Article: Relevance criteria for health information on a health discussion forum: An analysis of user eye movements
Pian, W., Khoo, C.S.G., & Chang, Y.K. (2016). The criteria people use in relevance decisions on health information: An analysis of user eye movements when browsing a health discussion forum. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(6):e136. (Available at: http://www.jmir.org/2016/6/e136/) Abstract Background: People are increasingly accessing health-related social media sites, such as health discussion forums, to post and read user-generated health information. It is important to know what criteria people use when deciding the relevance of information found on health social media websites, in different situations. Objective: The study attempted to identify the relevance criteria that people use when browsing a health discussion forum, in 3 types of use contexts: when seeking information for their own health issue, when seeking for other people’s health issue, and when browsing without a particular health issue in mind. Method: A total of 58 study participants were self-assigned to 1 of the 3 information...
Article: Comparison of drug information on consumer drug review sites versus authoritative health information websites
Chew, S.H., & Khoo, C.S.G. (2015 early view). Comparison of drug information on consumer drug review sites versus authoritative health information websites. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.(Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23390/abstract) Abstract Huge amounts of health-related information of different types are available on the Web. In addition to authoritative health information sites maintained by government health departments and healthcare institutions, there are many social media sites carrying user-contributed information. This study sought to identify the types of drug information available on consumer-contributed drug review sites compared to authoritative drug information websites—what types of drug information are common and unique, and how they differ in nature, detail and usefulness. Content analysis was carried out on the information available for nine drugs on three authoritative sites (RxList, eMC and PDRhealth), as well as three drug review sites (WebMD, RateADrug and PatientsLikeMe). The types of information found on authoritative...
Article: Issues in information behaviour on social media
Khoo, C.S.G. (2014). Issues in information behaviour on social media. LIBRES, 24(2), 75-96. (Available at: http://libres-ejournal.info/1399/) Abstract Background. Social media present a rich environment to study information behaviour, as much of the user interaction is recorded and stored in publicly accessible repositories and on personal devices. Objectives. This paper surveys the literature of the past nine years on information behaviour related to social media, focusing especially on social networking sites and online discussion forums. It reviews the characteristics of social media users and use, the predominant types of information behaviour, and new types of information found in user-contributed content. Results. Studies have found clear age, gender and national differences, and differences between local citizens and foreigners, in the frequency and purpose of social media use, the choice of social media sites, number of online friends, and types of information posted. Social media users typically share experiential and practical knowledge...
Article: Relevance judgment when browsing a health discussion forum: Content analysis of eye fixations
Pian, W., Khoo, C.S.G., & Chang, Y.K. (2014). Relevance judgment when browsing a health discussion forum: Content analysis of eye fixations. LIBRES, 24(2), 132-147. (Available at: http://libres-ejournal.info/1408/) Abstract Introduction. People are increasingly searching and browsing for health information on social media sites. This is a small study of the relevance criteria used by laypersons when browsing a health discussion forum under three conditions—when seeking information for their own health issue, for a friend’s or relative’s health issue, and with no particular issue in mind. Method. An eye-tracker system was used to identify what text users’ eyes were fixated on when browsing post surrogates and post content on a health discussion forum. Eye-fixations indicated the text segments that the user’s attention was focused on when making relevance judgments. Analysis. Content analysis was performed on the text segments with eye-fixation, to identify the types of information they contain. These types of...
Article: Literature review writing: How information is selected and transformed
Jaidka, K., Khoo, C.S.G., & Na, J.C. (2013). Literature review writing: How information is selected and transformed. Aslib Proceedings, 65(3), 303-325. Abstract Aim. This paper reports a study of researchers’ preferences in selecting information from cited papers to include in a literature review, and the kinds of transformations and editing applied to the selected information. This is a part of a larger project to develop an automatic summarization method that emulates human literature review writing behaviour. Research Questions. How are literature reviews written – where do authors select information from, what types of information do they select and how do they transform it? What is the relationship between styles of literature review (integrative and descriptive) and each of these variables (source sections, types of information and types of transformation)? Method. We analyzed the literature review sections of 20 articles from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science...
Article: Task-based navigation of a taxonomy interface to a digital repository
Khoo, C.S.G., Wang, Z., & Chaudhry, A.S. (2012). Task-based navigation of a taxonomy interface to a digital repository. Information Research, 17(4). (Available at: http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/infres174.html) Abstract Introduction. This is a study of hierarchical navigation; how users browse a taxonomy-based interface to an organizational repository to locate information resources. The study is part of a project to develop a taxonomy for an library and information science department to organize resources and support user browsing in a digital repository. Method. The data collection was carried out using task-based navigation exercises with twenty-two participants. A cognitive framework of hierarchical navigation is proposed, involving the cognitive process of matching context, topic and/or resource type concepts to taxonomy categories. Results. Though users often use the topic concept in making navigation choices, they sometimes make use of context and resource-type concepts. Users infer a variety of relationships between a task concept and a taxonomy category, including...
Conference paper: Categories of friends on social networking sites
Zhang, X., Gao, Q., Khoo, C., & Wu, A. (2013). Categories of friends on social networking sites: An exploratory study. In The 5th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Library and Information Education and Practice (A-LIEP 2013): Proceedings (pp. 244-259). Khon Kaen City, Thailand: University of Khon Kaen, Faculty of Humanties and Social Sciences. Abstract: The widespread use of social networking sites has transformed the ways people make, communicate with and manage their friends. This study seeks to find out students’ perception of the types of friends they have on their social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook and Twitter, in comparison to offline friends, and the quality of these friendships. A questionnaire survey was administered to 104 graduate students in the Division of Information Studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. It was found that the main categories of friends on SNS are school friends, work-related friends, friends sharing...
Conference paper: A user study of the Singapore Memory Portal to derive a taxonomy for content organization
Srieedar, J., & Khoo, C.S.G. (2013). A user study of the Singapore Memory Portal to derive a taxonomy for content organization. In Proceedings of the 2013 Digital Heritage International Congress, 28 Oct-1 Nov 2013, Marseille, France (IEEE catalog no. CFP1308W-USB, pp. 297-305). Summary: This paper reports an initial user study of a cultural heritage portal called Singapore Memory Portal that was set up in Singapore to collect people’s memories related to the history, culture, society, life and landscape of Singapore’s past. The study sought to find out users’ expectations of the content of the portal, how they search and browse the portal, and what they learn about particular historical or cultural topics from reading postings in the portal. The goal is to derive a taxonomy to organize the portals’ content for browsing and learning. For this initial study, 12 Singapore citizens were interviewed to find out what topics...