Consumers' longitudinal health information needs and seeking: a scoping review.

Needing and seeking health information often is a longitudinal everyday life information behavior that involves the use of technology. However, no reviews of consumers' longitudinal health information needs (HIN) and health information-seeking (HIS) behavior have been conducted. We performed a scoping review to address this gap. Specifically, we surveyed the characteristics, timeline construction and research findings of studies investigating consumers' longitudinal HIN and HIS. Initial searches were conducted in November 2019 and updated in July 2022. A total of 128 papers were identified, reviewed and analyzed using content and thematic analyses. Results showed that most papers were quantitative, conducted in the USA, related to cancer, conducted during the diagnosis and treatment phases, and followed preset time intervals. Findings concerning the development patterns of consumers' HIN degrees and HIS effort were mixed (i.e. increasing, decreasing or being consistent over time). They seemed to be shaped by factors such as health conditions, data collection methods and the length of data collection. Consumers' use of sources changes depending on health status and source accessibility; their medical terminologies seem to expand over time. HIS has a strong emotional dimension which may lead to adaptive or maladaptive information behaviors (e.g. information avoidance). Overall, the results revealed a lack of understanding of HIN and HIS from a longitudinal perspective, particularly along health condition progression and coping trajectories. There is also a lack of understanding of the role of technologies in the longitudinal HIS process.

The influence of PTSD symptoms on selective visual attention while reading.

A large body of research has provided evidence that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms are associated with broad changes in attentional processes which are in turn implicated in core facets of emotion regulation. However, prior research has primarily focused on specific task-based evaluations of attention. In the current study, we evaluated eye movement behaviour among adults that endorsed a traumatic event meeting Criterion A and were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms (N = 55) while they read short trauma-related or neutral passages. We found evidence that PTSD symptoms were associated with a small difference in attentional processes between the two types of passages, with longer first fixations to words in trauma-related passages b = 1.92, 95% CI [0.31, 3.56]. Moreover, within the trauma-related texts we found that greater PTSD symptoms were associated with longer total fixation times b = 9.53, 95% CI [2.20, 16.83] and a greater number of regressions b = 0.07, 95% CI [0.01,0.13] to trauma-related words. Inclusion of an additional 25 participants not endorsing a trauma that met Criterion A did not influence the results in any meaningful way. For the first time, we provide evidence that PTSD symptoms are linked to bias for trauma-related information during a naturalistic, everyday activity - reading.

Consumer Evaluation of the Quality of Online Health Information: Systematic Literature Review of Relevant Criteria and Indicators.

BACKGROUND: As the quality of online health information remains questionable, there is a pressing need to understand how consumers evaluate this information. Past reviews identified content-, source-, and individual-related factors that influence consumer judgment in this area. However, systematic knowledge concerning the evaluation process, that is, why and how these factors influence the evaluation behavior, is lacking. OBJECTIVE: This review aims (1) to identify criteria (rules that reflect notions of value and worth) that consumers use to evaluate the quality of online health information and the indicators (properties of information objects to which criteria are applied to form judgments) they use to support the evaluation in order to achieve a better understanding of the process of information quality evaluation and (2) to explicate the relationship between indicators and criteria to provide clear guidelines for designers of consumer health information systems. METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed in seven digital reference databases including Medicine, Psychology, Communication, and Library and Information Science to identify empirical studies that report how consumers directly and explicitly describe their evaluation of online health information quality. Thirty-seven articles met the inclusion criteria. A qualitative content analysis was performed to identify quality evaluation criteria, indicators, and their relationships. RESULTS: We identified 25 criteria and 165 indicators. The most widely reported criteria used by consumers were trustworthiness, expertise, and objectivity. The indicators were related to source, content, and design. Among them, 114 were positive indicators (entailing positive quality judgments), 35 were negative indicators (entailing negative judgments), and 16 indicators had both positive and negative quality influence, depending on contextual factors (eg, source and individual differences) and criteria applied. The most widely reported indicators were site owners/sponsors; consensus among multiple sources; characteristics of writing and language; advertisements; content authorship; and interface design. CONCLUSIONS: Consumer evaluation of online health information is a complex cost-benefit analysis process that involves the use of a wide range of criteria and a much wider range of quality indicators. There are commonalities in the use of criteria across user groups and source types, but the differences are hard to ignore. Evidently, consumers' health information evaluation can be characterized as highly subjective and contextualized, and sometimes, misinformed. These findings invite more research into how different user groups evaluate different types of online sources and a personalized approach to educate users about evaluating online health information quality.

Using Explainable AI to Cross-Validate Socio-economic Disparities Among Covid-19 Patient Mortality.

This paper applies eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods to investigate the socioeconomic disparities in COVID-19 patient mortality. An Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) prediction model is built based on a de-identified Austin area hospital dataset to predict the mortality of COVID-19 patients. We apply two XAI methods, Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Locally Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations (LIME), to compare the global and local interpretation of feature importance. This paper demonstrates the advantages of using XAI which shows the feature importance and decisive capability. Furthermore, we use the XAI methods to cross-validate their interpretations for individual patients. The XAI models reveal that Medicare financial class, older age, and gender have high impact on the mortality prediction. We find that LIME's local interpretation does not show significant differences in feature importance comparing to SHAP, which suggests pattern confirmation. This paper demonstrates the importance of XAI methods in cross-validation of feature attributions.

A meta-review of psychological resilience during COVID-19.

Psychological resilience has emerged as a key factor in mental health during the global COVID-19 pandemic. However, no work to date has synthesised findings across review work or assessed the reliability of findings based on review work quality, so as to inform public health policy. We thus conducted a meta-review on all types of review work from the start of the pandemic (January 2020) until the last search date (June 2021). Of an initial 281 papers, 30 were included for review characteristic reporting and 15 were of sufficient review quality for further inclusion in strategy analyses. High-level strategies were identified at the individual, community, organisational, and governmental levels. Several specific training and/or intervention programmes were also identified. However, the quality of findings was insufficient for drawing conclusions. A major gap between measuring the psychological resilience of populations and evaluating the effectiveness of strategies for those populations was revealed. More empirical work, especially randomised controlled trials with diverse populations and rigorous analyses, is strongly recommended for future research.

Psychological resilience during COVID-19: a meta-review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: The global COVID-19 pandemic continues to have wide-ranging implications for health, including psychological well-being. A growing corpus of research reviews has emerged on the topic of psychological resilience in the context of the pandemic. However, this body of work has not been systematically reviewed for its quality, nor with respect to findings on the effectiveness of tools and strategies for psychological resilience. To this end, a meta-review protocol is proposed with the following objectives: (1) identify review work on the topic of psychological resilience during COVID-19; (2) assess the quality of this review work using A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews; (3) assess the risk of bias in this work; (4) generate a narrative summary of the key points, strengths and weaknesses; (5) identify the psychological resilience strategies that have been reviewed; (6) identify how these strategies have been evaluated for their effectiveness; (7) identify what outcomes were measured and (8) summarise the findings on strategies for psychological resilience so far, providing recommendations, if possible. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A systematic meta-review will be conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews for Protocols and Joanna Briggs Institute umbrella review guidelines. Electronic searches of general databases, especially Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed, will be conducted. Only results from January 2020 onwards will be considered, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. Only results in English will be included. Descriptive statistics, thematic analysis and narrative summaries describing the nature of the reviewed work and evaluation of psychological resilience strategies will be carried out. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not needed for systematic review protocols. The results of the meta-review will be published in an international peer-reviewed journal. The raw and summarised data will be shared in the journal or other open venues. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021235288.

US Physicians' and Nurses' Motivations, Barriers, and Recommendations for Correcting Health Misinformation on Social Media: Qualitative Interview Study.

BACKGROUND: Health misinformation is a public health concern. Various stakeholders have called on health care professionals, such as nurses and physicians, to be more proactive in correcting health misinformation on social media. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to identify US physicians' and nurses' motivations for correcting health misinformation on social media, the barriers they face in doing so, and their recommendations for overcoming such barriers. METHODS: In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 participants, which comprised 15 (50%) registered nurses and 15 (50%) physicians. Qualitative data were analyzed by using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Participants were personally (eg, personal choice) and professionally (eg, to fulfill the responsibility of a health care professional) motivated to correct health misinformation on social media. However, they also faced intrapersonal (eg, a lack of positive outcomes and time), interpersonal (eg, harassment and bullying), and institutional (eg, a lack of institutional support and social media training) barriers to correcting health misinformation on social media. To overcome these barriers, participants recommended that health care professionals should receive misinformation and social media training, including building their social media presence. CONCLUSIONS: US physicians and nurses are willing to correct health misinformation on social media despite several barriers. Nonetheless, this study provides recommendations that can be used to overcome such barriers. Overall, the findings can be used by health authorities and organizations to guide policies and activities aimed at encouraging more health care professionals to be present on social media to counteract health misinformation.

Healthcare professionals' acts of correcting health misinformation on social media.

BACKGROUND: Health misinformation on social media is a public health concern, and healthcare professionals can help correct it. However, research on how they correct health misinformation on social media is rare. OBJECTIVE: To develop a conceptual model that demonstrates how healthcare professionals correct health misinformation on social media. METHODS: In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted between January and March 2020 with 30 U.S. healthcare professionals (15 registered nurses and 15 medical doctors). Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling and interviewed via mobile phone calls (using their mobile phone number) or apps (via Zoom or Skype). Interview data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. RESULTS: This study presents a two-phased conceptual model that shows healthcare professionals' acts of correcting health misinformation on social media (e.g., Twitter and Facebook). The first phase involves acts of authentication by which healthcare professionals verify health-related social media posts to be true or not. They undergo the process of internal acts of authentication (i.e., checking the author, checking for cues, checking the topic) and, if needed, external acts of authentication (i.e., examining the author and examining the content). When social media posts are deemed to contain health misinformation, they proceed to the second phase - acts of correction. In this phase, they undergo correction preparation (i.e., reflect, reveal, relate, and respect) and correction dissemination (i.e., private priming, public priming, public rebuttal, and private rebuttal). CONCLUSIONS: The study proposed a conceptual model that shows how healthcare professionals correct health misinformation on social media. The findings can guide healthcare professionals when identifying and correcting health misinformation on and off social media, and can guide health authorities when developing campaigns against health misinformation.