Posts under /Metareview Category
I’ve been interested for a while now in how information and behavior can spread through social networks; an important sub-topic in this field is the spread of health behaviors. This area of study is especially important in understanding the behaviors of adolescents, as there are a number of unhealthy behaviors (ranging from drug use to unhealthy eating to unsafe sex practices) which start in adolescence, persist into adulthood, and contribute to some of the leading causes of death and disability.
As any parent or educator will likely tell you, the behavior of teens closely linked in a social network will often display many similarities: teens who smoke or drink, for instance, are often friends with other teens who smoke or drink. By establishing and tracking the spread of these behaviors scientifically, we can gain a greater understanding of the mechanisms at work and perhaps harness them to help spread healthy behaviors instead of unhealthy ones.
This is a first post in a new format that I’m trying out: the “Meta-Review”. Besides the fact that it starts with an “M” (thus fitting with my category naming format), I’m calling it a “Meta-Review” because it’s composed of notes and thoughts about a handful of papers all mashed together. This isn’t intended to be a carefully thought-out treatise on the papers discussed, but instead is really just a more public version of my immediate thoughts and notes (if I’m going to write them down anyways, why not share?) Comments, discussion, and pointers to additional/related papers are encouraged, as they would benefit other readers (and more importantly, me).
In this post, I present a summary and discussion of 4 papers (and a poster abstract) about the role that domain expertise plays in web search behavior and performance.
