Text mining self-disclosing health information for public health service

Understanding specific patterns or knowledge of self‐disclosing health information could support public health surveillance and healthcare. This study aimed to develop an analytical framework to identify self‐disclosing health information with unusual messages on web forums by leveraging advanced te...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 2014-05, Vol.65 (5), p.928-947
Main Authors:	Ku, Yungchang, Chiu, Chaochang, Zhang, Yulei, Chen, Hsinchun, Su, Handsome
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome Bibliometrics. Scientometrics Bibliometrics. Scientometrics. Evaluation Data mining Digital media Disclosure Discussion groups Environmental health Exact sciences and technology Health Health care Information and communication sciences Information science. Documentation Library and information science. General aspects Mathematical analysis Messages Personal information Public health Sciences and techniques of general use Social networks text mining
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Summary:	Understanding specific patterns or knowledge of self‐disclosing health information could support public health surveillance and healthcare. This study aimed to develop an analytical framework to identify self‐disclosing health information with unusual messages on web forums by leveraging advanced text‐mining techniques. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed analytical framework, we conducted an experimental study on 2 major human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) forums in Taiwan. The experimental results show that the classification accuracy increased significantly (up to 83.83%) when using features selected by the information gain technique. The results also show the importance of adopting domain‐specific features in analyzing unusual messages on web forums. This study has practical implications for the prevention and support of HIV/AIDS healthcare. For example, public health agencies can re‐allocate resources and deliver services to people who need help via social media sites. In addition, individuals can also join a social media site to get better suggestions and support from each other.
ISSN:	2330-1635 2330-1643