PRISM: A Planned Risk Information Seeking Model

Abstract

Recent attention on health-related information seeking has focused primarily on information seeking within specific health and health risk contexts. This study attempts to shift some of that focus to individual-level variables that may impact health risk information seeking across contexts. To locate these variables, the researcher posits an integrated model, the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM). The model, which treats risk information seeking as a deliberate (planned) behavior, maps variables found in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991) and the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP; Griffin, Dunwoody, & Neuwirth, 1999), and posits linkages among those variables. This effort is further informed by Kahlor's (2007) Augmented RISP, the Theory of Motivated Information Management (Afifi & Weiner, 2004), the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (Johnson & Meischke, 1993), the Health Information Acquisition Model (Freimuth, Stein, & Kean, 1989), and the Extended Parallel Processing Model (Witte, 1998). The resulting integrated model accounted for 59% of the variance in health risk information-seeking intent and performed better than the TPB or the RISP alone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper was presented to the Communication Theory & Methodology Division at the annual conference of the Associated for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, 2008. Funding for this project came from the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The author thanks Sharon Dunwoody, Sonny Rosenthal, Michael Mackert, Patricia Stout, and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹PRISM focuses on risk information seeking within and outside of health communication contexts. The intent is to capture seeking shaped by “things, forces, or circumstances that pose danger to people or to what they value” (Stern & Fineberg, 1996, p. 215).

²These concepts were in a fuller version of RISP model as predictors of risk-related behaviors.

³A visual schematic of the HIAM is on page 8 in Freimuth, Stein, and Kean's book (1989).

⁴Scale item wording, item means, and standard deviations are available on request from the author.