Information women receive about heart attacks and how it affects their knowledge, beliefs, and intentions to act in a cardiac emergency.

In this study we investigate (a) what information women receive on acute myocardial infarction (AMI) from different information sources, (b) how women evaluate this information, and (c) how information acquisition is related to women's knowledge of AMI, personal risk perceptions, and behavioral intentions regarding a cardiac emergency. A random sample of 844 women 50 years and over were telephoned in the state of Washington. Repeated measures regression analyses showed that women receive most of their information on AMI from the mass media, even though they evaluated the media as less believable, less useful, less clear, and making less of an impression than information received from health care providers. Logistic regression analyses showed that the total number of information sources from which heart attack information was received in the past year was positively related to knowledge of AMI symptoms, beliefs about AMI, and personal risk perceptions. The results are discussed in terms of their pragmatic implications.