Information Avoidance, Self-affirmation, and Intentions to Receive Genomic Sequencing Results Among Members of an African Descent Cohort.

Background: Information avoidance tendencies have been found to be associated with lower intentions to pursue medically actionable genomic sequencing results, but less so among individuals who engage more in spontaneous self-affirmation. Yet these results were obtained with a largely non-Hispanic White, high-SES cohort.

Purpose: To assess these variables, their magnitude, and their associations in an African-descent cohort as part of the same ClinSeq® exome sequencing program.

Methods: Participants reported levels of spontaneous self-affirmation, information avoidance, and intentions to receive three types of results - medically actionable, non-medically actionable, and carrier status as part of a baseline survey.

Results: Relative to the original, non-Hispanic White cohort, those in the African-descent cohort had higher levels of spontaneous self-affirmation and lower intentions of learning about carrier genomic results; they reported comparable levels of information avoidance and intentions to receive other results. Information avoidance was negatively associated with intention to receive non-actionable results in the African-descent cohort, as found in the initial cohort, with no moderating effect of spontaneous self-affirmation. Information avoidance, spontaneous self-affirmation, and their interaction were not associated with intentions to receive actionable results (contrary to findings in the initial cohort), or carrier results.

Conclusions: Individuals of African descent may engage in relatively more spontaneous self-affirmation, and do not appear to engage in more information avoidance. Their information avoidance tendencies were associated with pursuit of non-actionable sequencing results, with no moderating effect of self-affirmation, and were not associated with pursuit of actionable results or carrier results.