Tag Archives: health communication

Lack of reciprocity and low confidence in talking about cancer predict topic avoidance in couples

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Drs. Maria Venetis (Purdue), Kathryn Greene (Rutgers), Maria Checton (College of Saint Elizabeth), and Kate Magsamen-Conrad (BGSU) have a new publication out in the Journal of Health Communication. 

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In this article, the authors use the Disclose Decision-Making Model to explore cancer-related topic avoidance among cancer patients and their partners. Participants include 95 dyads in which 1 partner had been diagnosed and/or treated for cancer. Variables of interest include death-, future-, sexuality-, and burden-related topic avoidance and dimensions of the Disclosure Decision-Making Model including information assessment, receiver assessment, relational quality, and discloser efficacy. Data were analyzed using linear regressions. Findings suggest that lack of reciprocity and efficacy are predictors of topic avoidance. The authors discuss implications of findings and suggests direction for future research.

 

Full text is available here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/zs6uPVWTseC96YPkhj6c/full#.VL_H61ptTt4

 

Venetis, M. K., Greene, K., Checton, M. G., & Magsamen-Conrad, K. (2015, online first). Decision making in cancer-related topic avoidance. Journal of Health Communication. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2014.96536