SELF-EVALUATION AND HEALTH INFORMATION-SEEKING: A STUDY OF SELF-ASSESSMENT AND SELF-PROTECTION MOTIVES.
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 227
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Social.; Psychology, Personality.
Description: The phenomenon of patient differential preferences for health information remains little understood despite its potentially pivotal role in health decision-making and behavior. The present dissertation tested the proposition that the search for health information is influenced by two self-evaluation motives. The self-assessment motive guides the patient toward seeking accurate and objective health information. The self-protection motive guides the patient toward seeking health information that does not threaten the integrity of the self.

Three experiments used samples of college students to investigate the relative influence of self-evaluation motives on health information-seeking. The experiments used hypothetical situations that portrayed the early phases of symptom detection and initial contact with the health care system. Experiment 1 attempted to delimit the personal and contextual conditions under which each motive affects health information-seeking by manipulating the key construct of diagnosticity (i.e., the degree of informativeness of a screening test) operationalized as "focused accuracy" (i.e., the relative percentages of hit rate and false negative of a health screening test). Experiment 2 tested the influence of the same personal and contextual variables on health information-seeking as Experiment 1 did, but operationalized the construct of diagnosticity as "generalized accuracy" (i.e., the ability of a screening test to detect one or more diseases). Experiment 3 examined the role of concrete self-aspect appraisals by subjects in giving way to the emergence of each motive.

Experiment 1 (N = 120) found an overwhelming tendency for subjects to prefer high diagnosticity information, thus lending support to the self-assessment perspective. Experiment 2 (N = 120) also favored the self-assessment over the self-protection perspective. Experiment 3 (N = 360) obtained partial support for the operation of the self-protection motive; however, self-assessment emerged again as the dominant motive.

Results are discussed with respect to four themes: reasons for the dominance of the self-assessment motive; diagnosticity as a more powerful predictor of health information-seeking than health threat severity; the role of self-aspect appraisals in reliance on self-evaluation motives; and, proximal versus distal goals in health information-seeking. Implications and avenues for future research are explored.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-05, Section: B, page: 2560.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON, 1995.

School code: 0262.