Search engines, cognitive biases and the man-computer interaction: a theoretical framework for empirical researches about cognitive biases in online search on health-related topics

Internet and social media preferences of orthopaedic patients vary according to factors such as age and education levels

BACKGROUND

Patients can often access the internet and social media for health information but it is not clear how much they trust and use the information retrieved.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the social media and internet use rates and preferences of orthopaedic patients, to reveal to what extent they self-treat, and to probe the affecting factors.

METHODS

Two thousand fifty-eight patients admitted to an orthopaedic polyclinic were asked to fill out a survey (voluntarily) consisting of 15 items, to collect demographic data, preference for platforms and sources used, trusted sources, and the extent to which information obtained was used for self-care.

RESULTS

The most preferred and most trusted sources of information were Google and other search engines, and physicians' personal websites (p < 0.001).

DISCUSSION

Variables such as age, gender, educational level and occupation affect the research preferences. Reliance on social media decreases with increasing educational levels (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Health information and knowledge services should work with health professionals to improve aspects of health literacy among orthopaedic patients.

Selective exposure to COVID-19 vaccination information: the influence of prior attitude, perceived threat level and information limit

Purpose

The massive amount of available information and functionality of the Internet makes selective information seeking effortless. This paper aims to understand the selective exposure to information during a health decision-making task.

Design/methodology/approach

This study conducted an experiment with a sample of 36 students to examine the influence of prior attitude, perceived threat level and information limit on users’ selective exposure to and recall of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination information. Participants were assigned to two conditions with or without an upper limit of the number of articles to be examined, and this study collected the number of articles read, the number of articles included in the report and recall score of the articles after one day of the experiment.

Findings

This study found that (1) participants with a negative attitude were more inclined to view attitude-consistent information and recalled attitude-consistent information more accurately, while participants with a positive attitude viewed more balanced information; (2) participants perceiving higher health threat level recalled attitude-consistent information more accurately; and (3) an upper limit on the number of articles to be viewed does not have any impact on selective exposure.

Research limitations/implications

The findings of this paper pinpoint the disparity of influence of positive and negative attitudes on selective exposure to and selective recall of health information, which was not previously recognized.

Practical implications

Vaccination campaigns should focus on reaching people with negative attitudes who are more prone to selective exposure to encourage them to seek more balanced information.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to explore selective exposure to COVID-19 vaccination information. This study found that people with a negative attitude and a higher level of perceived health threat are more prone to selective exposure, which was not found in previous research.