Analysis of the Questions, Answers and the Reasons of the Users in Research Gate in the Field of COVID-19

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Sahar Anbaraki 1
Sanaz poroushasb 2
Ghasem Azadi 3
1 PhD candidate in Knowledge and Information Management; Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.
2 PhD candidate in Knowledge and Information Management; Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
3 Assistant Professor. Knowledge and information science, National Research Institute for Science Policy, Tehran, Iran
10.22054/nms.2024.70561.1482
Abstract
Coronavirus and Covid-19 outbreaks have raised many questions for the public. In a short time, people were able to find the answers they needed to these questions in a variety of ways. Now, it is clear that some people use social media Question Answering (QA) Systems to answer their questions about this disease. So, this study analysis the questions, answers and the reasons of the users who use Question Answering System of ResearchGate in the field of COVID-19. This study is a survey. The Research Gate scientific social network crawler was used to extract the data. 1337 questions and 4857 answers of Q&A system of ResearchGate were collected and analyzed in the last two months of 2020 (November and December) in the field of COVID-19 or Coronavirus. The total number of retrieved data was analyzed and none were omitted. By using a checklist prepared and approved by 8 experts in information science, the type of questions (conceptual, methodological, experiences and skills and questions from other scientific sources) and answers based on citations (to the source via the Internet, to the expert, to the book, article and other offline resources) were evaluated. Due to concerns that not answering the questionnaires could pose a problem, 620 researcher-made questionnaires were distributed online to users to determine why they are using the ResearchGate question and answering system. These reasons were Finding Information, Getting Opinions, Being entertained, Socializing, Being update about contact’s information, Sharing personal Experiences, Getting promotions which have been mentioned in perez and Gomez’s research. 305 questionnaires were completely answered and all of them were analyzed according to Likert scale. Most of the questioners are men (60.6%) and 55.9% have a doctoral degree or even higher. About 61% of the respondents are men and 66.4% have a doctoral degree or higher. Americans asked the most questions (about 39%) and Europeans answered the most (about 31.5%). Respondents asked more questions about people's personal skills and experiences, and respondents referred more to Internet resources. The least resources which were used are books, papers and other offline resources. Also, users are more likely to use the ResearchGate Q&A system to find information (about 17.73%) and get Opinions (about 16.52%). The least common reasons for users to participate in this system is to be entertained or getting promotions which shows that, People use ResearchGate more as a network to access scientific information and to gain personal knowledge about other researchers than as an entertainment and leisure tool. In addition to, having a RJ score above 10 indicates the questions and answers are high quality. in order to find information and opinions of others in the field of Covid-19, people can ask their empirical and skillful questions using the question and answering system of ResearchGate. Questions and answers are of high quality due to the RJ rating above 10. Furthermore, this system allows users to identify specialists based on referrals provided to them and ask their questions directly in the field of Covid-19.
Introduction
 Virtual question and answer systems are facilities that these social media provide to their users. These systems are based on Web 2 technology and with a special system for users so that people can share their knowledge with others in the form of questions and answers. Membership in these systems is free and possible for everyone, and people with different information needs can Send your questions and receive answers from users all over the world and choose the best answer from them. Answers that can be shared without time and place limitations. COVID-19 outbreaks have raised many questions for the public. Now, it is clear that some people use social media Question Answering (QA) Systems to answer their questions about this disease. So, this study analyzes the questions, answers and reasons of the users who use the Question Answering System of ResearchGate in the field of COVID-19.
Literature Review
Examining the reasons for user participation, factors such as altruism (Yang, et al, 2011), motivational effects (Meng, et al. 2013), game effectiveness in stimulating voluntary participation (Cavusoglu & Huang, 2015), commitment, common language and common vision Fang, & Zhang, 2019)), users' self-efficacy, expertise and perceived common similarity (Bao & Han, 2019) and social factors such as exchange ideology, community support and social norms (Ondis, 2021) as the causes of users' participation in question and answer networks. The social response has been raised. Perez and Gomez (2011) have mentioned the reasons for using online networks mostly for fun and socializing and less for getting promotion and sharing personal experiences by stating their 7-category. However, despite the research conducted in the field of Covid-19, what kind of questions and answers have been raised about this disease in ResearchGate's Q&A network (referring to internet resources, referring to experts, referring to articles, books, etc.) and what is the RG rank of the questioners and respondents in the subject area of Covid-19, still needs to be investigated. Investigating the reasons for users' participation in the ResearchGate question and answer system as respondents and questioners is also still in question.
Methodolog
This study is a survey. The ResearchGate scientific social network crawler was used to extract the data. 1337 questions and 4857 answers from the QA system of ResearchGate were collected and analyzed in the last two months of 2020 (November and December) in the field of COVID-19 or Coronavirus. By using a checklist prepared and approved by 8 experts in information science, the type of questions (conceptual, methodological, experiences and skills, and questions from other scientific sources) and answers based on citations (to the source via the Internet, experts, books, articles, and other offline resources) were evaluated. Due to concerns that not answering the questionnaires could pose a problem, 620 researcher-made questionnaires were distributed online to users to determine why they were using the ResearchGate QA System. These reasons were Finding Information, Getting Opinions, Being Entertained, Socializing, Being Updated about contact information, Sharing Personal Experiences, and Getting Promotions which have been mentioned in Perez and Gomez’s research. 305 questionnaires were completely answered and all of them were analyzed according to the Likert scale.
Results
 Most of the questioners are men (60.6%) and 55.9% have a doctoral degree or even higher. About 61% of the respondents are men and 66.4% have a doctoral degree or higher. Questioners have asked more about people's personal skills and experiences, and respondents have referred more to Internet resources. The least used resources were books, papers and other offline resources. The most people have asked about the experiences and skills of other people in the subject of Covid-19. The most important reason that encourages people to use the Research Gate network and the question-and-answer systems of this network is to find the required information, which accounts for 17.73% of the obtained points. After that, more people refer to Research Gate and participate in it in order to know the opinions of other researchers and to feel social and participate in collective activities. On the other hand, reasons such as having fun and getting promoted with the lowest points show that people use Researchgate more as a platform to access scientific information and gain personal knowledge of other researchers than a network for entertainment and spending their free time.The least common reasons for users to participate in this system are to be entertained or get promotions which shows that, People use ResearchGate more as a network to access scientific information and to gain personal knowledge about other researchers than as an entertainment and leisure tool. In addition, having a RJ score above 10 indicates the questions and answers are in high quality.
Conclusion
Examining and evaluating the quality of answers sent in question-and-answer communities, in addition to the benefits for the user who sends questions to have better criteria for evaluating the quality of received answers, the management of social networking sites is also Having such criteria can have better performance. In this way, many social networks have used the reputation system, a system in which users can earn points based on participation in site activities or their rank on the site by considering factors such as the number of questions answered. Given, the number of answers voted as the best answer and other factors to promote. Based on the search and exploration of the conducted researches, it is obvious that considering that the first social networks that were created were part of the public networks, most of the researches have assigned the subject area to themselves. There is a constant for predicting and evaluating the quality of answers, which is due to the lack of research on the subject, despite its importance. This research can be used as an incentive for researchers to use scientific social networks to obtain the information they need. Also, the final results can be used by designers in order to form the algorithms for the design of social networks and making them professional. In this way, the designers will be informed about the preferences and interests of the users, and finally it will be possible to have higher quality and more user-friendly networks.
Keywords
"Question and Answering System"
"User Participation"
"Research Gate"
"Covid-19"
"Coronavirus"
References
Abdalla, M. J., Said, H., Ali, L., Ali, F., and Chen, X. (2021). COVID-19 and unpaid leave: Impacts of psychological contract breach on organizational distrust and turnover intention: mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Tourism Manag. Perspect. 39, 100854. doi: 10.1016/j.tmp.2021.100854
Adamic, L., Zhang, J., Bakshy, E., Ackerman, M. (2008). Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something. In International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). April 21-25, Beijing, China.
Aditya, D. S. (2021). Embarking digital learning due to COVID-19: are teachers ready? JOTSE 11, 104–116. doi: 10.3926/jotse.1109
Adom, D., Mensah, J. A., and Osei, M. (2021). The psychological distress and mental health disorders from COVID-19 stigmatization in Ghana. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100186. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100186
Ali, M., Gasca, V., Schrier, R., Pensa, M., Brockman, A., Olson, D. P., et al. (2021). Social determinants and COVID-19 in a community health center cohort. J. Immigr. Minor. Health 24, 10–17. doi: 10.1007/s10903-021-01320-6
Amitay, E., Carmel, D., Har'El, N., Ofek-Koifman, S., Soffer, A., Yogev, S., & Golbandi, N. (2009, June). Social search and discovery using a unified approach. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (pp. 199-208).
Ankrah, D. A., Agyei-Holmes, A., and Boakye, A. A. (2021). Ghana’s rice value chain resilience in the context of COVID-19. Social Sci. Human. Open 4, 100210. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100210
Awofeso, N., M. Hassan, & S. Hamidi. (2016). Individual and collaborative technology-mediated learning using question & answer online discussion forums–perceptions of Public Health learners in Dubai, UAE. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 31 (1): 54-63.
Bao, Z., & Han, Z. (2019). What drives users’ participation in online social Q&A communities? An empirical study based on social cognitive theory. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 71(5), 637-656. DOI:10.1108/AJIM-01-2019-0002
Bhattacharya, M., and Banerjee, P. (2021). COVID-19: Indices of economic and health vulnerability for the Indian states. Social Sci. Human. Open 4, 100157. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100157
Cai, Y., and Chakravarthy, Sh. (2011). Predicting Answer Quality in Q/A Social Networks: Using Temporal Features. Technical Report CSE. In IT Laboratory & Department of Computer Science & Engineering, The University of Texas, Arlington (pp. 1-19).
Cavusoglu, H., Li, Z., & Huang, K. W. (2015, February). Can gamification motivate voluntary contributions? The case of StackOverflow Q&A community. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference companion on computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 171-174). DOI:10.1145/2685553.2698999
Chaturvedi, K., Vishwakarma, D. K., and Singh, N. (2021). COVID-19 and its impact on education, social life and mental health of students: a survey. Children Youth Serv. Rev. 121, 105866. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105866
Chirisa, I., Mavhima, B., Nyevera, T., Chigudu, A., Makochekanwa, A., Matai, J., et al. (2021). The impact and implications of COVID-19: reflections on the Zimbabwean society. Social Sci. Human. Open 4, 100183. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100183
Ciotti, M., Ciccozzi, M., Terrinoni, A., Jiang, W. C., Wang, C., Bin, and Bernardini, S. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic. Crit. Rev. Clin. Lab. Sci. 2020, 365–388. doi: 10.1080/10408363.2020.1783198
Coupet, S., Nicolas, G., Louder, C. N., and Meyer, M. (2021). When public health messages become stressful: managing chronic disease during COVID-19. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100150. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100150
Cuschieri, S., and Grech, V. (2021). Protecting our vulnerable in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learnt from Malta. Public Health 198, 270–272. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2021.07.043
Das, M., and Bhattacharyya, A. (2021). Social distanciation through COVID-19: a narrative analysis of Indian Peri-Urban Elderly. Social Sci Human. Open 4, 100139. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100139
Delbiso, T. D., Kotecho, M. G., and Asfaw, F. M. (2021). Effects of COVID-19 imposed school closure on school feeding program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Social Sciences and Humanities Open 4, 100185. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100185
Deshpande, D. D., and Mhatre, C. K. (2021). A study of impact of online education on mental health and academic performance of children of project affected people studying at undergraduate level in Navi Mumbai. Rev. Gestão Inov. Tecnol. 11, 3866–3875. doi: 10.47059/revistageintec. v11i4.2412
Donnarumma, F., and Pezzulo, G. (2021). Moral decisions in the age of COVID-19: your choices really matter. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100149. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100149
Elalfy, D., W. Gad, & R. Ismail. )2018(. A hybrid model to predict best answers in question answering communities. Egyptian Informatics Journal, 19 (1): 21-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eij.2017.06.002
Evans, B.M and Chi, E. H (2010). An elaborated model of social search. Inform Process Manage, 46(6), 656–678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.10.036
Fang, C., & Zhang, J. (2019). Users' continued participation behavior in social Q&A communities: A motivation perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 92, 87-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/‌j.chb.‌2018.10.036
Filipova, T., Kopsieker, L., Gerritsen, E., Bodin, E., Brzezinski, B., and Ramirez Rubio, O. (2020). Mental Health and the Environment: How European Policies Can Better Reflect the Impact of Environmental Degradation on People’s Mental Health and Well-Being (Issue December). Available online at: https://ieep.eu/uploads/articles/‌attachments/‌2bfb2051‌-b305‌-4338-9770-ae8071320b1a/‌Mentalhealth‌andthe‌~environment.pdf?v$=$‌63775265428 (accessed January 15, 2022).
Hannam-Swain, S., and Bailey, C. (2021). Considering Covid-19: Autoethnographic reflections on working practices in a time of crisis by two disabled UK academics. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100145. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100145
Harper, F. M., D. Raban, S. Rafaeli, and J. A. Konstan. (2008). Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 865-874).
Jin, Xiao-Ling; Zhou, Zhongyun; Lee, Matthew K. O; Cheung, Christy M.K. (2013). Why users keep answering questions in online question answering communities: A theoretical and empirical investigation. International Journal of Information Management, 33, 93-104.
Hasan, N., and Bao, Y. (2020). Impact of “e-Learning crack-up” perception on psychological distress among college students during COVID-19 pandemic: a mediating role of “fear of academic year loss.” Children Youth Serv. Rev. 118, 105355. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105355
Kareem, B. (2021). Do global pandemics disrupt or seed transformations in cities? A systematic review of evidence. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100138. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100138
Le, L. T., Shah, C., & Choi, E. (2016). Evaluating the quality of educational answers in community question-answering. In 2016 IEEE/ACM Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) (pp. 129-138).
Li, H., and Cao, Y. (2021). Facing the pandemic in the dark: psychopathic personality traits and life history strategies during COVID-19 lockdown period in different areas of China. Curr. Psychol. 1, 1–9. doi: 10.1007/S12144-021-01549-2
Li, L., He, D., Jeng, W., Goodwin, S., & Zhang, C. (2015). Answer quality characteristics and prediction on an academic Q&A Site: A case study on ResearchGate. In Proceedings of the 24th international conference on World Wide Web (pp. 1453-1458).
Li, M., Lu, Y., Li, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Evaluating Indicators of Answer Quality in Social Q&A Websites. In PACIS (p. 217)
Liu, Y., Bian, J., & Agichtein, E. (2008, July). Predicting information seeker satisfaction in community question answering. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 483-490). Madhusudhan M (2012). Use of social networking sites by research scholars of the University of Delhi: A study. The International Information & Library Review, 44(2), 100-13.
Mahi, M., Mobin, M. A., Habib, M., and Akter, S. (2021). A bibliometric analysis of pandemic and epidemic studies in economics: future agenda for COVID-19 research. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100165. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100165
Meng, X., Webster, S. A., & Butler, B. S. (2013). Motivational effects of badge systems on participation in stack exchange social Q&A online community. In 19th Americas Conference on Information Systems (pp. 1-13).
Naghashzadeh, M., Haghshenas, A., Sami, A., & Lo, D. (2021). How Do Users Answer MATLAB Questions on Q&A Sites? A Case Study on Stack Overflow and MathWorks. The 28th edition of the IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and ReengineeringAt: Hawaii; United States.Ondis, A. L. (2021). Social Influences on US Postdoctoral Researchers’ Participation in ResearchGate (Doctoral dissertation, Saint Leo University).
Oh, S. (2012). The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(3), 543–557.
Oh, Sanghee; Oh; Jung Sun; Shah, Chirag (2008). The Use of Information Sources by Internet Users in Answering Questions. Journal of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 4(10), 1-13.
Perez, M., Gomez, J. M. (2011). Why Do People Use Social Networks? Communications of the IIMA, 11(2), 41-50.
Prempeh, C. (2021). Religion and the state in an episodic moment of COVID-19 in Ghana. Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100141. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100141
Saha, A., Dutta, A., and Sifat, R. I. (2021). The mental impact of digital divide due to COVID-19 pandemic induced emergency online learning at undergraduate level: Evidence from undergraduate students from Dhaka City. J. Affect. Disord. 294, 170–179. doi: 10.1016/J.JAD.2021.07.045
Sarfraz, M., Mohsin, M., Naseem, S., and Kumar, A. (2021). Modeling the relationship between carbon emissions and environmental sustainability during COVID-19: new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration approach. Environ. Dev. Sustain. 23, 16208–16226. doi: 10.1007/S10668-021-01324-0
Serafini, G., Parmigiani, B., Amerio, A., Aguglia, A., Sher, L., and Amore, M. (2020). The psychological impact of COVID-19 on the mental health in the general population. QJM 113, 229–235. doi: 10.1093/qjmed/hcaa201
Smith, J., Guimond, F. A., Bergeron, J., St-Amand, J., Fitzpatrick, C., and Gagnon, M. (2021). Changes in students’ achievement motivation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a function of extraversion/introversion? Educ. Sci. 11, 1–8. doi: 10.3390/educsci11010030
Tonkin, A., and Whitaker, J. (2021). Play and playfulness for health and wellbeing: a panacea for mitigating the impact of coronavirus (COVID 19). Soc. Sci. Human. Open 4, 100142. doi: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2021. 100142
Wang, Y., Tian, T., Pan, D., Zhang, J., Xie, W., Wang, S., et al. (2021). The relationship between dietary patterns and overweight and obesity among adult in Jiangsu Province of China: a structural equation model. BMC Public Health 21, 11341. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-11341-3
Xiong, P., Ming, W. K., Zhang, C., Bai, J., Luo, C., Cao, W., et al. (2021). Factors influencing mental health among chinese medical and non-medical students in the early stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Front. Public Health 9, 603331. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.603331
Yang, J., Morris, M., Teevan, J., Adamic, L., & Ackerman, M. (2011, July). Culture matters: A survey study of social Q&A behavior. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (pp. 409-416).
Ye, Z., Yang, X., Zeng, C., Wang, Y., Shen, Z., Li, X., et al. (2020). Resilience, social support, and coping as mediators between COVID-19-related stressful experiences and acute stress disorder among college students in China. Appl. Psychol. Health Well-Being 12, 1074–1094. doi: 10.1111/aphw.12211
Zhao, N., and Zhou, G. (2021). COVID-19 stress and addictive social media use (SMU): mediating role of active use and social media flow. Front. Psychiatry 12, 85. doi: 10.3389/FPSYT.2021.635546/BIBTEX
Zhu, F., Lei, W., Wang, C., Zheng, J., Poria, S., & Chua, T. S. (2021). Retrieving and reading: A comprehensive survey on open-domain Question Answering. ArXiv preprint arXiv: 2101.00774.
References (In Persian)
Aftabi, Zahra. (2013). An overview of question-and-answer systems based on information retrieval. Master's thesis in computer engineering. Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd. (In persian)
Aghakardan, Ahmed, and Amir Narimani. (2015). Presenting a new method to evaluate the level of user participation in question-and-answer forums. The second international web research conference, University of Science and Culture, Tehran, pp. 1-6. (In persian)
Anbaraki, S., & Jowkar, A. (2021). Evaluating and Predicting the Quality of Answers Factors in the Research Gates Question and Answer System: a Case Study of the Thematic Domain of Knowledge Management. Iranian Journal of Information Processing and Management, 36(3), 709-736. doi: 10.52547/jipm.36.3.709 (In persian)
Jan Mohammadi, Maryam; Rahmani, Maryam; Roten, Zahra. (2015). Examining R score indicators. J. and the ranking of researchers in Research Gate (case study: Faculty members of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tehran). The first international conference on interactive information retrieval, University of Tehran, Tehran. (In persian)
Saebi, Rasool; Redemption, Hamid. (2016). Prediction of text quality in question-answer systems: a review of deep learning methods. The National Conference of Computer, Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Applications, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, pp. 1-15. (In persian)
Shamsfard, Mehrnoosh, Ishraq, Faezeh, Sarabi, Zahra. (2006). Building a question-and-answer system in Persian language. The 12th Annual Conference of the Iranian Computer Association, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, pp. 1-5. (In persian)
Zahedi, Zahra, Zahedi, Fatemeh, Najafi Kashkouli, Zahra and Mohtjeb, Mohammad Ali. (2015). Question and answer systems. The second international conference of engineering and applied sciences, Tehran, July 31, 2015, pp. 1-10. (In persian)
New Media Studies
Volume 9, Issue 36
Autumn 2023
Pages 216-187