Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate autonomy preference of Japanese, especially of information seeking(IS), in clinical settings, and also to develop an instrument to measure this IS prefence. The subjects were 3110 people from two stage stratified sampling of 4500 people in Japan, a representative sample of Japansese population. The questionnaire consists of 23 IS question items based on 5 hypothetical clinical vignettes with different severities as well as IS preference in general.
Factor analysis identified two major factors, and based upon this result 18 items were selected out of original 23 items. The result shows that IS in the setting of “terminal cancer” was significantly lower than that in other cases. Higher IS was also associated with younger age and male gender. Multiple regression analysis identified several factors to predict IS in the setting of “terminal cancer”. It showed that younger age, male gender, IS in cerebro vascular accident (CVA), IS in hemiparesis after CVA, and IS in general proved to be the significant predictors.
