Understanding user‐generated questions in social Q&A: A goal‐framing approach

Abstract

In social Q&A, user‐generated questions can be viewed as goal expressions shaping the responses. Several studies have identified askers' goals from questions. However, it remains unclear how questions set goals for responders. To fill this gap, this research applies goal‐framing theory. Goal‐frames influence responses by attracting responders' attention to different goals. Eight question cues are used to identify gain, hedonic and normative goal‐frames. A total of 14,599 posts are collected. To investigate the influence of goal‐frames, response networks are constructed. Results reveal that gain goal‐frames attract interactions with questions, while hedonic, and normative goal‐frames promote interactions among responses. Further, topic types influence the effects of goal‐frames. Gain goal‐frames increase interactions with questions in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) topics while hedonic and normative goal‐frames attract interactions in non‐STEM topics. This research leverages responders' perspectives to explain responses to questions, which are influenced by the goals set up by question cues. Beyond that, our findings enrich the empirical knowledge of social Q&A topics, revealing that the influence of questions varies across STEM and non‐STEM topics because the question cues for specifying goals are different in the two topics. Our research opens new directions to investigate questions from responders' perspectives.

Making Sense of Responders' Evaluations of Question Answerability from Academic Q&A Sites

“…To analyze question answerability, question cues are the linguistic characteristics for responders to identify the asker's needs (Banerjee, 2017; Chowdhury, 2003) and make decisions regarding whether to answer. Importantly, it was found that askers can utilize various question cues to specify goals (Wu et al, 2023): (1) cognitive cues include complexity and specificity that specify the cognitive goals for responders (Te'eni, 1990; Wu et al, 2022a); (2) emotional cues convey personal feelings (i.e., emotional expressiveness, self‐disclosure) (Fu et al, 2022; Kring et al, 1994; Shi et al, 2018); and (3) social cues refer to collaborative climate and politeness that stress on collective goals and support social interactions (Petrov et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2022b) (refer to Figure 1). However, the influences of question cues on responders' evaluations of question answerability are not yet well understood.…”

“…To analyze question answerability, question cues are (Banerjee, 2017;Chowdhury, 2003) and make decisions regarding whether to answer. Importantly, it was found that askers can utilize various question cues to specify goals (Wu et al, 2023): (1) cognitive cues include complexity and specificity that specify the cognitive goals for responders ;…”