Abstract
In this study, we examined what sources laypeople would select (i.e., visit and adopt) to resolve their health-related information needs, and how different health conditions affect the selection. Twenty-four college students participated in this user study, where they were asked to search for two separate health issues respectively: multiple sclerosis and weight loss. The search logs were collected and analyzed afterwards. We classify the online information sources on both website level and webpage level, and a webpage classification scheme based on genre is proposed. Results suggest that users’ selection of sources depends on different types of health issues in terms of urgency and complexity. Health-specific webpage is a popular source and highly adopted for both tasks, but it is particularly helpful for urgent and complex health conditions. Search engines could facilitate users to navigate among scattered health information and support concerns regarding common health issues.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | CHIIR 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval |
Pages | 233-236 |
Number of pages | 4 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450349253 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 1 2018 |
Event | 3rd ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2018 - New Brunswick, United States Duration: Mar 11 2018 → Mar 15 2018 |
Publication series
Name | CHIIR 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval |
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Volume | 2018-March |
Conference
Conference | 3rd ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2018 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | New Brunswick |
Period | 3/11/18 → 3/15/18 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 Association of Computing Machinery.
Keywords
- Health information seeking
- Source classification
- Source selection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Information Systems