Eating disorder questions in Yahoo! Answers: Information, conversation, or reflection?

This study investigated a particular form of social Q&A – Yahoo! Answers – and the nature of the questions posed by teens on the topic of eating disorders. The goals of this study were to identify the information needs of questioners in Yahoo! Answers vis a vis the topic of eating disorders, to create a taxonomy of question types in Yahoo! Answers on the topic of eating disorders, and finally, to contribute to broader models of question-asking in social Q&A. We achieved these goals through a content analysis of 2230 questions posed in Yahoo! Answers between December 2005 and April 2011. This resulted in a classification scheme with five overarching themes - Seeking Information, Seeking Emotional Support, Seeking Communication, Seeking Self-Expression, and Seeking Help to Complete a Task, and the sub-categories of factual, diagnosis, treatment or intervention, validation, seeking comfort, conversation starters, deep talk, confession, reflection, homework help, and manuscript ideas. Through the investigation of the socio-emotional aspects of social Q&A, this study enriches our understanding of the affective dimension of health information behavior.

[1]  Rich Gazan,et al.  Social Q&A , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[2]  Julie O'Toole,et al.  Children and Adolescents With Eating Disorders: The State of the Art , 2003 .

[3]  A. Kaplan,et al.  Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media , 2010 .

[4]  Martin H. Levinson.  Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other , 2011 .

[5]  M. Lombard,et al.  Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability , 2002 .

[6]  D. Neumark-Sztainer,et al.  Health care information sources for adolescents: age and gender differences on use, concerns, and needs. , 2001, The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

[7]  Derek L. Hansen,et al.  Adolescents Searching for Health Information on the Internet: An Observational Study , 2003, Journal of medical Internet research.

[8]  J. Oh,et al.  Research agenda for social Q&A , 2009 .

[9]  V. Rideout,et al.  How young people use the Internet for health information. , 2001, Public health reports.

[10]  Daqing He,et al.  The Visibility of Health Web Portals for teens: a Hyperlink Analysis , 2011, Online Inf. Rev..

[11]  Nancy L Kondracki,et al.  Content analysis: review of methods and their applications in nutrition education. , 2002, Journal of nutrition education and behavior.

[12]  P J Hannan,et al.  Weight-related behaviors among adolescent girls and boys: results from a national survey. , 2000, Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine.

[13]  G. Eysenbach.  Credibility of Health Information and Digital Media: New Perspectives and Implications for Youth , 2007 .

[14]  Jeffrey Pomerantz,et al.  A linguistic analysis of question taxonomies , 2005, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[15]  Colin Seymour-Ure,et al.  Content Analysis in Communication Research. , 1972 .

[16]  Kimberly A. Neuendorf,et al.  The Content Analysis Guidebook , 2001 .

[17]  Hsiu-Fang Hsieh,et al.  Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis , 2005, Qualitative health research.

[18]  W. Stewart Agras.  The Oxford handbook of eating disorders , 2010 .

[19]  Lada A. Adamic,et al.  Knowledge sharing and yahoo answers: everyone knows something , 2008, WWW.

[20]  Dasha Nicholls,et al.  Management of eating disorders in children and adolescents , 2008 .

[21]  Sheizaf Rafaeli,et al.  Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites , 2008, CHI.

[22]  Pamela K. Keel.  Epidemiology and Course of Eating Disorders , 2010 .

[23]  Georgia Koutrika,et al.  Questioning Yahoo! Answers , 2007 .

[24]  Iryna Gurevych,et al.  Annotating Question Types in Social Q&A Sites , 2009 .

[25]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[26]  Lorraine Eden,et al.  Introduction and Overview , 2005 .

[27]  D. Katzman,et al.  Medical Screening and Management of Eating Disorders in Adolescents , 2010 .

[28]  Jack M. Maness.  Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries , 2006, Webology.

[29]  Daqing He,et al.  Who is referring teens to health information on the web?: hyperlinks between blogs and health web sites for teens , 2011, iConference '11.