Seeking Treatment Options: Consumers’ Search Behaviors and Cognitive Activities

摘要

As people increasingly search the Internet for health-relatedtopics like treatment options, it is important to understandhow they construct their searches, and how they understandthe results. In this paper, we report results from anexploratory lab study with 40 cross-sectional participantsand follow-up interviews with eleven of them about theiruse of search engines to find treatment options. Whilecorroborating prior research concerning basic consumerhealth information search behaviors (e.g., query length andevaluation of results), our findings also extend the currentunderstanding of health information searching bysuggesting that the process of seeking treatment options isshaped by consumers’ propensity for familiar andconfirming information as well as their desire to seek novelinformation. Furthermore, our findings suggest an underinvestigatedidea of the importance of a search timeline:that is that a consumer is likely to look for confirming ornovel information depending on where they are in aparticular timeline during their search. The results indicatethat search systems can better support consumers in findingnovel information about treatment options, but that it wouldbe best to introduce novel information after satisfyingconsumers search for general and familiar information.