Examining Health-Seeking Behaviors of Korean Immigrant Women

To identify specific factors that potentially influence the willingness of Korean immigrant women to seek preventive health care.

A descriptive cross-sectional correlational pilot study examining health-seeking behaviors of Korean immigrant women.

Participants were recruited from multiple sites, including Korean churches, small businesses, e-mail, and social media.

A convenience sample of 87 Korean immigrant women (i.e., both parents Korean), 18 years or older, able to read and understand English and/or Korean, and currently living in the United States.

Data were collected using a 62-item bilingual questionnaire, composed of researcher-developed questions and the Risk Behavior Diagnosis Scale. Pearson's correlations were performed to analyze bivariate relationships between willingness to seek care and outcome variables.

Korean immigrant women were significantly more willing to seek preventive health care when they were prompted by outside sources of information and exhibited greater self-efficacy. Significant positive correlations were found between participant's age, years lived in the United States, cues to action, and self-efficacy.

Promoting preventive health information at every opportunity and fostering self-efficacy in culturally sensitive ways are important to increase health care use among Korean immigrant women. Developing cultural-based interventions to improve the health-seeking behaviors of Korean immigrant women was shown to be imperative.