A Moderating Role of Gender in Online Health Information Seeking Behaviors for Colorectal Cancer Knowledge among Korean Americans Aged 50 to 75 Years

ABSTRACT

Korean Americans have consistently reported the underutilization of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, despite their high rates of CRC incidence and mortality. Research has indicated suboptimal CRC knowledge in Korean Americans as one of the main barriers to their recommended CRC screening. Also, research has shown the potential of online health information seeking (OHIS) to improve cancer knowledge and gender-based differences in the link between OHIS and cancer knowledge. Thus, this study aimed to examine the association between OHIS and CRC knowledge and the moderating effect of gender in this association among Korean Americans. A cross-sectional survey with purposive sampling was conducted of 421 Korean Americans aged 50–75 years in the Southeastern U.S. Three-step hierarchical multiple-regression analyses were performed to investigate if three blocks of variables—Block 1: control variables (sociodemographics and health-related information), Block 2: independent variables (OHIS and gender), and Block 3: an (OHIS × gender) interaction term—significantly reduce unexplained variance in CRC knowledge. The analyses showed that the final model fits best accounting for 29.3% of the variance in CRC knowledge. Also, the analyses showed that OHIS was positively associated with CRC knowledge and gender moderated the association between OHIS and CRC knowledge. The findings close the knowledge gap existing in the body of literature on the connection of OHIS to CRC knowledge in Korean Americans. The findings also extend the understanding of gender-specific approaches leveraging OHIS for CRC prevention education among Korean Americans.

KEYWORDS:

• Cancer knowledge
• colorectal cancer screening
• hierarchical linear regression
• Korean Americans
• online health information seeking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Additional information

Funding

The first author of the project was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) under Grant Number U54MD008173, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIMHD or NIH.