University of Florida Researcher Yields New Findings on Human Factors and Ergonomics (Users’ Navigation Strategy and Information Search with Health Insurance Decision Aids Using Social Network Analysis): Health and Medicine – Human Factors and Ergonomics

2023 NOV 08 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in human factors and ergonomics. According to news reporting from Gainesville, Florida, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Health insurance enrollment decisions are not only medical decisions but also involve other factors such as employment and financial status.”

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from University of Florida: “Decision aids such as Virtual Benefits Counselors (VBC) and Human Resources (HR) traditional websites may help users make informed decisions. Little research has explicitly focused on how users navigate and search for information using these aids. We propose the use of the Social Network Analysis (SNA) method to characterize navigation and information search behavior. SNA was applied to the navigation data of 16 participants who were asked to make mock health insurance enrollment decisions using a VBC or HR website.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “VBC users searched for financial information with less back-and-forth navigation and explored a larger percentage of the system, whereas HR website users had more back-and-forth navigation between the same pages but explored fewer available pages. In conclusion, SNA provided insights into differences between how users interact with different decision aids and what contents they were looking for which may prove useful in understanding users’ interaction strategies.”

For more information on this research see: Users’ Navigation Strategy and Information Search with Health Insurance Decision Aids Using Social Network Analysis. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2023. The publisher for Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/21695067231192697.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Albraa A. Rajkhan, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States. Additional authors for this research include Mahtab Eskandar, Coralys Colon-Morales, Michelle M. Alvarado, Wayne C.W. Giang.

ORCID is an identifier for authors and includes bibliographic information. The following is ORCID information for the author of this research: Wayne C.W. Giang (http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4022-7130).

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