Sanghee Oh

The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments

In Web 2.0 environments, people commonly share their knowledge and personal experiences with others, but little is known about their background characteristics and motivations. Thus, the current study examines some of the characteristics and motivations common among answerers, who produce health-related answers to questions asked by anonymous others in a social Q&A site, Yahoo! Answers. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to top and recent answerers to investigate their demographics, areas of health expertise, and other characteristics related to answering behaviors online. Also, 10 motivation factors are proposed and tested in the survey: enjoyment, efficacy, learning, personal gain, altruism, community interest, social engagement, empathy, reputation, and reciprocity. Findings show that altruism is the most influential motivation, while personal gain is the least. Enjoyment and efficacy are more influential than other social motivations, such as reputation or reciprocity, although there are some variations across different groups of answerers. Motivational factors among top answerers or health experts are further analyzed. The findings of this study have practical implications for promoting health answerers to share knowledge and experiences in social contexts. Furthermore, the study design of the current study can be used to examine motivations of answerers in other topic areas as well as other social contexts.

Best-answer selection criteria in a social Q&A site from the user-oriented relevance perspective

As an attempt to better understand how people seek, share, and evaluate information in a social Q&A environment, this study identifies the selection criteria people employ when they select best answers in Yahoo! Answers in the context of relevance research. Using content analysis, we analyzed the comments people left upon the selection of best answers to their own questions. From 1,200 samples of comments, only 465 mentioned the specific reasons for their selection, thus becoming eligible for analysis. Through an iterative process of evaluating the types of comments, the best-answer selection criteria were inductively derived and grouped into seven value categories: Content value, Cognitive value, Socio-emotional value, Information source value, Extrinsic value, Utility, and General statement. While many of the identified criteria overlap with those found in previous relevance studies, the Socio-emotional value was particularly prominent in this study, especially when people ask for opinions and suggestions. These findings reflect the characteristics of a social Q&A site and extend our understanding of the relevance of an electronic environment where people bring their every day problem-solving and decision-making tasks.

Characteristics of nurses who use social media.

Social media are changing the ways people communicate and influencing their approaches to meeting their healthcare needs. The Institute of Medicine recommends utilization of information technologies to improve the delivery of patient-centered care. Little is known about how nurses have adopted the use of social media, however. The researchers conducted an online survey to provide a preliminary review of the characteristics of nurses who do and do not use social media. Also, nurses’ preferences for using six different types of social media were analyzed and reported. Nurses from 43 states participated in this study, and the sample represented mostly advanced practice nurses who utilized the Internet regularly and confidently. About 94% of the participants indicated that they use social media, whereas fewer than 1% of the participants reported that they do not know how to use social media. Among those who use social media, social networking sites (90.33%) and podcasts (76.24%) were the most popular, followed by social question and asking sites (37.86%), blogs (31.85%), Twitter (19.06%), and SlideShare (9.92%). Social media can be a powerful tool to reach an intended audience quickly and globally. More research is needed to understand how nurses utilize social media to improve the delivery of patient-centered care.

The use of information sources by internet users in answering questions

The purpose of this study was to investigate what kinds of sources people prefer to use when they answer questions online, especially, in the context of social Q&A. Social Q&A is a Web-based service, that allows people to ask questions and receive answers from their fellow users. In social Q&A, people often cite sources of information when they answer questions. It could be a name, a short description, or hyperlinks to the original sources. Yahoo! Answers was chosen for this study due to its popularity as a top ranked social Q&A service as well as its capability for separately indicating sources for the answers in its format. We collected data with a crawler that used Yahoo! Answers APIs. A total number of 5,391 sources were identified and analyzed with the following three approaches: (1) source distribution by online accessibility, (2) source distribution by genre, and (3) source distribution by subjects. At the early stage of this study, it was expected that the results of source preferences heavily relied on sources online, since people ask and answer questions on the Web-based service. Nevertheless, it was found that human (56.4%) was the most frequently cited type of source, and it was followed by online (40%) and offline sources (4%). According to the source distribution by genre, human (56.4%) was followed by the Internet (38.1%), books (3.6%), and mass media (1.6%), and the sub-categories of these sources were analyzed. Additionally, the patterns of source distribution were shown differently across subjects. The categories of Health, Home & Electronics, and Society & Culture relied heavily on human sources, while Computers & the Internet included most of the Internet-based sources of information.

Why do social network site users share information on Facebook and Twitter

Users join social network sites (SNSs) for social network building and information sharing, however, little has been ascertained as to why users share information on SNSs. This study examined why SNS users share information, knowledge, and personal experiences with others on SNSs. Through an online survey, 10 motivation factors were tested with Facebook and Twitter users. The findings indicate that the motivations of SNS users in sharing information could be attributed to various aspects such as demographic characteristics, experiences of SNSs and Internet usage, as well as the characteristics and features of SNSs. SNS users could be highly motivated by the learning and social engagement aspects of SNS services. It is also found that the motivations could vary depending on the characteristics of services. The results of this study could be helpful for researchers in understanding the underlying reasons for social activities as well as for SNS developers in improving SNS services.

Quality of health answers in social Q&A

The purpose of the current study is to investigate perceptions regarding the quality of online health answers in social Q&A. The current study differs from previous studies by focusing on the topic of health, comparing the evaluations of users against experts. Three groups of participants -- librarians, nurses, and users of Yahoo! Answers -- were invited to assess the quality of health answers posted in Yahoo! Answers. Forty participants from each group reviewed a total of 400 health answers, rating them with a 5-points Likert scale according to 10 evaluation criteria: accuracy, completeness, relevance, objectivity, source credibility, readability, politeness, confidence, knowledge, and efforts. Findings indicated that there was no significant difference of the quality ratings between librarians and nurses. There was, however, significant difference between those two expert groups (librarians and nurses) and users. Librarians and nurses rated the quality of answers lower on most of the evaluation criteria than users. This research will help librarians and nurses better understand how laypeople, such as their patrons and patients, evaluate online health information in social contexts, leading to the offering of better health information services to these audiences.

Interdisciplinary curriculum development for digital library education

The Virginia Tech (VT) Department of Computer Science (CS) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) School of Information and Library Science (LIS) are developing curricular materials for digital library (DL) education, appropriate for the CS and LIS communities. Educational modules will be designed, based on input from the project advisory board, Computing Curriculum 2001, the 5S framework, and workshop discussions. These modules will be evaluated, first through expert inspection and, second, through field testing. We are identifying and refining module definitions and scopes, collecting related resources, developing a module template, and creating example modules. These will be presented at the conference. The developed curriculum should contribute to producing well-balanced digital librarians who will graduate from CS or LIS programs.

Quality evaluation of health answers in Yahoo! Answers: A comparison between experts and users

This work-in-progress study investigates perceptions regarding the quality of online health answers that people share in social contexts. The current study differs from previous research by focusing on the topic of health and comparing the evaluations of users against experts. Three groups of evaluators—questioners, health reference librarians, and nurses—are invited to assess the quality of health answers posted in Yahoo! Answers. Forty evaluators from each group review a total of 400 health answers, rating them 1 to 5 according to 10 evaluation criteria. Preliminary results from the quality ratings of 10 answers evaluated by librarians and questioners indicate that librarians rated the quality of answers lower on most of the evaluation criteria than questioners. Further results and analysis will be provided at the poster presentation at the 2011 ASIST conference. This research will help librarians and nurses better understand how lay people such as their patrons and patients evaluate online health information in social contexts, leading to the offering of better health information services to these audiences.

Further development of a digital library curriculum: evaluation approaches and new tools

This paper is a follow-up to our ICADL 2006 paper, reporting on our progress over the past year in developing a digital library curriculum. It presents and describes the current curriculum framework, which now includes ten modules and 41 sub-modules. It provides an overview of the curriculum development lifecycle, and our progress through that lifecycle. In particular, it reports on our evaluation of the modules that have been drafted. It concludes with a description of two new technologies - Superimposed Information (SI) to help resource presentation in a module and Visual User model Data Mining (VUDM) to help long-term module upgrade by visualizing the user community and its trends.

Evaluating answer quality across knowledge domains: using textual and non-textual features in social Q&A

As an increasing important source of information and knowledge, social questioning and answering sites (social Q&A) have attracted significant attention from industry and academia, as they address the challenge of evaluating and predicting the quality of answers on such sites. However, few previous studies examined the answer quality by considering knowledge domains or topics as a potential factor. To fill this gap, a model consisting of 24 textual and non‐textual features of answers was developed in this study to evaluate and predict answer quality for social Q&A, and the model was applied to identify and compare useful features for predicting high‐quality answers across four knowledge domains, including science, technology, art, and recreation. The findings indicate that review and user features are the most powerful indicators of high‐quality answers regardless of knowledge domains, while the usefulness of textual features (length, structure, and writing style) varies across different knowledge domains. In the future, the findings could be applied to automatically assessing answer quality and quality control in social Q&A.