Linguistic and Cultural Differences in Information Categorization and their Impact on Website Use
The Internet is increasingly used as a medium for providing medical information. Nevertheless, whether the World Wide Web is favoured over other information sources depends to a large extent on how easily the sought information can be found. Therefore, this paper investigates the impact of cult...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Proceeding |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2006
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/14164/1/Linguistic%20and%20Cultural.pdf http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/14164/ http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2006.254 |
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| Summary: | The Internet is increasingly used as a medium for
providing medical information. Nevertheless, whether
the World Wide Web is favoured over other
information sources depends to a large extent on how
easily the sought information can be found. Therefore,
this paper investigates the impact of culture, language
and medical knowledge on users’ preferences of
information categorization and on the evaluation and
use of search cues and search options. Results from a
laboratory experiment with 141 Malaysian, British,
Russian, and German test subjects revealed significant
differences but also commonalities between these
groups. As a consequence of their limited medical
knowledge, all groups exhibited a preference for visual
cues over verbal cues. Outcomes suggest furthermore
that culture mainly influences the users’ preferences in
information categorization as well as their attitudes
and using behaviour, whereas language predominantly
affects the users’ beliefs about ease of use and
usefulness. |
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