Methodology of the Empowered Patient: Moving from Passenger to Co-pilot

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We surveyed our registered members with these chronic conditions:

• Acid reflux
• Asthma
• Breast cancer
• Chronic pain
• Depression
• Diabetes
• IBD
• Rheumatoid arthritis

The study ran from Feb. 22 – March 5 and 2,888 people completed it.

Our survey was organized into these topic areas:

• Relationship with doctor
• Need for cognition
• Self-efficacy
• Social connectedness
• Social comparison

We asked several questions about each topic.

To determine an individual’s level of engagement, we asked questions about these aspects of the doctor/patient dynamic:

• Degree of preparation for doctor visits
• Length of relationship with current doctor
• Testing and treatment decisions
• Likelihood of changing doctors

Each question had four possible levels of engagement from very low engagement to very high engagement with the two lowest categories indicative of someone who would fit more of the traditional mold and the two highest categories proactively labeled.

Someone could score from 4 to 16 in terms of level of engagement. We coded someone who scored 12 or above as an empowered patient (i.e. they exhibited either engagement or high engagement across the four behaviors).

John T. Cacioppro and Richard E. Petty developed a way to assess a person’s need for cognition. Their original list included the 18 questions below. You can select 4 – 6 of the questions to use in a survey to determine need for cognition.

1. I would prefer complex to simple problems.
2. I like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking.
3. Thinking is not my idea of fun.
4. I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my thinking abilities.
5. I try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is likely a chance I will have to think in depth about something.
6. I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.
7. I only think as hard as I have to.
8. I prefer to think about small, daily projects to long-term ones.
9. I like tasks that require little thought once I’ve learned them.
10. The idea of relying on thought to make my way to the top appeals to me.
11. I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems.
12. Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me very much.
13. I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles that I must solve.
14. The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me.
15. I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important to one that is somewhat important but does not require much thought.
16. I feel relief rather than satisfaction after completing a task that required a lot of mental effort.
17. It’s enough for me that something gets the job done; I don’t care how or why it works.
18. I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they do not affect me personally.

You can read more about how these questions were developed here. You can also search on NFC and Cacioppo to find examples of how other studies have used a shorter form of this scale.

Please contact us for more information.

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