Estimating Consumer Familiarity with Health Terminology: A Context-based Approach Export

@article{Zeng-Treitler_JAMIA_2008, abstract = {ObjectivesEffective health communication is often hindered by a "vocabulary gap" between language familiar to consumers and jargon used in medical practice and research. To present health information to consumers in a comprehensible fashion, we need to develop a mechanism to quantify health terms as being more likely or less likely to be understood by typical members of the lay public. Prior research has used approaches including syllable count, easy word list, and frequency count, all of which have significant limitations. DesignIn this article, we present a new method that predicts consumer familiarity using contextual information. The method was applied to a large query log data set and validated using results from two previously conducted consumer surveys. MeasurementsWe measured the correlation between the survey result and the context-based prediction, syllable count, frequency count, and log normalized frequency count. ResultsThe correlation coefficient between the context-based prediction and the survey result was 0.773 (p < 0.001), which was higher than the correlation coefficients between the survey result and the syllable count, frequency count, and log normalized frequency count (p [\&le;] 0.012). ConclusionsThe context-based approach provides a good alternative to the existing term familiarity assessment methods. 10.1197/jamia.M2592}, author = {Zeng-Treitler, Qing and Goryachev, Sergey and Tse, Tony and Keselman, Alla and Boxwala, Aziz}, citeulike-article-id = {6021580}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2592}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.jamia.org/content/15/3/349.abstract}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://www.jamia.org/content/15/3/349.full.pdf}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18308983}, citeulike-linkout-4 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=18308983}, day = {1}, doi = {10.1197/jamia.M2592}, journal = {J Am Med Inform Assoc}, keywords = {consumer, context, health, ir, medlineplus}, month = {May}, number = {3}, pages = {349--356}, posted-at = {2009-10-28 18:16:06}, priority = {2}, title = {Estimating Consumer Familiarity with Health Terminology: A Context-based Approach}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2592}, volume = {15}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - Zeng-Treitler_JAMIA_2008 L3 - citeulike-article-id:6021580 N2 - ObjectivesEffective health communication is often hindered by a "vocabulary gap" between language familiar to consumers and jargon used in medical practice and research. To present health information to consumers in a comprehensible fashion, we need to develop a mechanism to quantify health terms as being more likely or less likely to be understood by typical members of the lay public. Prior research has used approaches including syllable count, easy word list, and frequency count, all of which have significant limitations. DesignIn this article, we present a new method that predicts consumer familiarity using contextual information. The method was applied to a large query log data set and validated using results from two previously conducted consumer surveys. MeasurementsWe measured the correlation between the survey result and the context-based prediction, syllable count, frequency count, and log normalized frequency count. ResultsThe correlation coefficient between the context-based prediction and the survey result was 0.773 (p < 0.001), which was higher than the correlation coefficients between the survey result and the syllable count, frequency count, and log normalized frequency count (p [&le;] 0.012). ConclusionsThe context-based approach provides a good alternative to the existing term familiarity assessment methods. 10.1197/jamia.M2592 IS - 3 JF - J Am Med Inform Assoc EP - 356 TI - Estimating Consumer Familiarity with Health Terminology: A Context-based Approach VL - 15 SP - 349 KW - consumer KW - context KW - health KW - ir KW - medlineplus AU - Zeng-Treitler, Qing AU - Goryachev, Sergey AU - Tse, Tony AU - Keselman, Alla AU - Boxwala, Aziz PY - 2008/05/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2592 ER -