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

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.