Determinants and beliefs of health information mavens among a lower-socioeconomic position and minority population
Highlights
► Novel application of the market maven concept to the US public health sector. ► Identifies social and environmental determinants of health information mavenism. ► Assesses health beliefs of health information mavens.
Section snippets
Background
The demands placed on the public as health consumers are ever increasing. The confluence of an information rich environment along with the multitude of health care decisions the public is asked to make, from healthy behavior choices to what health plan to subscribe to, create unique challenges for health communication (Viswanath, 2005). These challenges are further magnified for the most disadvantaged populations, such as members of lower-socioeconomic position (SEP) and most racial/ethnic
Data source
Data for this study were drawn from the baseline survey of “Click to Connect: Improving health literacy through computer literacy” (C2C), a randomized control intervention study funded through the US National Cancer Institute (grant #5R01CA122894). Human subjects approval for this investigation was granted by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Institutional Review Board and the baseline data were collected from September 2007 through November 2009. The aim of the study is to elicit a better
Characteristics of health information mavens
Nearly half (44%) of the Click to Connect participants identified as being a health information maven. The mean maven score was 27.69 (range 5–35 and a standard deviation of 5.77), and scores were approximately normally distributed.
Several distinguishing trends of health information mavenism emerged from the bivariate analyses. Having a larger social network, being female and being older were important social and demographic factors that were associated with higher mavenism scores (see Table 2
Discussion
Both social and media environments are influential in determining health information mavenism. As would be expected based on the noted link between communication and social capital, one’s social network is an important attribute of health information mavenism (Ackerson and Viswanath, 2009, Viswanath, 2008). Our data suggest that mavens are highly networked within their communities, reporting larger social networks and more civic engagement than those scoring lower on the maven scale. This
Acknowledgments
This study was made possible with funding from the US National Cancer Institute through the following mechanisms: “Click to Connect: Improving Health Literacy through Computer Literacy”, grant #5R01CA122894, and the Harvard Education Program in Cancer Prevention and Control, grant #5R25CA057711.
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