BackgroundSocial network technologies have become part of health education and wider health promotion—either by design or happenstance. Social support, peer pressure, and information sharing in online communities may affect health behaviors. If there are positive and sustained effects, then social network technologies could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of many public health campaigns. Social media alone, however, may be insufficient to promote health. Furthermore, there may be unintended and potentially harmful consequences of inaccurate or misleading health information. Given these uncertainties, there is a need to understand and synthesize the evidence base for the use of online social networking as part of health promoting interventions to inform future research and practice.ObjectiveOur aim was to review the research on the integration of expert-led health promotion interventions with online social networking in order to determine the extent to which the complementary benefits of each are understood and used. We asked, in particular, (1) How is effectiveness being measured and what are the specific problems in effecting health behavior change?, and (2) To what extent is the designated role of social networking grounded in theory?MethodsThe narrative synthesis approach to literature review was used to analyze the existing evidence. We searched the indexed scientific literature using keywords associated with health promotion and social networking. The papers included were only those making substantial study of both social networking and health promotion—either reporting the results of the intervention or detailing evidence-based plans. General papers about social networking and health were not included.ResultsThe search identified 162 potentially relevant documents after review of titles and abstracts. Of these, 42 satisfied the inclusion criteria after full-text review. Six studies described randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effectiveness of online social networking within health promotion interventions. Most of the trials investigated the value of a “social networking condition” in general and did not identify specific features that might play a role in effectiveness. Issues about the usability and level of uptake of interventions were more common among pilot studies, while observational studies showed positive evidence about the role of social support. A total of 20 papers showed the use of theory in the design of interventions, but authors evaluated effectiveness in only 10 papers.ConclusionsMore research is needed in this area to understand the actual effect of social network technologies on health promotion. More RCTs of greater length need to be conducted taking into account contextual factors such as patient characteristics and types of a social network technology. Also, more evidence is needed regarding the actual usability of online social networking and how different interface design elements may help or hinder behavior change and engagement. Moreover, it is crucial to i...
HighlightsPresents a novel theoretically-informed computerised audit and feedback (e-A&F) system.Identifies usability issues by employing an innovative hybrid inspection approach.Translates findings into recommendations for the user-centred design of e-A&F systems.
Eye movement data can provide an in-depth view of human reasoning and the decision-making process, and modern information retrieval (IR) research can benefit from the analysis of this type of data. The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between relevance criteria use and visual behavior in the context of predictive relevance judgments. To address this objective, a multimethod research design was employed that involved observation of participants' eye movements, talk-aloud protocols, and postsearch interviews. Specifically, the results reported in this article came from the analysis of 281 predictive relevance judgments made by 24 participants using the Google search engine. We present a novel stepwise methodological framework for the analysis of relevance judgments and eye movements on the Web and show new patterns of relevance criteria use during predictive relevance judgment. For example, the findings showed an effect of ranking order and surrogate components (Title, Summary, and URL) on the use of relevance criteria. Also, differences were observed in the cognitive effort spent between very relevant and not relevant judgments. We conclude with the implications of this study for IR research.
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