Information-Seeking Behavior of Community Pharmacists in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Study Based on Indexing Web Page Access (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shota Suzuki ◽  
Yoshitaka Nishikawa ◽  
Hiroshi Okada ◽  
Takeo Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Ecological Study ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Community Pharmacists ◽  
Information Seeking Behavior ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Web Page ◽  
Population Total ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
The Web

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an infodemic, and the need for rapid and accurate information seeking and providing has become an urgent issue. Community pharmacies play an important role in supporting the health of residents as “Communicators”. In the early stages of the pandemic in Japan, there was a lack of information in pharmacies about infection control written in Japanese. Therefore, the Pharmacy Informatics Group (Kyoto, Japan) published a Japanese-language web page to disseminate this information. Nevertheless, the information-seeking behavior of Japanese pharmacists during disasters such as COVID-19 has not been fully evaluated. OBJECTIVE This study aims to evaluate the information-seeking behavior of community pharmacists during the COVID-19 pandemic, with relation to COVID-19 infections and deaths within their local prefecture. METHODS An ecological study comparing the number of accesses to the web page established by the Pharmacy Informatics Group and the number of infections and deaths in 47 prefectures was conducted. Total number of accesses (TA), total number of infections (TI) per 100,000 population, total number of deaths (TD) per 100,000 population, and number of pharmacists per 100,000 population for the 47 prefectures during the target period (April 6 to September 30, 2020) were calculated using the access information on the web page and public information. RESULTS In Japan, during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, TA was 226,130 (10,984–138,898), TI was 78,761 (1,738–31,857), and TD was 1,470 (39–436). The correlation between TA and TI per 100,000 population in 47 prefectures was r=.72 (95% CI: .55–.83, P<.001), and between TA and TD per 100,000 population in 47 prefectures was r=.44 (95% CI: .17–.65, P=.002). CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that information-seeking behavior of community pharmacists was positively correlated with infection status within the community.

scholarly journals Video Pulses: User-Based Modeling of Interesting Video Segments

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markos Avlonitis ◽  
Konstantinos Chorianopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Video Retrieval ◽  
Regions Of Interest ◽  
Information Seeking Behavior ◽  
Web Video ◽  
User Activity ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
Video Summaries ◽  
Video Player ◽  
The Web

We present a user-based method that detects regions of interest within a video in order to provide video skims and video summaries. Previous research in video retrieval has focused on content-based techniques, such as pattern recognition algorithms that attempt to understand the low-level features of a video. We are proposing a pulse modeling method, which makes sense of a web video by analyzing users'Replayinteractions with the video player. In particular, we have modeled the user information seeking behavior as a time series and the semantic regions as a discrete pulse of fixed width. Then, we have calculated the correlation coefficient between the dynamically detected pulses at the local maximums of the user activity signal and the pulse of reference. We have found that users'Replayactivity significantly matches the important segments in information-rich and visually complex videos, such as lecture, how-to, and documentary. The proposed signal processing of user activity is complementary to previous work in content-based video retrieval and provides an additional user-based dimension for modeling the semantics of a social video on the web.

Profiling information-seeking behavior of mosque speechmakers in Upper Egypt

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (8/9) ◽  
pp. 635-652
Author(s):  
Essam Mansour
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Information Seeking Behavior ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Upper Egypt ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
The Web

Purpose The purpose of this paper is attracting attention to the use of information by mosque speechmakers (MSs) in the Islamic and Arabic world, specifically in Upper Egypt. Design/methodology/approach This study used a survey, which was conducted from September to November 2019. A structured questionnaire was designed in Arabic and distributed to the mosques that were chosen as a sample to represent all the mosques of Upper Egypt. The researcher sampled 5% (n = 421) of the total of 8,421 mosques in Upper Egypt. Findings The findings showed the majority of the MSs in Upper Egypt are to be older (from 36 to 60 years, educated [mostly with BA degrees]), married and with an average monthly income over LE 3,500. Almost all MSs were strongly looking for information to make specific/general research, to make a religious lecture and be aware of contemporary events. The most frequently used sources of information by MSs were biographies, books, mass media, references and the Web. Most of the MSs had been using information heavily. The highest percentage of them spent from 7 to 12 h a week searching for information. MSs preferred the use of printed sources of information to those non-print sources. Mobile apps, followed by the Web and information databases were the most significant technological tools used by MSs. MSs’ efficiency level of using English was good and a reasonable number of them indicated that they were not good at speaking other languages, such as French. The home/personal library and the special library were the most important types of libraries used by MSs. The unaffected role of the library to access information, followed by the use of foreign languages to access some sources of information, as well as the use of technology, were the most significant problems faced by MSs when searching for information. Research limitations/implications This paper investigates the topic of MSs’ use of and access to information. This topic, unfortunately, has limited previous research, particularly in the Arabic and Islamic environment. Practical implications This paper provides valuable insight into the information behavior of a very significant client group, namely, MSs. Originality/value Being one of the very few studies conducted on these beneficiaries of information in the Arab and Islamic environment, this study is considered a unique one among several studies conducted in the area of the information-seeking behavior, especially with such a significant group of information users/seekers in such influencing environment in the world. The findings of this study may help in a better understanding of the information-seeking behavior of the MSs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document