Volume 14, No 1, 2017
Scientific Publication Behavior versus Information Seeking Behavior: An Infodemiological Study on Stomach Cancer
Shohreh SeyyedHosseini, Asefeh Asemi, Ahmad Shabani and Mozafar CheshmehSohrabi
Abstract
Based on Eysenbach’s view, infodemiology can be defined as the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy. The current study aimed to investigate the state of health information supply and demand on stomach cancer among Iranian medical researchers and Iranian web users during 2011 to 2015. A mixed method research was conducted in this study. In qualitative part, a focus group interview was applied to the users to identify their selected keywords searched for stomach cancer on Google. The collected data were analyzed using Open Code software. In quantitative part, data were synthesized using R software in two parts. First, users’ Internet information seeking behavior (ISB) was analyzed using Google Trends outputs during 2011 to 2015. Second, the scientific publication behavior (SPB) of Iranian 22 http://www.webology.org/2017/v14n1/a153.pdf stomach cancer specialists was surveyed using PubMed during the period of the study. Eight keywords extracted by focus group interview were entered in the “Google Trends” main page. The results showed that the search volume index of preferred keywords on stomach cancer have increased from 475 in 2011 to 879 in 2015. Also, the findings revealed that Iranian scholars had 194 scientific papers on stomach cancer in PubMed during 2011 to 2015. There was a significant and positive relationship between Iranian ISB in the Google Trends and SPB of Iranian scholars on stomach cancer in PubMed. From infodemiological viewpoint, it has been elucidated that the alignment of ISB and SPB in medical studies can illustrate the purposefulness of these investigations.
Pages: 21-31
Keywords: Infodemiology; Health information supply; Health information demand; Health information need