The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments

Abstract

In Web 2.0 environments, people commonly share their knowledge and personal experiences with others, but little is known about their background characteristics and motivations. Thus, the current study examines some of the characteristics and motivations common among answerers, who produce health-related answers to questions asked by anonymous others in a social Q&A site, Yahoo! Answers. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to top and recent answerers to investigate their demographics, areas of health expertise, and other characteristics related to answering behaviors online. Also, 10 motivation factors are proposed and tested in the survey: enjoyment, efficacy, learning, personal gain, altruism, community interest, social engagement, empathy, reputation, and reciprocity. Findings show that altruism is the most influential motivation, while personal gain is the least. Enjoyment and efficacy are more influential than other social motivations, such as reputation or reciprocity, although there are some variations across different groups of answerers. Motivational factors among top answerers or health experts are further analyzed. The findings of this study have practical implications for promoting health answerers to share knowledge and experiences in social contexts. Furthermore, the study design of the current study can be used to examine motivations of answerers in other topic areas as well as other social contexts. IntroductionKaren Parles 1 was a patient with advanced lung cancer and a librarian who had been actively searching for information about her condition. Among a variety of the Internet sources, Received February 26, 2011; revised September 13, 2011; accepted September 15, 2011 1 Karen's story about her journey of information seeking and provision was told in an article published by a group of health care providers in the oncology department at Massachusetts General Hospital, based on an interview with Karen about her use of Internet sources (Penson, Benson, Parles, Chabner, & Lynch, 2002).© 2011 ASIS&T • Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.21676 an online cancer discussion group was the most valuable for her because she was able to immediately contact people in a similar or more advanced condition. The group participation eased her anxiety about the disease and enabled her to be more productive in receiving treatment. She used the online support group as a venue to share her experience and information, wrote a book to help other patients, and created a website called Lung Cancer Online. After an 11-year struggle, Karen died on February 16, 2009, but the Lung Cancer Online Foundation continues to run the website, which has been valuable resource for patients, their friends and families until now.Karen was a sophisticated searcher who knew how to find information. Furthermore, by nature, being a librarian, she was active in sharing information to help others. In the real world, perhaps only a few people can make such a remarkable contributio...

The use of rhetorical strategies in Q&A discussion

“…The majority of the findings originate from empirical investigations characterizing the content of questions and answers, as well as the ways in which Q&A sites are used (for an overview, see, Gazan, 2011;Oh, 2012, andShah et al, 2009).…”

Perceptions of the Diabetes Online Community’s Credibility, Social Capital, and Help and Harm: Cross-Sectional Comparison Between Baby Boomers and Younger Adults (Preprint)

“…Putnam (2001) found that social connectedness strongly predicts altruism. Altruism has been identified in other online communities [6,29,47,48]. Individuals who engage in the DOC may be providing emotional, informational, instrumental or companionship support to other DOC users for several reasons.…”

Question, answer, compare: a cross-category comparison of answers on question and answer websites

“…socio-emotional; Kim, Oh, & Oh, 2007) and self-presentation cues (Raban, 2009). Additionally, recent research has explored why users participate in social Q&A websites and answer questions via social media finding that altruism is the most common motivator for answering questions Morris, Teevan, & Panovich, 2010;Oh, 2012). Social Q&A websites include Yahoo!…”

“…Future research should address the various information needs of users by studying individual differences among users and their various motivations for participating in Q&A websites. Several studies have explored why users answer questions on social Q&A websites Morris et al, 2010;Oh, 2012), but additional work should be done to address why users pose questions on all three Q&A website types. This study suggests a relationship between the characteristics of speed, intimacy, transparency, and formality.…”