The Relationship Between Patients’ Perceived Health Status and Trust Propensity and Privacy Calculus

Patients need peace of mind to disclose their information to medical staff and with the lack of trust or in specific health status, they may avoid providing sensitive information for their care or might change the information. This research was done to examine the impact of perceived health status and trust propensity on privacy calculus.

In this analytical research three questionnaires, namely Trust Propensity, Health Status (Goldberg and Hiller), and Privacy Calculus were used. The statistical population consisted of the patients of one of the Ahvaz hospitals. Following sample size determination using the Morgan table, 379 usable questionnaires were collected non-randomly. The majority of respondents were younger than 30 and male. After face, content, and construct validities, the reliability was examined through Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability and the hypotheses were examined by partial least square method, using SmartPLS. 

Patients’ privacy calculus was associated with trust propensity and perceived health status (P<0.05), while trust propensity had no correlation with perceived advantages and disadvantages of privacy disclosure. The relationship between perceived health status and advantages and disadvantages of information disclosure was positively significant (P<0.05).

In order to improve patients’ provision of rich information to medical staff, their trust propensity should be improved.