Difference of Parental Level of Concerns on Surgery according to the Perspectives and Characteristic among Pediatrics with Intermittent Exotropia

PURPOSE

To evaluate the differences in the level of concerns regarding exotropia surgery according to the perspectives regarding surgery and basic characteristics of parents of pediatric patients with intermittent exotropia in South Korea.

METHODS

This study included the parents of pediatric patients with intermittent exotropia who underwent surgery at five hospitals, between June 2022 and February 2023. Parental perspectives, basic characteristics, and levels of concern regarding surgery were assessed using a questionnaire. We investigated the differences in concern levels according to perspectives regarding surgery and basic characteristics among parents, such as sex, age, residential area, and the most influential factors in the decision-making for surgery.

RESULTS

A total of 266 parents were included (228 mothers; age, 40.0±4.7 years). Parents who chose surgery for subjective symptoms had higher levels of concern about hemorrhage, conjunctival redness, and persistent overcorrection than did those who chose surgery for cosmetic reasons (all p < 0.05). Fathers were more concerned about postoperative pain, compared to mothers (p = 0.039). Parents in their 40s and 50s had higher levels of concern about the hospital environment compared with those in their 20s and 30s (p = 0.003). Concern did not significantly differ by residential area.

CONCLUSIONS

The level of concern regarding surgery differed according to the perspectives and characteristics of the parents of pediatric patients with intermittent exotropia. Parents who chose surgery for subjective symptoms of exotropia had a higher level of concern than did those who chose surgery for cosmetic reasons. The concern level differed according to the parents' sex and age but not their residential area.

Peer-to-peer sharing in public health interventions: strategies when people share health-related personal information on social media

PURPOSE

As sharing on social media has become an integrated part of everyday life, health and public health actors have started to show interest in the potential of people's peer-to-peer sharing of health-related personal information (HRI) for health interventions. In this article we focus on how people make sense of sharing HRI on social media.

METHODS

Twenty-two people between the ages 40 and 60 who had taken part in a regional health intervention were interviewed. Using theories about social media sharing, we explore their understandings and negotiations about whether, how much, and how to share HRI and discuss the results in relation to peer-to-peer sharing as a strategy in interventions.

RESULTS

We identified three aspects that were perceived as particularly risky: loss of control, effects on identity, and affecting others negatively, along with strategies that were used to manage risks in practice: avoiding sharing, allocating, and embedding HRI.

CONCLUSIONS

By allocating and embedding HRI, people can unlock motivating affordances for health work. However, strategies to manage risks can also be counterproductive. For actors to provide equality in health promotion, initiatives that include social media sharing need to be mindful of the sometimes counterproductive effects this may have on people's engagement.

Contents analysis of thyroid cancer-related information uploaded to YouTube by physicians in Korea: endorsing thyroid cancer screening, potentially leading to overdiagnosis

BACKGROUND

Thyroid cancer overdiagnosis is a major public health issue in South Korea, which has the highest incidence rate. The accessibility of information through the Internet, particularly on YouTube, could potentially impact excessive screening. This study aimed to analyze the content of thyroid cancer-related YouTube videos, particularly those from 2016 onwards, to evaluate the potential spread of misinformation.

METHODS

A total of 326 videos for analysis were collected using a video search protocol with the keyword "thyroid cancer" on YouTube. This study classified the selected YouTube videos as either provided by medical professionals or not and used topic clustering with LDA (latent dirichlet allocation), sentiment analysis with KoBERT (Korean bidirectional encoder representations from transformers), and reliability evaluation to analyze the content. The proportion of mentions of poor prognosis for thyroid cancer and the categorization of advertising content was also analyzed.

RESULTS

Videos by medical professionals were categorized into 7 topics, with "Thyroid cancer is not a 'Good cancer'" being the most common. The number of videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening decreased gradually yearly. Videos advocating screening received more favorable comments from viewers than videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening. Patient experience videos were categorized into 6 topics, with the "Treatment process and after-treatment" being the most common.

CONCLUSION

This study found that a significant proportion of videos uploaded by medical professionals on thyroid cancer endorse the practice, potentially leading to excessive treatments. The study highlights the need for medical professionals to provide high-quality and unbiased information on social media platforms to prevent the spread of medical misinformation and the need for criteria to judge the content and quality of online health information.

The Application of Knowledge-Based Clinical Decision Support Systems to Detect Antibiotic Allergy

Prevention of drug allergies is important for patient safety. The objective of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of antibiotic allergy-checking clinical decision support system (CDSS), K-CDSTM. A retrospective chart review study was performed in 29 hospitals and antibiotic allergy alerts data were collected from May to August 2022. A total of 15,535 allergy alert cases from 1586 patients were reviewed. The most frequently prescribed antibiotics were cephalosporins (48.5%), and there were more alerts of potential cross-reactivity between beta-lactam antibiotics than between antibiotics with the same ingredients or of the same class. Regarding allergy symptoms, dermatological disorders were the most common (38.8%), followed by gastrointestinal disorders (28.4%). The 714 cases (4.5%) of immune system disorders included 222 cases of anaphylaxis and 61 cases of severe cutaneous adverse reactions. Alerts for severe symptoms were reported in 6.4% of all cases. This study confirmed that K-CDS can effectively detect antibiotic allergies and prevent the prescription of potentially allergy-causing antibiotics among patients with a history of antibiotic allergies. If K-CDS is expanded to medical institutions nationwide in the future, it can prevent an increase in allergy recurrence related to drug prescriptions through cloud-based allergy detection CDSSs.

Health Information Sharing via Social Network Sites (SNSs): Integrating Social Support and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Despite its prevalence, research on health information sharing via social network sites (SNSs) is mostly descriptive and often lacks a coherent theoretical framework. By integrating social support and socioemotional selectivity theory, the present study takes a uses and gratifications approach to examining what factors affected health information sharing via WeChat, the most widely used SNS in China. Results of an online survey (N = 519) show that emotional and informational support provisions both predicted health information sharing via WeChat. In addition, age moderated the effects of both support provision. While the relationship between emotional support provision and health information sharing was stronger among older adults, the effect of informational support provision was marginally significantly stronger among younger adults. These findings provide additional understanding of health information sharing via SNSs by revealing its emotional meaning and demonstrating different sharing motivations in different age groups, which offers implications on health information design, dissemination, and discussions in different groups.

Sharing health information across online platforms: A systematic review

Advanced Web 2.0 communication technologies have facilitated health-related information (HRI) sharing on the Internet. Especially, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns around the world have forced more people to turn to the Internet for HRI. A better understanding of users' sharing content and sharing behavior can help communicators improve health literacy, raise community awareness, and facilitate social support exchanges. This paper reports the results of a systematic review of online HRI sharing literature, including key research topics, theories and methods used in past studies, and key factors of sharing behavior across online platforms. Following the PRISMA procedure for a systematic review, 58 articles were identified and analyzed using keyword matching, thematic analysis, and expert review. Guided by the platform theory, our findings differentiated five types of online platforms that differently influenced online users' sharing content and sharing purposes, including micro-blogs, social network sites, online health communities, social question and answer sites, and Wikis. The findings also clarify five main research topics and applicable theories used in each topic, including personal health sharing, health-related knowledge sharing, general health message diffusion, outcomes of HRI sharing, and exploratory research. Key factors of sharing behavior and potential sharing outcomes are also reviewed and summarized in the research framework developed from the motivation theory. Our study contributes to the understanding of online sharing behavior and provides implications for health communicators to develop effective health campaigns. Potential research directions are also identified and discussed.

Intention of health experts to counter health misinformation in social media: Effects of perceived threat to online users, correction efficacy, and self-affirmation

Our study analyzes the intention of Chinese health experts (health professionals and medical students) to correct health misinformation in social media. In an experimental 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design (n = 415), we manipulated the experts' perception of the threat that health misinformation poses for online users, their self-efficacy with respect to correcting misinformation, and their self-affirmation. To select the potential influence factors, we draw on self-affirmation theory and the extended parallel process model. Results of our experiment revealed that correction intention increases if experts perceive the threat for online users as severe, believe that they are capable of countering the impact of misinformation, and have a high motivation to maintain a positive self-image of caring for others. We discuss the consequences of our findings for motivating experts to help reduce the adverse effects of health misinformation in social media.

[Sharing information on COVID-19 vaccination: quantitative online survey on actors, content, sources, and motives]

BACKGROUND

A person's opinion about COVID-19 vaccination and their decision for or against the vaccination are determined, among other things, by the information they receive. Therefore, it seems crucial to examine the phenomenon of information sharing in the context of COVID-19 vaccination. The study explores who shares which information about vaccinations with whom, how the sharing of information is related to the seeking of information from various sources, and what the motives are.

METHOD

From 19 June to 13 July 2021, we conducted an online survey with 833 people using the German non-representative Social Sciences' (SoSci) panel. The questionnaire assessed information sharing with strangers and the social environment, the content, and the motives as well as the sources of information. The responses of 828 people were evaluated using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analyses.

RESULTS

Older people, women, and unvaccinated individuals were more likely to share information about COVID-19 vaccination. Information was more often shared in the social environment than with strangers. People shared information about benefits and risks of the vaccination as well as their own experiences with vaccinations. People who research websites of health authorities were more likely to share information about the benefits of vaccinations and their own experiences, while people using YouTube or messenger services were more likely to share information about risks. The motives for sharing information are to help others, social exchange, to raise awareness, to gain status, and the fear of being attacked or judged.

CONCLUSION

Information sharing on COVID-19 vaccination is complex in terms of content and motivation. In order to promote vaccination readiness, the range of information offered by public health departments should be expanded and the population's health literacy should be strengthened.

The Impact of Beliefs on Health Information Social Sharing for Users: The Perspectives of Social Psychology and Information Technology

With the integration and penetration of digitization into healthcare services, the comprehensive health industrial market is developing flourishingly. Users are fast-changing the way of health communication. This study investigates psychosocial and technological factors on health information sharing adoption through social sharing services. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, social influence theory, and innovation diffusion theory, we developed a hypothesized model for health information social sharing adoption (HISSA), and dimensions of attitude beliefs, control beliefs, and normative beliefs were created. We conducted an empirical study on the adoption intention using a survey for data collection. The results were obtained from 375 valid questionnaires, and their interactions were tested and analyzed using PLS-structural equation modeling. Results implied that (1) social identity of normative beliefs was the most critical variable affecting behavioral intention, which revealed the importance of psychosocial factors; (2) behavioral intention was also determined by user's performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, subjective norm; (3) personal innovativeness had a negative effect on behavioral intention and positive effect on effort expectancy; and (4) effort expectancy and social identity had a positive effect on performance expectancy. This study advances the understanding of social sharing for health and provides references for the development of both virtual health communities and social sharing services to upgrade their products from user's behavior and psychology. This empirical research model may also be useful for researchers who are interested in user's health information behavior.

What users seek and share in online diabetes communities: examining similarities and differences in expressions and themes

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate user health information seeking and sharing patterns and content in an online diabetes community and explore the similarities and differences in the ways and themes they expressed.

Design/methodology/approach

Multiple methods are applied to analyze the expressions and themes that users seek and share based on large-scale text data in an online diabetes community. First, a text classifier using deep learning method is performed based on the expression category this study developed. Second, statistical and social network analyses are used to measure the popularity and compare differences between expressions. Third, topic modeling, manual coding and similarity analysis are used to mining topics and thematic similarity between seeking and sharing threads.

Findings

There are four different ways users seek and share in online health communities (OHCs) including informational seeking, situational seeking, objective information sharing and experiential information sharing. The results indicate that threads with self-disclosure could receive more replies and attract more users to contribute. This study also examines the 10 topics that were discussed for information seeking and 14 topics for information sharing. They shared three discussion themes: self-management, medication and symptoms. Information about symptoms can be largely matched between seeking and sharing threads while there is less overlap in self-management and medication categories.

Originality/value

Being different from previous studies that mainly describe one type of health information behavior, this paper analyzes user health information seeking and sharing behaviors in OHCs and investigates whether there is a correspondence or discrepancy between expressions and information users spontaneously seek and share in OHCs.

Users’ health information sharing intention in strong ties social media: context of emerging markets

Purpose

This paper aims to theorize and examine how central cognition elaboration cue and peripheral cognition elaboration cue influence users’ health information sharing intention in Strong ties social media (STSM) in emerging markets.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper innovatively proposes two concepts of health information emotion and health information sharing value based on the in-depth observation of users’ social health behavior. We integrate Elaboration Likelihood Model, Media Richness Theory, Trust Theory and Regulatory Focus Theory to develop hypotheses and research models and lay emphasis on the study of health information emotion’s moderating effect. This paper conducts an empirical study by selecting 372 health information users of WeChat, a typical STSM, to verify the research model by structural equation model.

Findings

For the central route, individual motivation and health information richness positively influence health information sharing value. For peripheral route, health information source trust and health information recipient trust both positively influence the health information sharing attitude. Health information sharing value and sharing attitude can positively affect users’ health information sharing intention. In addition, health information positive emotion has significant moderating effect, while health information negative emotion does not have.

Originality/value

This study contributes to a comprehensive perspective for understanding users’ health information sharing intention in STSM in emerging markets, an important but understudied topic. The results can also give implications for researchers to explore users’ behavioral intention from the perspective of process-oriented persuasion and health information emotion’s moderating effect.

Users' Willingness to Share Health Information in a Social Question-and-Answer Community: Cross-sectional Survey in China

BACKGROUND

Social question-and-answer communities play an increasingly important role in the dissemination of health information. It is important to identify influencing factors of user willingness to share health information to improve public health literacy.

OBJECTIVE

This study explored influencing factors of social question-and-answer community users who share health information to provide reference for the construction of a high-quality health information sharing community.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted through snowball sampling of 185 participants who are Zhihu users in China. A structural equation analysis was used to verify the interaction and influence of the strength between variables in the model. Hierarchical regression was also used to test the mediating effect in the model.

RESULTS

Altruism (β=.264, P<.001), intrinsic reward (β=.260, P=.03), self-efficacy (β=.468, P<.001), and community influence (β=.277, P=.003) had a positive effect on users' willingness to share health information (WSHI). By contrast, extrinsic reward (β=-0.351, P<.001) had a negative effect. Self-efficacy also had a mediating effect (β=.147, 29.15%, 0.147/0.505) between community influence and WSHI.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that users' WSHI is influenced by many factors including altruism, self-efficacy, community influence, and intrinsic reward. Improving the social atmosphere of the platform is an effective method of encouraging users to share health information.

What quality factors matter in enhancing the perceived benefits of online health information sites? Application of the updated DeLone and McLean Information Systems Success Model

BACKGROUND

Despite a growing need for designing and monitoring health information sites through comprehensive examination of the various elements of website quality, there is little research that systematically models and presents such examinations.

OBJECTIVES

Applying the updated DeLone and McLean Model of Information Systems Success, this research aimed to examine how health information sites' information quality, system quality, and service quality lead to user satisfaction and perceived benefits.

METHODS

This research was conducted in a specific context of the National Health Information Portal (NHIP), a governmental health information site in South Korea. We conducted online survey in 2017, with 506 adults from the NHIP consumer panel. Data were analyzed using a confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical ordinary least squares regression, and bootstrapping approach for a mediation test.

RESULTS

Of the three quality factors, information quality had significant associations with all outcome variables: user satisfaction, intention to reuse the site, and perceived benefits of site use in health settings. There were also indirect paths from information quality to perceived benefits, one mediated through intention and the other mediated through satisfaction and then intention. Service quality had a significant association with user satisfaction, and its impact on perceived benefits occurred indirectly through user satisfaction and intention in serial. By contrast, the role of system quality received no empirical support.

IMPLICATIONS

The results offer theoretical and practical implications for how to enhance the effectiveness of online health information sites.