The Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS)HINTS is a national health communication survey conducted biennially by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which has the vital mission of developing and implementing programs that prevent and reduce the incidence of cancer. The task of planning, developing, and coordinating research on health communication relevant to cancer control falls within the realm of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB), in the Behavioral Research Program (BRP) in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the NCI. HINTS was conceived during an NCI-sponsored risk communication conference in 1998. Attendees spanned a range of disciplines including communication, psychology, public health, health education, health behavior, journalism, and medicine. Prior risk communication research was reviewed and recommendations for future research were made. During this conference, attendees discussed the lack of population-level data about health information and health communication variables and encouraged the NCI to develop a national communication population survey to provide baseline and follow-up data on the populations access to, need for, and use of cancer information. This call for the development of a national cancer communication survey coincided with NCI launching a set of initiatives aimed at advancing the science of cancer control through basic science, surveillance, knowledge synthesis, and program delivery. Out of this set of initiatives, NCI designated an Extraordinary Opportunity in Cancer Communication in the fiscal year 2001 budget. Identification of cancer communication as an extraordinary opportunity allowed NCI to support scientific research to advance the discipline of cancer communication. A key component of the initiative was HINTS. Building upon the interdisciplinary recommendations of the 1998 risk communication conference, NCI developed a national survey to assess trends in health information usage over time and to periodically conduct fundamental research to assess the basic relationships among cancer-related communication, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. HINTS was designed to support the mission of the Branch and the Institute by providing a means to systematically evaluate the public s cancer-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors relevant to health communication, which have not adequately been studied through other national data collection efforts prior to HINTS. Two iterations of the HINTS survey have been completed (HINTS 2003, HINTS 2005) and HINTS 2007 is currently in the field. Data for HINTS 2007 are being collected via a dual frame design that mixes modes. One frame is a Random Digit Dial (RDD) using state-of-the-art procedures to maximize the response rate. The second frame is a national listing of addresses available from the United States Postal Service (USPS). This list is relatively comprehensive and includes both telephone and non-telephone households. These households will be administered a mail survey. The sample will be designed to complete 3,500 interviews with the RDD telephone interviews and 3,500 from the USPS frame. It will be possible to develop national estimates by combining the two frames using a composite estimator.
