Effects of individual health topic familiarity on activity patterns during health information searches

JMIR Medical Informatics
Ira PuspitasariMasayuki Numao

Abstract

Non-medical professionals (consumers) are increasingly using the Internet to support their health information needs. However, the cognitive effort required to perform health information searches is affected by the consumer's familiarity with health topics. Consumers may have different levels of familiarity with individual health topics. This variation in familiarity may cause misunderstandings because the information presented by search engines may not be understood correctly by the consumers. As a first step toward the improvement of the health information search process, we aimed to examine the effects of health topic familiarity on health information search behaviors by identifying the common search activity patterns exhibited by groups of consumers with different levels of familiarity. Each participant completed a health terminology familiarity questionnaire and health information search tasks. The responses to the familiarity questionnaire were used to grade the familiarity of participants with predefined health topics. The search task data were transcribed into a sequence of search activities using a coding scheme. A computational model was constructed from the sequence data using a Markov chain model to identify the comm...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Sep 14, 2016·Biomédica : revista del Instituto Nacional de Salud·Karen LópezOscar Daniel Salomon
Sep 14, 2019·International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health·Ira Puspitasari, Alia Firdauzy

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Software Mentioned

MedSearch
Health Information Query Assistant (
HIQuA ) system
SRI Language Modeling
MedicoPort Systems
Yahoo Health
ModQ
AccSE
Camstudio

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