Computer Science Department, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Mar 24;23(3):e21642. doi: 10.2196/21642.
Web-based question and answer (Q&A) sites have emerged as an alternative source for serving individuals' health information needs. Although a number of studies have analyzed user-generated content in web-based Q&A sites, there is insufficient understanding of the effect of disease complexity on information-seeking needs and the types of information shared, and little research has been devoted to the questions concerning multimorbidity.
This study aims to investigate seeking of health information in Q&A sites at different levels of disease complexity. Specifically, this study investigates the effects of disease complexity on information-seeking needs, types of information shared, and stages of disease development.
First, we selected a random sample of 400 questions separately from each of the Q&A sites: Yahoo Answers and WebMD Answers. The data cleaning resulted in a final set of 624 questions from the two sites. We used a mixed methods approach, including qualitative content analysis and quantitative statistical analysis.
The one-way results of ANOVA showed significant effects of disease complexity (single vs multimorbid disease questions) on two information-seeking needs: diagnosis (F=5.08; P=.02) and treatment (F=4.82; P=.02). There were also significant differences between the two levels of disease complexity in two stages of disease development: the general health stage (F=48.02; P<.001) and the chronic stage (F=54.01; P<.001). In addition, our results showed significant effects of disease complexity across all types of shared information: demographic information (F=32.24; P<.001), medical diagnosis (F=11.04; P<.001), and treatment and prevention (F=14.55; P<.001).
Our findings present implications for the design of web-based Q&A sites to better support health information seeking. Future studies should be conducted to validate the generality of these findings and apply them to improve the effectiveness of health information in Q&A sites.
基于网络的问答（Q&A）网站已成为满足个人健康信息需求的另一种来源。尽管许多研究已经分析了基于网络的 Q&A 网站中的用户生成内容，但对于疾病复杂性对信息寻求需求以及共享信息类型的影响的理解还不够充分，而且很少有研究涉及到与多种疾病相关的问题。
本研究旨在调查不同疾病复杂程度下在 Q&A 网站上寻求健康信息的情况。具体而言，本研究调查了疾病复杂性对信息寻求需求、共享信息类型和疾病发展阶段的影响。
首先，我们从两个 Q&A 网站：雅虎问答（Yahoo Answers）和 WebMD 问答（WebMD Answers）中分别随机选择了 400 个问题。数据清理后，来自这两个网站的最终问题集为 624 个。我们使用了混合方法，包括定性内容分析和定量统计分析。
单因素方差分析的结果表明，疾病复杂性（单种疾病与多种疾病问题）对两个信息寻求需求（诊断和治疗）有显著影响（F=5.08；P=.02）。在疾病发展的两个阶段，即一般健康阶段（F=48.02；P<.001）和慢性阶段（F=54.01；P<.001），两种疾病复杂程度之间也存在显著差异。此外，我们的结果还表明，在所有类型的共享信息中，疾病复杂性都有显著影响：人口统计学信息（F=32.24；P<.001）、医学诊断（F=11.04；P<.001）和治疗与预防（F=14.55；P<.001）。
我们的研究结果为设计基于网络的 Q&A 网站以更好地支持健康信息寻求提供了启示。未来的研究应该进行，以验证这些发现的普遍性，并应用于提高 Q&A 网站中健康信息的有效性。
