Emotional or informational? Understanding cancer patients’ multifaceted help-seeking behaviors in online health communities

Xiandong Feng, Yinhuan Hu, Holger Pfaff, Sha Liu, Hui Wang and Yangfan Wang

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 371, issue C

Abstract: Although the widespread use of online health communities (OHCs) has transformed how cancer patients interact and acquire information, there is limited understanding of their specific help-seeking behaviors in these digital environments. Based on stress and coping theory, this study develops a framework to examine the patterns and determinants of cancer patients’ help-seeking behaviors in OHCs. We collected 19,224 help-seeking posts from a leading cancer-focused OHC in China between January 2016 and July 2023. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining content analysis through Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for behavioral pattern identification and beta regression for determinant analysis. The results revealed two primary categories of help-seeking behaviors - emotional and informational - which comprised six distinct topics: daily emotional regulation, community social support, medical options, treatment processes, medical results interpretation, and medication management and effects. Female patients exhibited stronger tendencies toward emotional help-seeking, while male patients favored informational help-seeking. Both increasing age and time since diagnosis were positively associated with emotional help-seeking but negatively correlated with informational help-seeking. Moreover, different cancer types showed distinct patterns in their help-seeking behaviors. This study advances the theoretical framework of help-seeking behaviors in an online context and provides evidence-based recommendations for optimizing OHCs to meet the diverse needs of cancer patients.

Keywords: Cancer patient; Help-seeking behaviors; Online health communities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117902

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