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Seeking health information on the web: positive hypothesis testing
1College of Business, University of South Florida St. Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, FL 33701, USA. vkayhan@usfsp.edu
International Journal of Medical Informatics
|January 9, 2013
Summary
Most health information seekers exhibit positive hypothesis testing online. An incorporation technique effectively reduced this bias, unlike a recommendation technique, suggesting improved search engine design is needed.
Area of Science:
- Information Science
- Cognitive Psychology
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Consumers of health information often exhibit cognitive biases during online searches.
- Positive hypothesis testing, the tendency to seek confirming evidence, is a prevalent bias.
- Understanding and mitigating this bias is crucial for accurate information retrieval.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the prevalence of positive hypothesis testing in web-based health information searches.
- To evaluate the effectiveness of two debiasing techniques: recommendation and incorporation.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: 60 undergraduate students searched a controlled online database with confirming and disconfirming abstracts.
- Experiment 2: Tested debiasing techniques, including a recommendation server and an incorporation technique, within the same database.
Main Results:
- Experiment 1 revealed that 85% of participants demonstrated positive hypothesis testing.
- The recommendation technique failed to reduce positive hypothesis testing; no participants found disconfirming evidence.
- The incorporation technique successfully reduced positive hypothesis testing, with 75% of participants retrieving disconfirming evidence.
Conclusions:
- Positive hypothesis testing is a significant, understudied issue in online health information seeking.
- The incorporation technique shows promise for debiasing, while the recommendation technique was ineffective.
- Search engine developers should explore features presenting both confirming and disconfirming evidence to aid users.
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01:16Null and Alternative Hypotheses
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