Consumer health information needs: A systematic review of measures

•Only 3.2% of the reviewed articles defined consumer health information needs (CHIN).•All definitions defined CHIN from a cognitive perspective.•Emotional and social dimensions of CHIN were largely ignored in the included studies.•There was a lack of consensus in measuring CHIN among studies.•Health...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Information processing & management Jg. 57; H. 2; S. 102077
Hauptverfasser: Pian, Wenjing, Song, Shijie, Zhang, Yan
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2020
Elsevier Science Ltd
Schlagworte:
Behavior
Cognition
Cognitive ability
Concept formation
Consumer health information
Consumer health information needs
Consumer health information seeking
Content analysis
Emotions
Empirical analysis
Fulfilment
Health
Health behavior
Health informatics
Health information
Information
Information needs
Information retrieval
Information seeking behavior
Meta-analysis
Needs
Qualitative analysis
Quantitative analysis
Research design
Social factors
Systematic review
Systems design
User needs
Information needs
Consumer health information needs
Consumer health information seeking
ISSN:0306-4573, 1873-5371
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:•Only 3.2% of the reviewed articles defined consumer health information needs (CHIN).•All definitions defined CHIN from a cognitive perspective.•Emotional and social dimensions of CHIN were largely ignored in the included studies.•There was a lack of consensus in measuring CHIN among studies.•Health topics needed was the most commonly measured aspect. Information needs motivate human information behavior. Knowledge of information needs is critical for user-centered information behavior research and system design. In consumer health information behavior research, there is a lack of understanding of how consumer health information needs (CHIN) is measured in empirical studies. This study is a systematic review of empirical quantitative studies on CHIN, with a focus on how CHIN is defined and operationalized. A search of six academic databases and citation-track of relevant articles identified a total of 216 relevant articles. These articles were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. We found that few included articles explicitly defined either CHIN or information needs in general. When definitions were given, they were from a cognitive perspective and largely ignored the multidimensionality of the concept. Consistent with this cognitive-centered conceptualization, CHIN was operationalized primarily as information topics, with some articles also measuring several additional attributes, including level of importance, fulfilment, amount of information needed, and frequency of needs. These findings suggest that CHIN is undertheorized. To address this gap, future studies should attend to social and emotional dimensions of CHIN, such as motivations, goals, activities, and emotions. Further, more research is needed to understand how CHIN is related to consumer health information seeking behavior and to the social and environmental context in which the needs arise.
Bibliographie:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0306-4573
1873-5371
DOI:10.1016/j.ipm.2019.102077