Charlotte van Hooijdonk

Evaluating consumer health information websites: The importance of collecting observational, user-driven data

The internet is an increasingly popular source of consumer health information (CHI). Worldwide, millions of people regularly visit CHI websites to seek answers to medical issues, either for themselves or their loved ones. As CHI websites play such a vital role in peoples health behaviour, the evaluation of these sites has often been addressed in scholarly studies. The vast majority of these studies have focused on evaluation methods for assessing the quality of CHI websites (expert testing). While this emphasis on quality is understandable — health information needs to be accurate and up-to-date — calls are increasingly made to not only ensure the quality of information on CHI websites, but to also focus on the usability of these sites. This paper offers a review of the usability studies that have so far been conducted regarding CHI websites. We will discuss the potential of, in particular, observational user-driven research for CHI websites, by discussing the methodological drawbacks of the existing usability studies. In addition, we will examine the role of user characteristics in the evaluation of CHI web sites. The results of our review indicate that observational user research, when conducted properly, may offer valuable insights that complement those gained by means of expert testing.

“Smoking Is Sóóó ... Sandals and White Socks”: Co-Creation of a Dutch Anti-Smoking Campaign to Change Social Norms

Abstract This article considers co-creation as a new persuasive strategy in health campaigns. Co-creation enables target audience members to become active campaign producers. A recent Dutch anti-smoking campaign applied co-creation, inviting the target audience to complete the slogan “smoking is sóóó . . . ” with something outdated on social networking sites (SNSs) like Facebook and Twitter to stress non-smoking as the new social norm. From a corpus-linguistic perspective, we investigated how the slogans from the target audience resonated with or deviated from the campaign’s original message. In general, the target audience slogans followed the campaign’s approach, but on the SNSs, differences were found regarding the valence, type of utterance, and domain to which smoking was compared. The target audience frequently compared smoking with other (inter)personal social norms. Co-creation thus provides the target audience with an opportunity to disseminate campaign messages from their own perspective, but at the same time a co-creation strategy risks diluting the intended campaign message.

Verbal redundancy in a procedural animation

Multimedia learning research has shown that presenting the same words as spoken text and as written text to accompany graphical information hinders learning (i.e., redundancy effect). However, recent work showed that a condensed form of written text (i.e., on-screen labels) that overlaps with the spoken text, and thus is only partially redundant, can actually foster learning. This study extends this line of research by focusing on the usefulness of on-screen labels in an animation explaining a procedural task (i.e., first-aid procedure). The experiment had a 222 between-subject design (N=129) with the factors spoken text (yes vs. no), written text (yes vs. no), and on-screen labels (yes vs. no). Learning outcomes were measured as retention accuracy and behavioral performance accuracy. Results showed that on-screen labels improved retention accuracy (but not behavioral performance accuracy) of the procedure, especially when presented together with spoken text. So, on-screen labels appear to be promising for learning from procedural animations. Recent research shows that on-screen labels improve learning of multimedia material.This study aimed to extend this to learning from procedural animations.We also applied a behavioral performance measure next to a cognitive outcome measure.On-screen labels improved retention but not behavioral performance of the procedure.On-screen labels appear to be promising for learning from procedural animations.

Experiments in Multimodal Information Presentation

In this chapter we describe three experiments investigating multimodal information presentation in the context of a medical QA system. In Experiment 1, we wanted to know how non-experts design (multimodal) answers to medical questions, distinguishing between what questions and how questions. In Experiment 2, we concentrated on how people evaluate multimodal (text+picture) answer presentations on their informativeness and attractiveness. In Experiment 3, we evaluated two versions of an automatic picture selection method, and compared answer presentations with automatically selected pictures to answer presentations with manually selected pictures.

The effects of infographics and several quantitative versus qualitative formats for cardiovascular disease risk, including heart age, on people's risk understanding.

OBJECTIVE To study how comprehension of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk is influenced by: (1) infographics about qualitative risk information, with/without risk numbers; (2) which qualitative risk dimension is emphasized; (3) heart age vs. traditional risk format. METHODS For aim 1, a 2 (infographics versus text) x 2 (risk number versus no risk number) between-subjects design was used. For aim 2, three pieces of information were tested within-subjects. Aim 3 used a simple comparison group. Participants (45-65 yrs old) were recruited through an online access panel; low educated people were oversampled. They received hypothetical risk information (20%/61yrs). Primary outcomes: recall, risk appraisals, subjective/objective risk comprehension. SECONDARY OUTCOMES behavioral intentions, information evaluations. RESULTS Infographics of qualitative risk dimensions negatively affected recall, subjective risk comprehension and information evaluations. No effect of type of risk dimension was found on risk perception. Heart age influenced recall, comprehension, evaluations and affective risk appraisals. CONCLUSION Infographics of hypothetical CVD risk information had detrimental effects on measures related to risk perception/comprehension, but effects were mainly seen in undereducated participants. Heart age influenced perceptions/comprehension of hypothetical risk in a way that seemed to support understanding. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Heart age seems a fruitful risk communication approach in disease risk calculators.