Abstract
Understanding why patients seek informational and/or emotional support online is fundamental to providing patients with accurate and reliable support that is tailored to their needs, preferences, and personal situation. Based on the stress and coping theory and uses and gratifications theory (UGT), this study aimed to identify theoretically-founded profiles of cancer patients differing in their motives for seeking informational and/or emotional support online, and to compare the profiles in terms of patients’ psychological and background characteristics, and perception of health care services. Hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted, using questionnaire data from patients visiting a large Dutch health website (N = 181). This revealed three distinctive profiles, i.e., overall seekers (n = 83, 46.0%), occasional information seekers (n = 83, 46.0%), and contact exchangers (n = 15, 8.0%). Patients across these profiles differed in their eHealth literacy, with the contact exchangers being more eHealth literate than the overall seekers and occasional information seekers. The results can be used to create awareness among health care providers, web designers, and patient organizations on different types of cancer patients with different motives for seeking informational and/or emotional support online, and help them to tailor recommendations to and development of (online) sources that fit patients’ needs. Future research could further investigate the integration of stress and coping theory with UGT by acknowledging the interplay of different coping strategies and different gratifications. The internet is an important source of information and supet al., 2009; Germeni & Schulz, 2014; Nagler et al., 2010; port for many patients (Carlsson, 2009; Van Eenbergen et al., Protière et al., 2012). Research has indicated that cancer 2020), often in combination with a health care provider conpatients visit different online platforms to find different consultation (Caiata-Zufferey et al., 2010; Lee & Lin, 2020). By tent which suggests they go online for different reasons (i.e., engaging in so-called “convergence,” patients have become motives) to satisfy their needs (Chung, 2014; Haase et al., 2019; more active in managing their health (Haase et al., 2019; Sanders et al., 2020). Some patients seem predominantly to Mattsson et al., 2017). According to Kreps (2017), convergence seek informational support to cope with their illness, while is a process in which patients sequentially use multiple sources others seem mainly to seek emotional support (Caiataof information to fulfill their information and support needs. Zufferey et al., 2010; Dolce, 2011; Maddock et al., 2011; Yli- Patients can either use “information accessed through digital uotila et al., 2013). An explanation for this variation can be mass media and its subsequent discussion in interpersonal found in the stress and coping theory which posits that indiviencounters” (type 1 convergence, p.