Modern patients who want to be informed, aware and active in the treatment process seek health information through various sources, and the internet is one of the key ones.
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the information seeking behavior of cancer patients in Slovenia, based on the following research questions: (1) how common is the use of the Internet to search for health information compared to other sources; (2) which types of health information seekers can be identified according to the frequency of use of different sources of information; (3) what types of cancer information different types of health information seekers search for on the Internet; and (4) whether the socio-demographic characteristics of cancer patients are related to the frequency of Internet use for health information purposes. Based on a statistical analysis, it was found that Slovenian cancer patients still place doctors and specialists in the first place as a source of information, however the Internet falls into a close second place. Patients mostly search the Internet for information about experiences with the course of the disease, the symptoms of the disease, and the methods and processes of treatment. The non-hierarchical classification of units indicated three groups: less active information seekers, active information seekers from all sources, and active information seekers from professional medical staff and the Internet. An analysis of the socio-demographic structure of Slovenian cancer patients seeking information about their disease on the Internet indicated that age and employment status were statistically significantly related to the frequency of Internet use for searching for information on cancer.
|
