What Does the Public Want to Know About The COVID-19 Pandemic? A Systematic Analysis of Questions Asked in The Internet

  1. Jaiben George
  2. Deepak Gautam
  3. Vartika Kesarwani
  4. PonAravindhan A Sugumar
  5. Rajesh Malhotra

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Abstract

Background

Quora is a popular question and answer (Q&A) website that enables people to connect with others and clear their doubts about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In this study, we analysed the content, type and quality of Q&As in Quora regarding this pandemic, and compared the information with that on World Health Organization (WHO) website.

Methods

We conducted a systematic search to include 964 questions in Quora. The tone of the question was categorized as either positive (questions with a primary intent to obtain information), negative (questions which represent panic or are related to misconception/false information) or ambivalent. The two most helpful answers of each question were graded for accuracy, authority, popularity, readability, and relevancy.

Results

462 (48%) questions were classified as positive, while 391 (41%) were negative. Number of views were higher for negative questions (11421 vs 7300, p=0.004). Majority of the questions were on social impact (N=217, 23%), followed by politics (N=122, 13%) and disease management (N=96, 10%). Positive questions had more accurate, but less popular answers (p<0.05). Information related to 229 (28%) questions were present on WHO website, while partial information was present for 103 (11%) questions.

Discussion

Higher views with negative questions suggest that false and panic promoting information is more likely to get public attention. A substantial amount of questions was related to the present and future effects of COVID-19 on social and personal lives of the users which were not readily available on official health websites.

Funding

None

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.15.20192039: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are number of limitations to the study. Quora does not provide the option of a systematic search like various academic libraries such as PubMed or Embase. Moreover, the Q&As in Quora are updated at a rapid pace with 100s of questions added in every hour, and multiple questions being merged. As a result, a search conducted at a different time point might not have yielded the similar set of questions used in this study. However, this is unlikely to affect the results of the study as we used a large number of questions. Although three authors were involved in independently classifying the Q&As, the classification of questions as positive or negative might have been arbitrary. COVID-19 is an evolving situation, and as a result, the information related to COVID-19 in Quora and the information provided in WHO is also rapidly evolving, and might have affected the results of the study. The current study compared the information in Quora with that on WHO website only. Although WHO is an international body with its updates being followed globally, a number of other public health agencies and regional health bodies do provide reliable information about COVID-19 which may have been not present in WHO website. Finally, we only used the Q&As in English and the findings may be less applicable to non-English speaking nations. Our study found that internet users from across the world ask a wide variety of questions in Quora with a number of questions having over a million views at the t...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.15.20192039v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.15.20192039v1 on medRxiv