scholarly journals Gender, Soft Skills, and Patient Experience in Online Physician Reviews: A Large-Scale Text Analysis (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zackary Dunivin ◽  
Lindsay Zadunayski ◽  
Ujjwal Baskota ◽  
Katie Siek ◽  
Jennifer Mankoff
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Patient Experience ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Female Physicians ◽  
Physician Rating ◽  
Physician Reviews

BACKGROUND Online physician reviews are an important source of information for prospective patients. In addition, they represent an untapped resource for studying the effects of gender on the doctor-patient relationship. Understanding gender differences in online reviews is important because it may impact the value of those reviews to patients. Documenting gender differences in patient experience may also help to improve the doctor-patient relationship. This is the first large-scale study of physician reviews to extensively investigate gender bias in online reviews or offer recommendations for improvements to online review systems to correct for gender bias and aid patients in selecting a physician. OBJECTIVE This study examines 154,305 reviews from across the United States for all medical specialties. Our analysis includes a qualitative and quantitative examination of review content and physician rating with regard to doctor and reviewer gender. METHODS A total of 154,305 reviews were sampled from Google Place reviews. Reviewer and doctor gender were inferred from names. Reviews were coded for overall patient experience (negative or positive) by collapsing a 5-star scale and coded for general categories (process, positive/negative soft skills), which were further subdivided into themes. Computational text processing methods were employed to apply this codebook to the entire data set, rendering it tractable to quantitative methods. Specifically, we estimated binary regression models to examine relationships between physician rating, patient experience themes, physician gender, and reviewer gender). RESULTS Female reviewers wrote 60% more reviews than men. Male reviewers were more likely to give negative reviews (odds ratio [OR] 1.15, 95% CI 1.10-1.19; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Reviews of female physicians were considerably more negative than those of male physicians (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.94-2.14; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Soft skills were more likely to be mentioned in the reviews written by female reviewers and about female physicians. Negative reviews of female doctors were more likely to mention candor (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.42-1.82; <i>P</i>&lt;.001) and amicability (OR 1.63, 95% CI 1.47-1.90; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Disrespect was associated with both female physicians (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.35-1.51; <i>P</i>&lt;.001) and female reviewers (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.19-1.35; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Female patients were less likely to report disrespect from female doctors than expected from the base ORs (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.04-1.32; <i>P</i>=.008), but this effect overrode only the effect for female reviewers. CONCLUSIONS This work reinforces findings in the extensive literature on gender differences and gender bias in patient-physician interaction. Its novel contribution lies in highlighting gender differences in online reviews. These reviews inform patients’ choice of doctor and thus affect both patients and physicians. The evidence of gender bias documented here suggests review sites may be improved by providing information about gender differences, controlling for gender when presenting composite ratings for physicians, and helping users write less biased reviews.

scholarly journals Gender, Soft Skills, and Patient Experience in Online Physician Reviews: A Large-Scale Text Analysis

10.2196/14455 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. e14455
Author(s):  
Zackary Dunivin ◽  
Lindsay Zadunayski ◽  
Ujjwal Baskota ◽  
Katie Siek ◽  
Jennifer Mankoff
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Patient Experience ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Female Physicians ◽  
Physician Rating ◽  
Physician Reviews

Background Online physician reviews are an important source of information for prospective patients. In addition, they represent an untapped resource for studying the effects of gender on the doctor-patient relationship. Understanding gender differences in online reviews is important because it may impact the value of those reviews to patients. Documenting gender differences in patient experience may also help to improve the doctor-patient relationship. This is the first large-scale study of physician reviews to extensively investigate gender bias in online reviews or offer recommendations for improvements to online review systems to correct for gender bias and aid patients in selecting a physician. Objective This study examines 154,305 reviews from across the United States for all medical specialties. Our analysis includes a qualitative and quantitative examination of review content and physician rating with regard to doctor and reviewer gender. Methods A total of 154,305 reviews were sampled from Google Place reviews. Reviewer and doctor gender were inferred from names. Reviews were coded for overall patient experience (negative or positive) by collapsing a 5-star scale and coded for general categories (process, positive/negative soft skills), which were further subdivided into themes. Computational text processing methods were employed to apply this codebook to the entire data set, rendering it tractable to quantitative methods. Specifically, we estimated binary regression models to examine relationships between physician rating, patient experience themes, physician gender, and reviewer gender). Results Female reviewers wrote 60% more reviews than men. Male reviewers were more likely to give negative reviews (odds ratio [OR] 1.15, 95% CI 1.10-1.19; P<.001). Reviews of female physicians were considerably more negative than those of male physicians (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.94-2.14; P<.001). Soft skills were more likely to be mentioned in the reviews written by female reviewers and about female physicians. Negative reviews of female doctors were more likely to mention candor (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.42-1.82; P<.001) and amicability (OR 1.63, 95% CI 1.47-1.90; P<.001). Disrespect was associated with both female physicians (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.35-1.51; P<.001) and female reviewers (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.19-1.35; P<.001). Female patients were less likely to report disrespect from female doctors than expected from the base ORs (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.04-1.32; P=.008), but this effect overrode only the effect for female reviewers. Conclusions This work reinforces findings in the extensive literature on gender differences and gender bias in patient-physician interaction. Its novel contribution lies in highlighting gender differences in online reviews. These reviews inform patients’ choice of doctor and thus affect both patients and physicians. The evidence of gender bias documented here suggests review sites may be improved by providing information about gender differences, controlling for gender when presenting composite ratings for physicians, and helping users write less biased reviews.

Gender Biases in Online Physician Ratings: Female Doctors Evaluated More Harshly by Patients (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Barnett ◽  
Margrét Vilborg Bjarnadóttir ◽  
David Anderson ◽  
Chong Chen
Keyword(s):  
Online Reviews ◽  
Physician Services ◽  
Female Physicians ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Online Ratings ◽  
Physician Reviews ◽  
And Gender ◽  
State Medical Boards

BACKGROUND Prior research has highlighted gender differences in online physician reviews, however, to date no research has linked online ratings with quality of care. OBJECTIVE To compare a consumer-generated measure of physician quality (online ratings) with a clinical quality outcome (sanctions for malpractice or improper behavior), to understand how patients’ perception and evaluation of doctors differ based on the physician’s gender and quality. METHODS We use data from a large online doctor reviews website and the Federation of State Medical Boards. We implement paragraph vector methods to identify words that are specific to and indicative of the separate groups of physicians. We then enrich these findings by utilizing the NRC word-emotion association lexicon to assign emotional scores to the various segments: gender, gender and sanction, and gender and rating. RESULTS We find significant differences in the sentiment and emotion of reviews for male and female physicians. We find that numerical ratings are lower and the sentiment in text reviews is more negative for women who will be sanctioned than for men who will be sanctioned; sanctioned male doctors are still associated with positive reviews. CONCLUSIONS Conclusions: Given the growing impact of online reviews on demand for physician services, understanding the different reviews faced by male and female physicians is important for consumers and for platform architects in order to revisit their platform design.

scholarly journals Gender differences and bias in open source: pull request acceptance of women versus men

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Terrell ◽  
Andrew Kofink ◽  
Justin Middleton ◽  
Clarissa Rainear ◽  
Emerson Murphy-Hill ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Women In The Workplace ◽  
Large Scale Study ◽  
Pull Request ◽  
Acceptance Rates

Biases against women in the workplace have been documented in a variety of studies. This paper presents a large scale study on gender bias, where we compare acceptance rates of contributions from men versus women in an open source software community. Surprisingly, our results show that women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s. However, for contributors who are outsiders to a project and their gender is identifiable, men’s acceptance rates are higher. Our results suggest that although women on GitHub may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless.

scholarly journals Political Leadership in the Media: Gender Bias in Leader Stereotypes during Campaign and Routine Times

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 911-931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loes Aaldering ◽  
Daphne Joanna Van Der Pas
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Gender Effects ◽  
Leadership Traits ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Automated Content Analysis ◽  
Female Politicians

This article studies gender differences in media portrayals of political leadership, starting with the expectation that male politicians are evaluated more often on traits belonging to the male leader stereotype, and that female politicians have no such advantage. These gender differences are expected to be especially pronounced during non-campaign periods. To test these expectations, a large-scale automated content analysis of all Dutch national newspapers from September 2006 to September 2012 was conducted. The results show that male politicians received more media coverage on leadership traits in general, although the male and female leader stereotypes explain most of the variation in gender bias between leadership traits. These gender effects are found during seldom-studied routine periods but not during campaigns. As leadership trait coverage has electoral consequences, this gender-differentiated coverage likely contributes to the under-representation of women in politics.

Physician Gender, Patient Risk and Online Reviews: A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship between Physicians’ Gender and Their Online Reviews (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danish Saifee ◽  
Matthew Hudnall ◽  
Uzma Raja
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
The State ◽  
Physician Specialty ◽  
Female Physicians ◽  
Patient Risk ◽  
Online Ratings ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

BACKGROUND Online reviews of physicians have become exceedingly popular among healthcare consumers since the early 2010s. A factor that can potentially influence these reviews is the gender of the physician since the physician's gender has been found to influence patient-physician communication. When studying the direct relationship between the gender of physicians and their online reviews, it is important to account for clinical characteristics, such as the patient risk, associated with a physician to isolate the direct effect of a physician’s gender on their online reviews. It is also important to account for temporal factors that can influence physicians and their online reviews. Our study is among the first to conduct rigorous longitudinal analysis to study the effects of the gender of physicians on their reviews after accounting for several important clinical factors, including patient risk, physician specialty, as well as temporal factors using time fixed-effects. This study is also among the first ones to study the possible gender bias in online reviews using statewide data from Alabama. OBJECTIVE This study conducts a longitudinal empirical investigation of the relationship between the gender of physicians and their online reviews using data across the state of Alabama after accounting for patient risk and temporal effects. METHODS We created a unique dataset by combining data from online physician reviews from a popular physician review website RateMDs and clinical data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the state of Alabama. We utilized longitudinal econometric specifications to conduct the econometric analysis and controlled for several important clinical and review characteristics, including patient risk, physician specialty and latent topics embedded in the textual comments of the online reviews. We utilized the four rating dimensions (helpfulness, knowledge, staff, and punctuality) and overall rating from RateMDs as the dependent variables and gender of the physicians as the key explanatory variable in our panel regression models. RESULTS The panel used to conduct most of the analysis had approximately 1093 physicians. After controlling for clinical factors such as Medicare patient risk, number of Medicare beneficiaries, number of services provided, and physician specialty, review factors such as latent topics embedded in the review comments, and number of words in the comments and year fixed effects, the physician random-effects specifications showed that male physicians receive better online ratings than female physicians. The coefficients and the corresponding standard errors, P values of the binary variable GenderFemale (1 for female physicians and 0 otherwise) with different rating variables as outcomes are as follows: OverallRating (Coefficient: -0.194, Std. Error: 0.060, P=.001), HelpfulnessRating (Coefficient: -0.221, Std. Error: 0.069, P=.001), KnowledgeRating (Coefficient: -0.230, Std. Error: 0.065, P<.001), StaffRating (Coefficient: -0.123, Std. Error: 0.062, P=.049) and PunctualityRating (Coefficient: -0.200, Std.Error: 0.067, P=.003). CONCLUSIONS This study finds that female physicians do indeed receive lower online ratings than male physicians, and this finding is consistent even after accounting for several clinical characteristics associated with the physicians and temporal effects. Even though the magnitude of the coefficients of GenderFemale is relatively small, they are statistically significant. The findings of this study provide support to the findings on gender bias in the existing healthcare literature. We contribute to the existing literature by conducting a study using data across the state of Alabama and utilizing a longitudinal econometric analysis along with incorporating important clinical and review controls associated with the physicians.

scholarly journals Reader and author gender and genre in Goodreads

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Thelwall
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Fantasy Novels ◽  
First Time

There are known gender differences in book preferences in terms of both genre and author gender but their extent and causes are not well understood. It is unclear whether reader preferences for author genders occur within any or all genres and whether readers evaluate books differently based on author genders within specific genres. This article exploits a major source of informal book reviews, the Goodreads.com website, to assess the influence of reader and author genders on book evaluations within genres. It uses a quantitative analysis of 201,560 books and their reviews, focusing on the top 50 user-specified genres. The results show strong gender differences in the ratings given by reviewers to books within genres, such as female reviewers rating contemporary romance more highly, with males preferring short stories. For most common book genres, reviewers give higher ratings to books authored by their own gender, confirming that gender bias is not confined to the literary elite. The main exception is the comic book, for which male reviewers prefer female authors, despite their scarcity. A word frequency analysis suggested that authors wrote, and reviewers valued, gendered aspects of books within a genre. For example, relationships and romance were disproportionately mentioned by women in mystery and fantasy novels. These results show that, perhaps for the first time, it is possible to get large-scale evidence about the reception of books by typical readers, if they post reviews online.

Large-Scale Demonstration Experiment of Mental Imagery Ability

1993 ◽  
Vol 76 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1089-1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Richard Ferraro
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Introductory Psychology Class ◽  
Imagery Ability ◽  
Psychology Class ◽  
Demonstration Experiment ◽  
And Gender

The present article describes a demonstration experiment used in a large introductory psychology class pertaining to mental imagery ability. The experiment is effective in providing a concrete instance of mental imagery as well as an effective discussion regarding individual differences and gender differences in imagery ability.

The Gender-bias Effect of Test Scoring and Framing: A Concern for Personnel Selection and College Admission

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Paz Espinosa ◽  
Javier Gardeazabal
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Personnel Selection ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
College Admission ◽  
Bias Effect ◽  
Multiple Choice Tests ◽  
Choice Tests ◽  
Correction For Guessing

AbstractThis paper analyzes gender differences in student performance in Multiple-Choice Tests (MCT). We report evidence from a field experiment suggesting that, when MCT use a correction for guessing formula to obtain test scores, on average women tend to omit more items, get less correct answers and lower grades than men. We find that the gender difference in average test scores is concentrated at the upper tail of the distribution of scores. In addition, gender differences strongly depend on the framing of the scoring rule.

Gender differences in academic entrepreneurship: experience, attitudes and outcomes among NSF I-CORPS participants

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna Epstein ◽  
Nathalie Duval-Couetil ◽  
Aileen Huang-Saad
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technology Commercialization ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Interactions

PurposeExpanding access to entrepreneurship training programs can be a method to increase female involvement in technology commercialization only if these programs adequately address the specific challenges facing female faculty and graduate students. In the context of the US National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) program, this study examines gender differences in prior experience and attitudes towards the training in order to propose improvements to the program design.Design/methodology/approachThis quantitative study uses Pearson's Chi-Square and ANOVA tests on survey data from the I-Corps national program (n = 2,195), which enrolls faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and industry experts.FindingsIn comparison to male participants, female I-Corps participants reported less entrepreneurial experience prior to the program, poorer team relationships during the program and lower entrepreneurial intention and technology commercialization readiness at both the beginning and the end of the program. However, no gender differences were found in positive or negative perceptions of the instructional climate or perceptions of program usefulness.Originality/valueThis study is unique as it is based on a large-scale dataset drawn from sites across the United States. The results support potential changes to I-Corps and similar programs, including providing more explicit instructions for tasks with which female participants have less prior experience than males (e.g. in applying for patents), offering guidance for team interactions, and providing mentorship to assess whether low self-efficacy is leading women to underestimate the potential success of their projects.

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