Method: Women with invasive, non-metastatic breast cancer were recruited and interviewed from July 2006 to April 2011. Participants were asked to check the sources from which they seek health information including formal networks (e.g. doctors, nurses), informal networks (e.g. friends, family), and other media (e.g. TV, radio, internet, cancer information sources-ACS). General treatment decision-making preferences as well as patient’s actual involvement in their surgery decision were queried with two items. Frequencies and Cross-tabs were computed to explore differences in types of information sources and decision-making preferences by socio-demographic factors (age, race, education, and marital status).
Result:
A total of 359 women participated in the study. The top sources of information preferred were: doctors (97.1%), friends or someone who has gone through breast cancer (69.0%), cancer sources information (68.2%), the internet (63.9%), and nurses (63.8%). Differences in information sources were noted by education, race, age, and marital status. For instance, compared to women with lower education (≤ High School), women with higher education (> High School) were more likely to seek health information from friends (72.9% vs. 56.6%, p = .01), through internet (73.2% vs. 33.8%, p = .00), and cancer information sources (71.5% vs. 57.9%, p = .03). Compared to their White counterparts, Black breast cancer patients tended to consult less internet sources (58% vs. 71.9%, p = .01) and sought information to a greater extent from the radio or TV (38.4% vs. 18.3%, p = .00) and from nurses (69.4% vs. 55.4%, p = .015). Most participants (73.3%) tended to prefer sharing the decision-making with their provider and most (72.9%) perceived that they had a high level of involvement in their actual surgery decision.
Conclusion: Preliminary data suggests that information sources vary by socio-demographic characteristics. The next step is to further characterize if these relationships are sustained in multivariable models. Findings from this work can inform patient information interventions to improve decision making and patient provider communication.