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Predicting escalations of medical queries based on web page structure and content

Published: 19 July 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Logs of users' searches on Web health topics can exhibit signs of escalation of medical concerns, where initial queries about common symptoms are followed by queries about serious, rare illnesses. We present an effort to predict such escalations based on the structure and content of pages encountered during medical search sessions. We construct and then characterize the performance of classifiers that predict whether an escalation will occur after the access of a page. Our findings have implications for ranking algorithms and the design of search interfaces.

References

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Bengeri M. & Pluye P. (2003). Shortcomings of health-related information on the internet. Health Prom Int., 18(4): 381--387.
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Buscher, G., Cutrell, E. & Morris, M.R. (2009). What do you see when you're surfing? Using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages. SIGCHI, 21--30.
[3]
Eysenbach, G. & Köhler, C. (2002). How do consumers search for and appraise health information on the world wide web? British Medical Journal 324: 573--577.
[4]
Fox, S. (2006). Online health search 2006. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Accessed January 2009.
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Sillence, E., Briggs, P., Fishwick, L. & Harris, P. (2004). Trust and mistrust of online health sites. SIGCHI, 663--670.
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Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157): 1124--1131.
[7]
White, R.W. & Horvitz, E. (2009). Cyberchondria: Studies of the escalation of medical concerns in web search. TOIS, 23(4).

Cited By

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  • (2024)Online Health Information Seeking and Cyberchondria Among Men at Risk of HIV Infection: A Moderated Mediation ModelInternational Journal of Sexual Health10.1080/19317611.2024.244459037:1(102-115)Online publication date: 27-Dec-2024
  • (2022)A Solution Focused Consideration of CyberchondriaHandbook of Research on Cyberchondria, Health Literacy, and the Role of Media in Society’s Perception of Medical Information10.4018/978-1-7998-8630-3.ch009(153-172)Online publication date: 2022
  • (2017)Web Use for Symptom Appraisal of Physical Health Conditions: A Systematic ReviewJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/jmir.675519:6(e202)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2017
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  1. Predicting escalations of medical queries based on web page structure and content

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGIR '10: Proceedings of the 33rd international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval
        July 2010
        944 pages
        ISBN:9781450301534
        DOI:10.1145/1835449
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 19 July 2010

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        Author Tags

        1. cyberchondria
        2. medical search

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        SIGIR '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 87 of 520 submissions, 17%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 792 of 3,983 submissions, 20%

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2024)Online Health Information Seeking and Cyberchondria Among Men at Risk of HIV Infection: A Moderated Mediation ModelInternational Journal of Sexual Health10.1080/19317611.2024.244459037:1(102-115)Online publication date: 27-Dec-2024
        • (2022)A Solution Focused Consideration of CyberchondriaHandbook of Research on Cyberchondria, Health Literacy, and the Role of Media in Society’s Perception of Medical Information10.4018/978-1-7998-8630-3.ch009(153-172)Online publication date: 2022
        • (2017)Web Use for Symptom Appraisal of Physical Health Conditions: A Systematic ReviewJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/jmir.675519:6(e202)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2017
        • (2015)Belief Dynamics and Biases in Web SearchACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/274622933:4(1-46)Online publication date: 4-May-2015
        • (2014)Content Bias in Online Health SearchACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/26633558:4(1-33)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2014
        • (2014)Interactions between health searchers and search enginesProceedings of the 37th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research & development in information retrieval10.1145/2600428.2609602(143-152)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2014
        • (2013)Captions and biases in diagnostic searchACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/24860407:4(1-28)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2013
        • (2013)The presentation of health-related search results and its impact on negative emotional outcomesProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2470654.2470702(333-342)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2013
        • (2012)Studies of the onset and persistence of medical concerns in search logsProceedings of the 35th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval10.1145/2348283.2348322(265-274)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2012
        • (2011)Intentions and attention in exploratory health searchProceedings of the 34th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in Information Retrieval10.1145/2009916.2009929(65-74)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2011

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