Positive attitudes and failed queries: an exploration of the conundrums of consumer health information retrieval

Zeng, Qing; Kogan, Sandra; Plovnick, Robert M.; Crowell, Jonathan; Lacroix, Eve Marie; Greenes, Robert A.

doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2003.12.015

Cited by 81 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…6 Not all questions have easily accessible answers: in a 2004 survey, 97 subjects found answers to 30% of their questions and partial answers to another 33% in MedlinePlus and other related websites. 7 Furthermore, although logs are relatively available and useful sources, they present user search strategies and general information needs but not specific needs. Alternatively, questions posted to online forums or question answering (QA) sites not only reflect the information needs more fully and explicitly, but also are commonly the next step after failing to find information via search engines.…”

Section: Background and Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive use of online health resources: a comparison of consumer and professional questions

Roberts

Demner‐Fushman

2016

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

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Objective To understand how consumer questions on online resources differ from questions asked by professionals, and how such consumer questions differ across resources. Materials and Methods Ten online question corpora, 5 consumer and 5 professional, with a combined total of over 40 000 questions, were analyzed using a variety of natural language processing techniques. These techniques analyze questions at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels, exposing differences in both form and content. Results Consumer questions tend to be longer than professional questions, more closely resemble open-domain language, and focus far more on medical problems. Consumers ask more sub-questions, provide far more background information, and ask different types of questions than professionals. Furthermore, there is substantial variance of these factors between the different consumer corpora. Discussion The form of consumer questions is highly dependent upon the individual online resource, especially in the amount of background information provided. Professionals, on the other hand, provide very little background information and often ask much shorter questions. The content of consumer questions is also highly dependent upon the resource. While professional questions commonly discuss treatments and tests, consumer questions focus disproportionately on symptoms and diseases. Further, consumers place far more emphasis on certain types of health problems (eg, sexual health). Conclusion Websites for consumers to submit health questions are a popular online resource filling important gaps in consumer health information. By analyzing how consumers write questions on these resources, we can better understand these gaps and create solutions for improving information access.

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Section: Background and Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive use of online health resources: a comparison of consumer and professional questions

Roberts

Demner‐Fushman

2016

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

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“…Zeng et al (2004) conducted personal interviews and observations with 97 health care consumers (from public waiting areas in cardiology clinic, and a hospital), where they asked a user to first state their health search goal, then search for that info on MEDLINEplus website, and then evaluate their searches. Concerning their most recent prior online search, 55% reported they had been successful, and 29% unsuccessful; based on their results from the experimental search, 74% indicated they would use the Internet to find more information on the topic.…”

Section: Online Health Information As a Source For Support And Interamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Books are now beginning to review and integrate this literature (Rice & Katz, 2001;Murero & Rice, 2006), including health benefits (Baker, Wagner, Singer & Bundorf, 2003;Moyer et al, 2002;Murero, D'Ancona & Karamaoukian, 2001;Pastore, 2001;Scherrer-Bannerman, 2000) and online health information quality (Berland et al, 2001;Bock et al, 2004;Craigie, Loader, Burrows & Muncer, 2002;Culver, Gerr, & Frumkin, 1997;Donald, Lindenberg & Humphreys, 1998;Dutta-Bergman, 2003;Greenspan, 2002;Houston & Allison, 2002;Kunst et al, 2002;Licciardone, SmithBarbara & Coleridge, 2001;Michael et al, 2003;Murero, D'Ancona & Karamaoukian, 2001;Oravec, 2000;Pastore, 2000;Pastore, 2001;Stephen and McLeod, 1998;Williams et al, 2002;Zeng et al, 2004). The following analyses are limited to the evaluation and outcomes measures included in the Pew studies, however.…”

Section: Other Related Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influences, usage, and outcomes of Internet health information searching: Multivariate results from the Pew surveys

Rice

2006

International Journal of Medical Informatics

646

454

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“…Health consumers most commonly seek information about conditions and diseases [5][6][7][8][9]. Searches are most often conducted by patients with a medical condition looking for information on a specific condition [5,7,10,11].…”

Section: The Health Consumermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many health consumers could benefit from guidance in the selection of sources [9]. Online searches by health consumers often fail [9,20,21].…”

Section: The Health Consumermentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming the linguistic divide: a barrier to consumer health information

Boden¹

2014

J Can Health Libr Assoc

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Seeking health information online has become very popular. Despite this popularity, health consumers face many barriers to successfully retrieving good quality health information. This paper reviews the literature on the linguistic divide between health consumers and consumer health information. Consumer health vocabularies (CHV) and natural language processing (NLP) show potential for bridging the divide, thereby improving recall and precision from information retrieval systems. Developers of digital libraries can incorporate CHV and (or) NLP as help tools to facilitate health consumers' search success. Deeper issues, such as health consumers' mental representation of medical domain, must also be addressed in future research for optimal benefit from such help tools.Boden 80

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Positive attitudes and failed queries: an exploration of the conundrums of consumer health information retrieval

Cited by 81 publications

References 8 publications

Interactive use of online health resources: a comparison of consumer and professional questions

Interactive use of online health resources: a comparison of consumer and professional questions

Influences, usage, and outcomes of Internet health information searching: Multivariate results from the Pew surveys

Overcoming the linguistic divide: a barrier to consumer health information

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