NDLI: Captions and biases in diagnostic search

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Captions and biases in diagnostic search

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Horvitz, Eric White, Ryen W.
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	People frequently turn to the Web with the goal of diagnosing medical symptoms. Studies have shown that diagnostic search can often lead to anxiety about the possibility that symptoms are explained by the presence of rare, serious medical disorders, rather than far more common benign syndromes. We study the influence of the appearance of potentially-alarming content, such as severe illnesses or serious treatment options associated with the queried for symptoms, in captions comprising titles, snippets, and URLs. We explore whether users are drawn to results with potentially-alarming caption content, and if so, the implications of such attraction for the design of search engines. We specifically study the influence of the content of search result captions shown in response to symptom searches on search-result click-through behavior. We show that users are significantly more likely to examine and click on captions containing potentially-alarming medical terminology such as “heart attack” or “medical emergency” independent of result rank position and well-known positional biases in users' search examination behaviors. The findings provide insights about the possible effects of displaying implicit correlates of searchers' goals in search-result captions, such as unexpressed concerns and fears. As an illustration of the potential utility of these results, we developed and evaluated an enhanced click prediction model that incorporates potentially-alarming caption features and show that it significantly outperforms models that ignore caption content. Beyond providing additional understanding of the effects of Web content on medical concerns, the methods and findings have implications for search engine design. As part of our discussion on the implications of this research, we propose procedures for generating more representative captions that may be less likely to cause alarm, as well as methods for learning to more appropriately rank search results from logged search behavior, for examples, by also considering the presence of potentially-alarming content in the captions that motivate observed clicks and down-weighting clicks seemingly driven by searchers' health anxieties.
Starting Page	1
Ending Page	28
Page Count	28
File Format	PDF
ISSN	15591131
e-ISSN	1559114X
DOI	10.1145/2486040
Volume Number	7
Issue Number	4
Journal	ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB)
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	2013-11-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Captions Biases Cyberchondria Diagnostic search
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Networks and Communications

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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