research-article

Write Like a Pro or an Amateur? Effect of Medical Language Formality

Authors:

Daniel ZengAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, Volume 12, Issue 3

Article No.: 24, Pages 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/3458752

Published: 03 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Past years have seen rising engagement among caregivers in online health communities. Although studies indicate that this caregiver-generated online health information benefits patients, how such information can be perceived easily and correctly remains unclear. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring mechanisms to improve the perceived helpfulness of online health information. We propose a multi-method framework, including a novel Medical-Enriched DEep Learning (MEDEL) feature extraction method, econometric analyses, and a randomized experiment. The results show that when the medical language of health information is informal, the senior care information is more helpful. Our findings provide a theoretical foundation to understand the influence of language formality on many other business communications. Our proposed multi-method approach can also be generalized to investigate research questions involving complex textual features. Forum sites could leverage our proposed approach to improve the helpfulness of online health information and user satisfaction.

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Cited By

Wang SZhang XMeng F(2025)Convergent or not? The effect of linguistic convergence on the effectiveness of online physician-patient communicationIndustrial Management & Data Systems10.1108/IMDS-11-2023-0835Online publication date: 4-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-11-2023-0835
Zhang FLi X(2024)How to find helpful health-related knowledge in the online healthcare communityInformation and Management10.1016/j.im.2024.10402961:7Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.im.2024.104029
Nguyen TNguyen TNguyen TYin HNguyen TJo JNguyen Q(2023)Isomorphic Graph Embedding for Progressive Maximal Frequent Subgraph MiningACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/363063515:1(1-26)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3630635
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Write Like a Pro or an Amateur? Effect of Medical Language Formality
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems

ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems Volume 12, Issue 3

September 2021

225 pages

ISSN:2158-656X

EISSN:2158-6578

DOI:10.1145/3468067

Editor:
Daniel Zeng
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

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Copyright © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 03 June 2021

Accepted: 01 March 2021

Revised: 01 March 2021

Received: 01 June 2020

Published in TMIS Volume 12, Issue 3

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Cited By

Wang SZhang XMeng F(2025)Convergent or not? The effect of linguistic convergence on the effectiveness of online physician-patient communicationIndustrial Management & Data Systems10.1108/IMDS-11-2023-0835Online publication date: 4-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-11-2023-0835
Zhang FLi X(2024)How to find helpful health-related knowledge in the online healthcare communityInformation and Management10.1016/j.im.2024.10402961:7Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.im.2024.104029
Nguyen TNguyen TNguyen TYin HNguyen TJo JNguyen Q(2023)Isomorphic Graph Embedding for Progressive Maximal Frequent Subgraph MiningACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/363063515:1(1-26)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3630635
Stokes JAugust TMarver RCzeskis ARoesner FKohno TReinecke K(2023)How Language Formality in Security and Privacy Interfaces Impacts Intended ComplianceProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581275(1-12)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581275

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