Abstract The study explored college students' use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, for academic tasks and their perceptions and behaviors in assessing the credibility of GenAI‐generated information. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 college students in the United States. Interview transcripts were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. The study identified various types of academic tasks for which students used ChatGPT, including writing, programming, and learning. Guided by two models of credibility assessment Hilligoss and Rieh (2008); Metzger (2007), six factors influencing students' motivation and ability to assess the credibility of GenAI‐generated information were identified (e.g., task salience, social pressure). We also identified 9 constructs (e.g., refinedness, explainability), 5 heuristics (e.g., inter‐ and intrasystem consistency heuristics), and 10 cues (e.g., version and tone) used by students to assess the credibility of GenAI‐generated information. This study provides theoretical and empirical findings regarding students' use of GenAI tools in the academic context and credibility evaluation of the system outputs using rich, qualitative interview data.

Abstract Value co‐creation as a research topic has been a critical proposition of interest to a wide range of disciplines. In recent years, the field of cultural heritage has also developed a range of information practices to promote different forms of value co‐creation. While the body of literature has begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of conceptual foundations and how value co‐creation is implemented in cultural heritage information practices. This paper conducted a hermeneutic literature review to understand and conceptualize the core aspects of value co‐creation in various cultural heritage information works. In particular, this paper provides a research mapping of the genres of co‐creation in cultural heritage information practices, the actors, and the roles played by the stakeholders. Further, this review provides an overview of the dominant value co‐creation models in the cultural heritage field. It distills the drivers of value co‐creation and the core value consequences that arise from a process perspective. Finally, this paper puts forward a thematic, theoretical, and methodological agenda for future work based on these findings. The review contributes to the literature by proposing an integrated conceptual framework that summarizes the core elements of value co‐creation in cultural heritage information practices. The framework also serves as a call for action, providing a general understanding of the conceptual foundation for future research.

Accessing quality information is becoming increasingly important, given the amount of information on the Internet and the exponential growth of misinformation. Information retrieval research tends to focus on conceptualizing and measuring the concept of relevance and synthesizing research on how users perceive and judge the relevance of information. Comparatively, less attention has been paid to information quality and the synthesis of research on how quality is perceived and judged by information consumers. As an initial effort to bridge the gap, we reviewed the literature concerning information quality on the topic of consumer health information seeking. We included literature on three intertwined concepts – credibility, trust, and quality – which more or less convey the notion of the quality of information. We collected the definitions and measures of the three concepts and identified their overlaps and differences. We further classified the dimensions of these concepts based on an existing hierarchical taxonomy of data quality. We found that the three concepts shared a core set of dimensions: credibility, trustworthiness, objectivity, accuracy, reliability, currency, and recommendations to friends. However, they had different scopes and differed in notable ways. Credibility and trust emphasize the intrinsic features of information, source, or system followed by their relations to users’ feelings, whereas quality emphasizes information or system’s fitness with tasks at hand followed by the intrinsic features of information or system. The results call for more explicit definitions of these concepts in empirical research and greater efforts to theorize users’ perceptions of information quality in increasingly complex and opaque information systems. Such work precedes the design of effective, user-centered, and ethical information systems.

Abstract Knowledge of ovarian cancer patients' information practices around cancer genetic testing (GT) is needed to inform interventions that promote patient access to GT‐related information. We interviewed 21 ovarian cancer patients and survivors who had GT as part of the treatment process and analyzed the transcripts using the qualitative content analysis method. We found that patients' information practices, manifested in their information‐seeking mode, information sources utilized, information assessment, and information use, showed three distinct styles: passive, semi‐active, and active. Patients with the passive style primarily received information from clinical sources, encountered information, or delegated information‐seeking to family members; they were not inclined to assess information themselves and seldom used it to learn or influence others. Women with semi‐active and active styles adopted more active information‐seeking modes to approach information, utilized information sources beyond clinical settings, attempted to assess the information found, and actively used it to learn, educate others, or advocate GT to family and friends. Guided by the social ecological model, we found multiple levels of influences, including personal, interpersonal, organizational, community, and societal, acting as motivators or barriers to patients' information practice. Based on these findings, we discussed strategies to promote patient access to GT‐related information.

Abstract Evaluating the quality of online health information (OHI) is a major challenge facing consumers. We designed PageGraph, an interface that displays quality indicators and associated values for a webpage, based on credibility evaluation models, the nudge theory, and existing empirical research concerning professionals' and consumers' evaluation of OHI quality. A qualitative evaluation of the interface with 16 participants revealed that PageGraph rendered the information and presentation nudges as intended. It provided the participants with easier access to quality indicators, encouraged fresh angles to assess information credibility, provided an evaluation framework, and encouraged validation of initial judgments. We then conducted a quantitative evaluation of the interface involving 60 participants using a between‐subject experimental design. The control group used a regular web browser and evaluated the credibility of 12 preselected webpages, whereas the experimental group evaluated the same webpages with the assistance of PageGraph. PageGraph did not significantly influence participants' evaluation results. The results may be attributed to the insufficiency of the saliency and structure of the nudges implemented and the webpage stimuli's lack of sensitivity to the intervention. Future directions for applying nudges to support OHI evaluation were discussed.

With the advancement of precision medicine, genetic information becomes increasingly important as it informs cancer prevention and treatment. However, an understanding of how ovarian cancer (OC) patients and survivors access genetic testing (GT)-related information is limited, especially how they search online for such information. We interviewed 21 OC patients and survivors about their GT experience and GT-related information search experience. Of the 21 participants, ten (47.6%) conducted online searches. These participants chose sources based on particular evaluative criteria and displayed specific intentions in searching in the first instance. Participants were concerned about online information quality and were frustrated with information understandability and a lack of OC-specific GT information. Future studies with representative samples are needed to understand ovarian cancer patients’ genetic information search behavior to inform the design of search systems and information sources that can effectively address their unmet information needs.

Abstract Information quality (IQ) is key to users' satisfaction with information systems. Understanding what IQ means to users can effectively inform system improvement. Existing inquiries into self‐tracking data quality primarily focus on accuracy. Interviewing 20 consumers who had self‐tracked health indicators for at least 6 months, we identified eight dimensions that consumers apply to evaluate self‐tracking data quality: value‐added, accuracy, completeness, accessibility, ease of understanding, trustworthiness, aesthetics, and invasiveness. These dimensions fell into four categories—intrinsic, contextual, representational, and accessibility—suggesting that consumers judge self‐tracking data quality not only based on the data's inherent quality but also considering tasks at hand, the clarity of data representation, and data accessibility. We also found that consumers' self‐tracking data quality judgments are shaped primarily by their goals or motivations, subjective experience with tracked activities, mental models of how systems work, self‐tracking tools' reputation, cost, and design, and domain knowledge and intuition, but less by more objective criteria such as scientific research results, validated devices, or consultation with experts. Future studies should develop and validate a scale for measuring consumers' perceptions of self‐tracking data quality and commit efforts to develop technologies and training materials to enhance consumers' ability to evaluate data quality.

Evaluating the quality of online health information is one of the most significant challenges that older adults face in using the internet to inform their healthcare. In this exploratory study, we observed four older adults with distinctive backgrounds to evaluate a set of preselected webpages in response to hypothetical tasks and interviewed them based on the recording of their eye- and mouse-movements during their evaluation. Results revealed that older adults consistently relied on a set of limited number of webpage or language indicators to evaluate webpages. They had misconceptions concerning some quality indicators such as references and website types. The results suggest that future interventions to improve older adults' ability to evaluate online health information quality should consider their unique behavioral patterns and preconceptions of internet technologies.

Abstract In this opinion paper, we argue that global health crises are also information crises. Using as an example the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) epidemic, we (a) examine challenges associated with what we term “global information crises”; (b) recommend changes needed for the field of information science to play a leading role in such crises; and (c) propose actionable items for short‐ and long‐term research, education, and practice in information science.

Online information sources are become increasingly diverse. The selection of sources for health information has significant implications for people's healthcare decision-making. However, little is known about how individual differences influence users' selection of online sources for health information. This study intends to fill this gap by exploring the impact of a number of individual characteristics on users' selection of five online sources (search engines, social Q&A sites, social networking sites (SNSs), online health communities, and crowdsourcing sites) for three distinct types of health-related search task (factual, exploratory, and personal experiences). We found that individuals' health literacy and frequency of using a source are the most significant predictors of their source selections across task types. Preference for information has an impact on users' selection of SNSs for exploratory tasks. Extraversion personality has an impact on users' selection of search engines for tasks that seek personal experiences. Nevertheless, demographic factors, including gender, income, and health status, do not predict users' selection of online sources for health information.

Sustained use of an information source is sometimes important for achieving an individual's long‐term goals, such as learning and self‐development. It is even more important for users of online health communities because health benefits usually come with sustained use. However, little is known about what retains a user. We interviewed 21 participants who had been using online diabetes communities in a sustained manner. Guided by self‐determination theory, which posits that behaviors are sustained when they can satisfy basic human needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, we identified mechanisms that help satisfy these needs, and thus sustain users in online health communities. Autonomy‐supportive mechanisms include being respected and supported as a unique individual, feeling free in making choices, and receiving meaningful rationales about others' decisions. Competence‐cultivating mechanisms include seeking information, providing information, and exchanging information with others to construct knowledge. Mechanisms that cultivate relatedness include seeing similarities between oneself and peers, receiving responses from others, providing emotional support, and forming small underground groups for closer interactions. The results suggest that, like emotions, information and small group interactions also play a key role in retaining users. System design and community management strategies are discussed based on these mechanisms.

The quality of online health information for consumers has been a critical issue that concerns all stakeholders in healthcare. To gain an understanding of how quality is evaluated, this systematic review examined 165 articles in which researchers evaluated the quality of consumer‐oriented health information on the web against predefined criteria. It was found that studies typically evaluated quality in relation to the substance and formality of content, as well as to the design of technological platforms. Attention to design, particularly interactivity, privacy, and social and cultural appropriateness is on the rise, which suggests the permeation of a user‐centered perspective into the evaluation of health information systems, and a growing recognition of the need to study these systems from a social‐technical perspective. Researchers used many preexisting instruments to facilitate evaluation of the formality of content; however, only a few were used in multiple studies, and their validity was questioned. The quality of content (i.e., accuracy and completeness) was always evaluated using proprietary instruments constructed based on medical guidelines or textbooks. The evaluation results revealed that the quality of health information varied across medical domains and across websites, and that the overall quality remained problematic. Future research is needed to examine the quality of user‐generated content and to explore opportunities offered by emerging new media that can facilitate the consumer evaluation of health information.

Searches for specific factual health information constitute a significant part of consumer health information requests, but little is known about how users search for such information. This study attempts to fill this gap by observing users' behavior while using MedlinePlus to search for specific health information. Nineteen students participated in the study, and each performed 12 specific tasks. During the search process, they submitted short queries or complete questions, and they examined less than 1 result per search. Participants rarely reformulated queries; when they did, they tended to make a query more specific or more general, or iterate in different ways. Participants also browsed, primarily relying on the alphabetical list and the anatomical classification, to navigate to specific health topics. Participants overall had a positive experience with MedlinePlus, and the experience was significantly correlated with task difficulty and participants' spatial abilities. The results suggest that, to better support specific item search in the health domain, systems could provide a more “natural” interface to encourage users to ask questions; effective conceptual hierarchies could be implemented to help users reformulate queries; and the search results page should be reconceptualized as a place for accessing answers rather than documents. Moreover, multiple schemas should be provided to help users navigate to a health topic. The results also suggest that users' experience with information systems in general and health‐related systems in particular should be evaluated in relation to contextual factors, such as task features and individual differences.

A systematic understanding of factors and criteria that affect consumers' selection of sources for health information is necessary for the design of effective health information services and information systems. However, current studies have overly focused on source attributes as indicators for 2 criteria, source quality and accessibility, and overlooked the role of other factors and criteria that help determine source selection. To fill this gap, guided by decision‐making theories and the cognitive perspective to information search, we interviewed 30 participants about their reasons for using a wide range of sources for health information. Additionally, we asked each of them to report a critical incident in which sources were selected to fulfill a specific information need. Based on the analysis of the transcripts, 5 categories of factors were identified as influential to source selection: source‐related factors, user‐related factors, user‐source relationships, characteristics of the problematic situation, and social influences. In addition, about a dozen criteria that mediate the influence of the factors on source‐selection decisions were identified, including accessibility, quality, usability, interactivity, relevance, usefulness, familiarity, affection, anonymity, and appropriateness. These results significantly expanded the current understanding of the nature of costs and benefits involved in source‐selection decisions, and strongly indicated that a personalized approach is needed for information services and information systems to provide effective access to health information sources for consumers.

Web search engines are important gateways for users to access health information. This study explored whether a search interface based on the Bing API and enabled by Scatter/Gather, a well‐known document‐clustering technique, can improve health information searches. Forty participants without medical backgrounds were randomly assigned to two interfaces: a baseline interface that resembles typical web search engines and a Scatter/Gather interface. Both groups performed two lookup and two exploratory health‐related tasks. It was found that the baseline group was more likely to rephrase queries and less likely to access general‐purpose sites than the Scatter/Gather group when completing exploratory tasks. Otherwise, the two groups did not differ in behavior and task performance, with participants in the Scatter/Gather group largely overlooking the features (key words, clusters, and the recluster function) designed to facilitate the exploration of semantic relationships between information objects, a potentially useful means for users in the rather unfamiliar domain of health. The results suggest a strong effect of users' mental models of search on their use of search interfaces and a high cognitive cost associated with using the Scatter/Gather features. It follows that novel features of a search interface should not only be compatible with users' mental models but also provide sufficient affordance to inform users of how they can be used. Compared with the interface, tasks showed more significant impacts on search behavior. In future studies, more effort should be devoted to identify salient features of health‐related information needs.

Designing effective consumer health information systems requires deep understanding of the context in which the systems are being used. However, due to the elusive nature of the concept of context, few studies have made it a focus of examination. To fill this gap, we studied the context of consumer health information searching by analyzing questions posted on a social question and answer site: Yahoo! Answers. Based on the analysis, a model of context was developed. The model consists of 5 layers: demographic, cognitive, affective, situational, and social and environmental. The demographic layer contains demographic factors of the person of concern; the cognitive layer contains factors related to the current search task (specifically, topics of interest and information goals) and users' cognitive ability to articulate their needs. The affective layer contains different affective motivations and intentions behind the search. The situational layer contains users' perceptions of the current health condition and where the person is in the illness trajectory. The social and environmental layer contains users' social roles, social norms, and various information channels. Several novel system functions, including faceted search and layered presentation of results, are proposed based on the model to help contextualize and improve users' interactions with health information systems.

Abstract Although considered proxies for people to interact with a system, mental models have produced limited practical implications for system design. This might be due to the lack of exploration of the elements of mental models resulting from the methodological challenge of measuring mental models. This study employed a new method, concept listing, to elicit people's mental models of an information‐rich space, MedlinePlus, after they interacted with the system for 5 minutes. Thirty‐eight undergraduate students participated in the study. The results showed that, in this short period of time, participants perceived MedlinePlus from many different aspects in relation to four components: the system as a whole, its content, information organization, and interface. Meanwhile, participants expressed evaluations of or emotions about the four components. In terms of the procedural knowledge, an integral part of people's mental models, only one participant identified a strategy more aligned to the capabilities of MedlinePlus to solve a hypothetical task; the rest planned to use general search and browse strategies. The composition of participants' mental models of MedlinePlus was consistent with that of their models of information‐rich Web spaces in general.

Abstract This study explored undergraduate students' mental models of the Web as an information retrieval system. Mental models play an important role in people's interaction with information systems. Better understanding of people's mental models could inspire better interface design and user instruction. Multiple data‐collection methods, including questionnaire, semistructured interview, drawing, and participant observation, were used to elicit students' mental models of the Web from different perspectives, though only data from interviews and drawing descriptions are reported in this article. Content analysis of the transcripts showed that students had utilitarian rather than structural mental models of the Web. The majority of participants saw the Web as a huge information resource where everything can be found rather than an infrastructure consisting of hardware and computer applications. Students had different mental models of how information is organized on the Web, and the models varied in correctness and complexity. Students' mental models of search on the Web were illustrated from three points of view: avenues of getting information, understanding of search engines' working mechanisms, and search tactics. The research results suggest that there are mainly three sources contributing to the construction of mental models: personal observation, communication with others, and class instruction. In addition to structural and functional aspects, mental models have an emotional dimension.