Personal Cancer Knowledge and Information Seeking Through PRISM: The Planned Risk Information Seeking Model

Abstract

This study retested PRISM, a model of risk information seeking, and found that it is applicable to the context of cancer risk communication. The study, which used an online sample of 928 U.S. adults, also tested the effect of additional variables on that model and found that the original model better fit the data. Among the strongest predictors of cancer information seeking were seeking-related subjective norms, attitude toward seeking, perceived knowledge insufficiency, and affective risk response. Furthermore, risk perception was a strong predictor of an affective risk response. The authors suggest that, given the robustness across studies, the path between seeking-related subjective norms and seeking intention is ready to be implemented in communication practice.

Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the Kellogg Health Scholars Program, under grant P0117943 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to the Center for Advancing Health (Hovick) and The University of Texas at Austin, College of Communication, Junior Faculty Fellowship (Kahlor). Dr. Hovick was also supported in part by a cancer prevention fellowship (National Cancer Institute Grant R25 T CA57730, Shine Chang, Ph.D., principal investigator) and by the National Institutes of Health through The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant CA016672.

Notes

^{1 1}Kahlor (2010) speculated that the lack of a relationship between knowledge insufficiency and information-seeking intention was due to the general context in which the model was tested (an individual's need for additional knowledge may not have been urgent in that context).

²One reason for their absence is the lack of consensus in the literature regarding the theoretical rationale for their inclusion in such models (Kahlor, 2007). While it is often assumed that structural factors, such as socioeconomic status, age, or gender, will affect health behaviors via behavior-related beliefs, this assumption is relatively untested (Godin et al., 2010). In addition, the contribution of demographic variables to the prediction of information seeking and knowledge is often small (e.g., Shim, 2008; Smith-McLallen, Fishbein, & Hornick, 2011) and studies suggest that minority and low-socioeconomic populations are motivated by factors contained in PRISM (Matthews et al., 2002).

**p < .01. *p < .05.

³The variance accounted for in cancer information seeking is comparable to the variance accounted for in general health information seeking in past research (R ² = .59; Kahlor, 2010).