Scanning Health Information Sources: Applying and Extending the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking

Information scanning, or attention to information via incidental or routine exposure or browsing, is relatively less understood than information seeking. To (a) provide a more theoretical understanding of information scanning and (b) extend existing information seeking theory to information scanning, the current study used data from the National Cancer Institute's Health Information National Trends Survey to examine cancer information scanning using the comprehensive model of information seeking (CMIS). Consistent with the CMIS, health-related factors were associated with the information-carrier factor of trust, and health-related factors and trust were associated with attention to information sources. Some of these associations differed between entertainment-oriented sources, information-oriented sources, and the Internet. The current findings provide a clearer picture of information scanning and suggest future avenues of research and practice using the CMIS.