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    Int J Aging Hum Dev. 1997;45(2):85-98.

    Age differences in information-seeking among cancer patients.

    Turk-Charles S, Meyerowitz BE, Gatz M.

    Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90089, USA.

    Studies examining patient populations have found that information-seeking decreases with age. However, researchers usually define information-seeking as involving only the medical establishment, while they neglect other sources of information. The present study examined the use of two types of information sources, non-medical establishment (newspaper, television, and friends) and medical establishment (doctors and nurses), among seventy-five cancer patients aged eighteen to eighty-one years. Patients responded to questionnaires asking about information-seeking, desire for more cancer information, self-perception of their knowledge about cancer, and actual knowledge of facts about cancer. For the medical establishment source, information-seeking decreased with age; however, no age differences existed for seeking non-medical establishment information. In individuals with high levels of desire for information, older adults reported more information-seeking from non-medical sources than did younger adults.

    PMID: 9395923 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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