A case study: Individual’s Efficacy Beliefs and Self-Determination with Health Information Seeking

Seeking information is the beginning of learning that information. If a person wants to know something, he will seek that information, put it into actions. According to the self-determination theory (SDT), need fulfillment contributes to one’s motivation in actions. On the other hand, the self-efficacy theory (SET) exhibits efficacy beliefs (including self-efficacy and response efficacy), i.e. individual's beliefs in his or her capability to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments, are key determinants for executing the action.  

Using the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 4, Cycle 3), it found that low need fulfillment and low response efficacy over cancer prevention hinder people’s cancer information seeking, respectively, while confidence of getting needed information (high self-efficacy) stimulates people’s cancer information seeking.

(The graph above shows the adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the social cognitive predictor variables predicting cancer health information seeking. The model was adjusted by demographic covariates: age, gender, income, and education. N=3185, * P ≤0.1, ** P ≤0.05, *** P ≤ 0.01)

Furthermore, there are significant interaction effects among the variables of need fulfillment, response efficacy and confidence. The positive effect of confidence on cancer information seeking is overridden by low need fulfillment and the negative effect of low need fulfillment on cancer information seeking is diminished with low response efficacy over cancer prevention (feeling of risk). 

(Predictive margin of interaction effects) 


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