'Different time, different place': an exploratory study of information use by women with advanced breast cancer

The focus of this multidisciplinary research is how women with advanced breast cancer use information. To date, scant attention has been paid to information use as a distinct entity in the various domains relevant to this study - namely, information behaviour, medicine and the social sciences. Historically, the research lens has centred on information needs, information seeking, or the identification of preferred sources and the role demographic variables may play in these actions. The perspective of the patient has largely been ignored. This study investigates how women perceive the multi-layered processes and outcomes of their interactions with information. Sixteen women participated in this qualitative study. Analysis of the interviews, focus groups and content analysis of one month’s bulletin board postings reveal that information use within this sample of the population may be conceptualised through a typology that extends beyond the dichotomies currently evident in the exploration of information use. For the woman experiencing advanced disease, four inter-related categories of information use were discerned - ‘trust’, ‘sense making’, ‘decision making’ and ‘support’. Each of these categories is interconnected, dynamic and grounded in individual contexts of ‘different time, different place’ - the temporal, physical, social, and psychological domains from which all instances of information use is founded. The study demonstrates that information use may be explored through constructivist grounded theory methodology leading to a far more holistic and ‘realistic’ vision of the phenomenon ofinformation use over time and changing circumstances. The study’s findings also bring into focus questions regarding the adequacy ofthe rationalistic ‘problem solving’ approach of the cognitive and behavioural schools of thought in both the disciplines of medicine and information behaviour, and the consequences of interpreting ‘information’ from within paradigms that reduce notions of ‘information’ and ‘value’ to the domain of evidence based medicine. The study argues instead for the need to view information use through a far more holistic framework that accords with the personal values and preferences of the individual herself.