(Press-News.org) TEMPE (March 12, 2012) - Maybe you've had a reoccurring sore throat or frequent headaches. Perhaps the pain in your leg won't go away. In the past, you might have gone to a doctor's office to diagnose symptoms.
Today, people are more likely to go online to punch in their symptoms.
Details of a new study examining how symptoms presented online influence people's reactions to possible medical conditions will be presented in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researchers found that identifying symptoms in "streaks" - sequences of consecutive items on a list that are either general or specific - prompted people to perceive higher disease risk than symptoms that were not identified in an uninterrupted series.
The research was conducted by Arizona State University Associate Psychology Professor Virginia Kwan, Sean Wojcik of the University of California, Irvine, Talya Miron-shatz of Ono Academic College, Ashley Votruba of ASU, and Christopher Olivola of the University of Warwick.
"A recent report by the Health Information National Trends Survey examined the use of Internet in seeking cancer-related information. More than 60 percent of individuals who are feeling ill go to the Internet to search for health information. Many decide to go to the doctor or not based on what they learn online," Kwan said. "This is really an era of self-diagnosis. To our knowledge, our study is the first to examine the impact of online presentation formats on medical decision making."
The research team reviewed the symptom presentations of the 12 deadliest forms of cancer for either males or females on five reputable cancer websites. All of the sites varied in how symptoms were given with some in bullet points, others in paragraphs, severe and common symptoms listed in varied ways and the number of symptoms.
Two studies were conducted, one where a fictional type of thyroid cancer was presented to study participants with six symptoms listed. Researchers varied the way the symptoms were presented from three common and frequently experienced symptoms (i.e. – feeling easily fatigued) followed by three specific symptoms (i.e. – lump in neck); another group was presented symptoms with three specific followed by three common; and the third group received a symptoms list with common and specific interspersed. Researchers used the fictional cancer to ensure no one had prior knowledge of symptoms.
Study participants in the first two groups reported similar results, but the perceived medical risk was significantly lower for the last group that received specific and common symptoms that were interspersed.
A second study for a real type of brain cancer reported the same results as the first study, but when the symptom list was expanded to 12, effects of a list of consecutive series of symptoms was diluted.
"The length of the list matters," Kwan said. "This is analogous to a dilution effect. If you don't have that many symptoms, you may not experience concern about getting that disease if you're looking at a long list."
Medical implications of the study include insight into how symptoms may be presented online, depending on goals. For instance, if someone wants to increase awareness of an emerging medical issue that requires treatment, symptoms that are more likely to be checked off in sequence can be grouped together, Kwan said.
According to Votruba, "If there are concerns that the perceptions of disease risk are too high, possibly resulting in over utilization of health services, then symptom lists should alternate common and specific symptoms or create longer symptom lists."
"Previous research shows that perception of risk of disease is a powerful predictor of health preventative behavior (such as going to the doctor)," Kwan said. "How information is presented online will make a substantive difference in behavior."
INFORMATION:
Contact:
Julie Newberg
Media Relations Officer
Arizona State University
(480) 727-3116
julie.newberg@asu.edu
END
KINGSTON, R.I. – March 12, 2012 – University of Rhode Island marine biologist Jacqueline Webb gets an occasional strange look when she brings fish to the Orthopedics Research Lab at Rhode Island Hospital. While the facility's microCT scanner is typically used to study bone density and diseases like osteoporosis, it is also providing new insights into the skull structure and sensory systems of fish.
A professor of biological sciences and director of the marine biology program at URI, Webb studies the lateral line system, a sensory system in all fishes that enables them ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of scientists has documented for the first time that animals can and do consume Archaea – a type of single-celled microorganism thought to be among the most abundant life forms on Earth.
Archaea that consume the greenhouse gas methane were in turn eaten by worms living at deep-sea cold seeps off Costa Rica and the West Coast of the United States. Archaea perform many key ecosystem services including being involved with nitrogen cycling, and they are known to be the main mechanism by which marine methane is kept out of the atmosphere.
The finding ...
The earth's structure can be compared to an orange: its crust is the peel supported by the earth's heavy mantle. That peel is made up of a continental crust 30 to 40 kilometers thick. It is much lighter than the thinner oceanic crust and protrudes from the earth's mantle because of its lower density, like an iceberg in the sea. "According to the current theory, the first continental crusts were formed when tectonic plates would collide, submerging oceanic crusts into the earth's mantle, where they would partially melt at a depth of approximately 100 kilometers. That molten ...
A new study by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that from 1999 through 2008, more than 93,000 children younger than 5 years of age were treated in U.S. emergency departments for stair-related injuries. On average, this equates to a child younger than 5 years of age being rushed to an emergency department for a stair-related injury every six minutes in the U.S.
The study, which is being released online March 12, 2012 and appearing in the April 2012 print issue of Pediatrics, noted ...
Many premature infants throughout the United States continue to receive inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) during their NICU stay, despite the lack of evidence to support its use. Whether or not a preemie will receive iNO treatment, when and for how long, varies greatly throughout the country, as its use in premature infants appears to be unstandardized. These are the findings of a Nationwide Children's Hospital study appearing in the journal Pediatrics.
Inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) is a selective pulmonary vasodilator approved for use in term and near-term infants with hypoxic ...
Many children with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis who received treatment through ImproveCareNow, a national quality improvement and research network, ceased to have symptoms and no longer needed to take steroids for disease management. These are the findings from a study appearing in Pediatrics that examined the ImproveCareNow network's quality improvement efforts and their impact on outcomes. In this study, the proportion of children with Crohn's disease who were in remission increased from 55 percent to 68 percent, with a similar improvement in ulcerative colitis ...
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Forest Service scientists today released an assessment that shows forest land has expanded in northern states during the past century despite a 130-percent population jump and relentless environmental threats. At the same time, Forest Service researchers caution that threats to forests in the coming decades could undermine these gains.
According to the Forests of the Northern United States report, forest coverage in the United States has increased by 28 percent across the region that includes Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, ...
Saranac Lake, N.Y. – New research from the Trudeau Institute addresses how the human body controls gamma-herpesviruses, a class of viruses thought to cause a variety of cancers. The study, carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Marcia Blackman, awaits publication in The Journal of Immunology. Led by postdoctoral fellow Mike Freeman, with assistance from other laboratory colleagues, the study describes the role of white blood cells in controlling gamma-herpesvirus infections and has implications for the treatment and prevention of certain cancers.
One of the many factors ...
Montreal -- When it comes to prevention of substance use in our tween population, turning our kids on to thought control may just be the answer to getting them to say no.
New research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, co-led by professors Roisin O'Connor of Concordia University and Craig Colder of State University of New York at Buffalo, has found that around the tween-age years kids are decidedly ambivalent toward cigarettes and alcohol. It seems that the youngsters have both positive and negative associations with these harmful substances and ...
When oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in late April 2010, friends asked George Haller whether he was tracking its movement. That's because the McGill engineering professor has been working for years on ways to better understand patterns in the seemingly chaotic motion of oceans and air. Meanwhile, colleagues of Josefina Olascoaga in Miami were asking the geophysicist a similar question. Fortunately, she was.
For those involved in managing the fallout from environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it is essential to have tools that predict ...
