In a recent study conducted by the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, people who were subject to back-and-forth interaction with an online health risk assessment website were more inclined to participate in healthier activities the website suggested.
“This shows that delivering information on health risks through dialogue can help users get engaged with the tool and may positively affect their health,” S. Shyam Sundar, professor of Communications and co-director of the lab said. “In general, it speaks to the design of interactive delivery of health information that is not only engaging, but also inspiring.”
The study was published in the recent issue of Human Communication Research and suggests that when intertwined and presented with related questions, participants experience a feeling of immediacy and relevancy.
“When you are having this back and forth interaction with a system — you are having a conversation with that system,” Sundar said. “We think that interactivity has been achieved when the system’s output is contingent on the user’s input in a continuous threaded way.”
Although the results are promising, the study has unveiled some cautions that such interactive websites and apps should take when communicating with patients. More specifically, a more conversational, informal tone may cause users to feel less susceptible to health risks such as obesity, heart diseases and diabetes.
The study screened for particular phrases that trigger such mentality, and found that “Mm-hmm” and “Go on” incite behavior and thoughts that make users falsely think they are less susceptible to these malevolent conditions.
The researchers of the study suggest that this type of constant back-and-forth communication could ease the frustration from which many patients have been suffering as face-to-face interaction with doctors has steadily declined.
Patients may be more open to trying online health assessments and applications, since in 2012, a poll conducted by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation at the Harvard School of Public Health, found that 61 percent of people stated that they were unhappy with the amount of time their doctor spent with them.
“We are seeing a growth in e-medicine. People are trying to compensate for this lack of face-to-face time with doctors by using online tools, which are becoming increasingly conversational,” Sundar said.
A promising conclusion from the study is that effective electronic health tools and communication does not have to be highly sophisticated.
“A simple instant-message-like feature that enables a dialogue between the user and the system is sufficient to evoke rich perceptions of interactivity, which, in turn, could favorably influence health behaviors and attitudes. Therein lies the power of interactive health tools,” Sundar said.
To conduct the study, researchers enlisted 172 undergraduate students, each of whom was assigned to one of six health risk assessment websites. With each pairing of student and website, the variables manipulated were level of interactivity (low, medium or high) and with either conversational or non-conversational tone.
The low interactivity site included no visual cues that an ongoing communication was occurring. The medium interactivity site had a simple “your response” box, and the high interactivity website included phrases such as “previously, you mentioned.” Websites with conversational tones added in casual phrases to the ongoing communication.
From the manipulation of these variables and the answers that students gave, the researchers were able to conclude that high interactivity communication that was not overly conversational was most effective.
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