Older Adults' Health Information Wants in the Internet Age: Implications for Patient–Provider Relationships

Abstract

A qualitative, exploratory study was conducted in the summer of 2007 to investigate older adults' preferences for health information and participation in decision making. The study involved in-depth individual and focus group interviewing with a total of 20 older Internet users and nonusers. Grounded theory was used to conduct the data analysis and construct the theory that best explains the data. The concept of health information wants (HIW), or health information that one would like to have and use to make important health decisions that may or may not be directly related to diagnosis or standard treatment, emerged from the data analysis and led to the development of the HIW framework. This framework encompasses four types of HIW that have varying properties and positions on the decision-making spectrum. While Internet use has not changed these older adults' reliance on medical professionals for diagnostic or standard treatment decisions (and reliance on professionals for information needed to make those decisions), it has opened up new venues for obtaining information to make decisions in broader scopes. Thus, both the Internet and the perpetuating influence of the provider–dependent model are at play in the patient–provider relationships of these older adults.

This research was supported by a General Research Board Faculty Summer Research Grant from the University of Maryland. The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland provided supplemental funding. The author thanks Ken Fleischmann, Dagobert Soergel, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.