PROFILE
UPM's Staff Profile
DR. THAM JEN SERN
PENSYARAH KANAN
FACULTY OF MODERN LANGUAGES AND COMMUNICATION
ARTICLE & BLOG
As a health communication scholar, he aims to examine how a particular target group seeks and consumes health-related information from various sources and the effects of these health messages on the target group. He is also interested in discovering why they seek health-related information and participate in specific health behaviors. Based on health and communication theories, he designs his study to improve communication strategies by developing successful social marketing and education programs about a health issue and informing people about ways to improve health or prevent specific health hazards. What he is most interested in is the interrelationship between mass media, communication behaviors, health issues, and public health outcomes, and he sees his research as part of a more significant transdisciplinary research effort to transform raw health communication research findings into practical and usable health care/promotion interventions and policies.
His work studies health information acquisition behavior, specifically investigating how people seek health information from various media and interpersonal channels to help improve their knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward a health topic. Through the post-positivism paradigm, he is motivated by epidemiological research to determine the “behavioral and psychological variables important to the process of prevention and adopting healthier behaviors”, as well as the psychological orientation of interpersonal research and the scientific perspective of medical research.
He anticipates that his primary research trajectory will expand the focus on the Malaysian population he has studied. There are many potential places where his research may lead him and many potential topics he may explore. He can transfer the cultural uniqueness of Malaysians into evidence-based interventions, transforming the Malaysians’ lives for the better. He wants to learn whether a self-health management system can be found in Malaysian populations outside the Western continent and, if so, how this process may be altered by different contexts, cultural discourses, and state policies. He wants to learn more about how Malaysians engage in different communication behaviors regarding health-related issues. Given the increasing importance of health in the economy, questions such as these have never been more significant for social scientists (including communication scholars).
His work studies health information acquisition behavior, specifically investigating how people seek health information from various media and interpersonal channels to help improve their knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward a health topic. Through the post-positivism paradigm, he is motivated by epidemiological research to determine the “behavioral and psychological variables important to the process of prevention and adopting healthier behaviors”, as well as the psychological orientation of interpersonal research and the scientific perspective of medical research.
He anticipates that his primary research trajectory will expand the focus on the Malaysian population he has studied. There are many potential places where his research may lead him and many potential topics he may explore. He can transfer the cultural uniqueness of Malaysians into evidence-based interventions, transforming the Malaysians’ lives for the better. He wants to learn whether a self-health management system can be found in Malaysian populations outside the Western continent and, if so, how this process may be altered by different contexts, cultural discourses, and state policies. He wants to learn more about how Malaysians engage in different communication behaviors regarding health-related issues. Given the increasing importance of health in the economy, questions such as these have never been more significant for social scientists (including communication scholars).
