Evidotes: Integrating Scientific Evidence and Anecdotes to Support Uncertainties Triggered by Peer Health Posts

TL;DR

Evidotes is a support system that enhances peer health posts by integrating scientific evidence and anecdotes, improving user satisfaction and emotional well-being when dealing with health uncertainties.

Contribution

This work introduces Evidotes, a novel system that combines scientific and anecdotal information to address diverse user needs and emotions in health-related online discussions.

Findings

Increased user satisfaction from 3.2 to 4.6

Reduced emotional cost from 3.4 to 1.9

Enabled effective integration of evidence and anecdotes

Abstract

Peer health posts surface new uncertainties, such as questions and concerns for readers. Prior work focused primarily on improving relevance and accuracy fails to address users' diverse information needs and emotions triggered. Instead, we propose directly addressing these by information augmentation. We introduce Evidotes, an information support system that augments individual posts with relevant scientific and anecdotal information retrieved using three user-selectable lenses (dive deeper, focus on positivity, and big picture). In a mixed-methods study with 17 chronic illness patients, Evidotes improved self-reported information satisfaction (3.2->4.6) and reduced self-reported emotional cost (3.4->1.9) compared to participants' baseline browsing. Moreover, by co-presenting sources, Evidotes unlocked information symbiosis: anecdotes made research accessible and contextual, while research helped filter and generalize peer stories. Our work enables an effective integration of scientific evidence and human anecdotes to help users better manage health uncertainty.