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Post by judithodili on Apr 19, 2016 3:33:51 GMT
RE: This study utilized online questionnaire as the research method, and asked the participant to rate 51 web elements (each is a description of a characteristic of a web site). Do you think this method is appropriate? Why?
I think the method is alright - effective but can be better. It is difficult to ask people to judge things that they can't see because people cannot always remember things and rely on their sometimes flawed memory of how these things work. It would have been more effective to present people with different websites showing these different characteristics and have them rate those characteristics directly.
RE: how can you relate this paper with other readings from this week on people’s decision making process?
The most obvious correlation between this paper and the others is tailoring the user experience - the user experience provided by a website allows people to purchase products according their own preferences and value system, and It think that's why websites like amazon and ebay are so successful.
RE: The study was conducted in 1999. Do you think the elements that make web sites credible have changed over the time? If so, how?
No - I think it is still the same. Our definition of the different elements certainly change over time, but the basic concept is the same.
RE: How is what makes web sites credible different from that of other information sources (e.g. newspapers, stories told by your friend, TV programs)?
I don't think they are different at all. When people try to sell you an idea with obvious sprinklings of their personal interest (i.e. commercials) it always seems suspect. Now the different forms of media force these factors to manifest themselves in different forms, but the basic concept is the same.
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Post by rushil on Apr 19, 2016 4:33:51 GMT
I agree with Alex that the situation today has changed where we only go to a small number of websites that we overwhelmingly trust, or at least we are moving in that direction. Therefore, a slightly better study in 2016 would be to compare why certain websites seem more trustworthy than others even if they contain elements with similar credibility.
Fannie brought an interesting point about having a schema associated with certain kind of websites. For example, the expectation of pastel color background with Times New Roman Text. However, when I see a website that is more modern and well designed within the same schema, I automatically tend to trust it more (rather than getting confused), since I tend to associate the effort put into making it modern and nicer as a sign of trustworthiness (even if it wouldn't take any extra time).
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Post by cgleason on Apr 19, 2016 4:48:18 GMT
This study utilized online questionnaire as the research method, and asked the participant to rate 51 web elements (each is a description of a characteristic of a web site). Do you think this method is appropriate? Why?
No, this method does not seem appropriate. I can self-report a Likert scale on what I think my perception of my perception of someone else's credibility would be in a specific scenario, but that's a far cry from actually measuring credibility of websites. It would be more appropriate to actually show people example websites and see what they believed and why. The only benefit to this method is the sheer number of respondents. Even then, the authors immediately downplay their findings in the survey, not finding them of practical use.
The result of this study suggests how web users judge the credibility of a website, how can you relate this paper with other readings from this week on people’s decision making process?
Well, I think it's clear that framing of information definitely has an impact on people's intuitive sense of it's veracity. Presentation of information seems to matter a great deal.
The study was conducted in 1999. Do you think the elements that make web sites credible have changed over the time? If so, how?
Oh, definitely. Websites have managed to become very slick, and yet have somehow managed to make themselves even more untrustworthy. Instead of banner ads, we get popups asking us to subscribe to a newsletter or read a quote of the day (Forbes). I immediately leave websites that begin to autoplay videos, even respectable journalist organizations. Words matter so much more, as I can pattern-match a clickbait article headline easily enough after seeing so many. Does that mean all websites are untrustworthy? No, but I'm much more likely to look for links to back up claims and sources than I was a decade ago. That could be academia talking, or it could be that I've been fooled too many times by some paid freelance blogger.
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Post by julian on Apr 19, 2016 5:07:33 GMT
It is interesting to see how many of these properties that make a website credible are currently used for scams. For example, Lumosity.com a website that offers purported "brain games", was fined recently by the government for making references in its website to results from its own papers without making explicit that those studies were paid for and done by lumosity. Similarly, some of their claims were greatly exaggerated and in some cases they even referred events that never occurred to instigate fear in their users and lure them into their service. I actually do like their games and used to play them some years ago but I completely ignored all of their claims.
Something that I think the article is missing, is that of content and its effect on what we find as credible. For instance, does a blog require all this to be a credible blog? Does a bank website has the same requisites? ...etc. I believe this will vary greatly depending on content.
I'm curious at whether the same principles would apply to mobile apps or not.
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Post by Adam on Apr 19, 2016 11:10:38 GMT
I recently did a lit review on credibility in social media. And it's funny, over the last ten years, credibility has basically collapsed to the analytics--how many likes something has, whether it's trending, where it falls in a google search. Is it good to put so much emphasis on what's popular? What messages or truths get left out if that's how we define credibility? This is an interesting about the collapse of credibility measured by analytics in social media. I think the question Judy asks is the right one to be asking for this (i.e., what truths get left out if that's how we define credibility?). Is there any research that shows credibility/trustworthiness/etc. correlates with popularity? While I'm sure this relationship does exist, it isn't a very nuanced view of credibility as credibility is more of a subjective rather than objective concept. Unrelated, I also wonder about how factors that are on a time scale affect users' perception of website credibility. Take for example an organization that launches one website only to switch it out with something that looks completely different after a couple weeks and after promoting the first one on social media. How will the website's audience perceive the organization's credibility based on this drastic change in website twice in a month? Will people care and will it bring down the organization's credibility? I would assume so, just based on the fact there was a change in website design in a short period of time. Of course, this would only apply to those who saw both sites. Probably not a great example for how changes over time might impact the credibility, but hopefully my point gets across  |
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Post by mmadaio on Apr 19, 2016 13:48:11 GMT
RE: This study utilized online questionnaire as the research method, and asked the participant to rate 51 web elements (each is a description of a characteristic of a web site). Do you think this method is appropriate? Why?
I'm inclined to believe, like Cole, that a much more accurate method of determining people's perceptions of credibility is to see what information they take away from a website that is designed with credible markers, vs. one that is not, or even a study that manipulates some of the credibility dimensions to see which are more salient, in which contexts. As others have said, I would expect a slickly designed website that's "clean, well-lit", and with "modern" UI tropes from a company, particularly from some sort of design agency that bills itself on its design sense, but not necessarily from a CS faculty member. (which is, perhaps, ironic?) It's also worth discussing how trends come and go for what is considered "modern"UI design, and how those markers of recency or hipness might translate to credibility (e.g. "flat" design).
RE: The result of this study suggests how web users judge the credibility of a website, how can you relate this paper with other readings from this week on people’s decision making process?
Even with "enough" information about the website (what organization it represents, the content, its SEO ranking, how you found it, and its design, among others), we still need to weight those attributes in our credibility decision (assuming a rational actor), but the method for assigning weights might be so difficult or costly that we make gut decisions based on the appearance, despite issues with the content.
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k
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Post by k on Apr 19, 2016 14:16:03 GMT
The result of this study suggests how web users judge the credibility of a website, how can you relate this paper with other readings from this week on people’s decision making process?
This week's readings attempt to characterize the decision making process, and this one does so by using anchored semantic scales. While the researchers report on statistically significant findings for 8 scales of website credibility, it is odd that none of the factors have a mean above or below |2|. Were figure 2 actually to depict the full range from -100 to 100, the concentration of the scales around a neutral point might illustrate this better. I'm curious how the researchers brainstorming/interviewing/reading generated the initial group of 300 factors related to web credibility and whether the questions were structured to engage fundamental decision making processes that might geralize to the cases considered by the other studies we read.
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vish
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Post by vish on Apr 20, 2016 1:45:44 GMT
How is what makes websites credible different from that of other information sources?
Well, most of us read the information on the website and check if the content consists of a list of works cited. Are the cited work credible? Any strong sources? When the information does not have any quotes or citation, we question if the work belongs to author itself or not? Sometimes, even with strong citation, there are chances that the author of the blog/site may have interpreted the information wrong.
Regarding the aesthetic appeal altering our judgment on websites: a website that is simple and easy to use is easily trusted more than the one with complex navigation of tabs within the website and the one with many ads. However, this is could be contextual. As authors suggest, it is usually the identity of the website/authors that the users search, make a difference in validating the website.
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Post by xuwang on Apr 21, 2016 2:37:42 GMT
This study utilized online questionnaire as the research method, and asked the participant to rate 51 web elements (each is a description of a characteristic of a web site). Do you think this method is appropriate? Why?
This study used online questionnaire as the research method, which asked participants their subjective views on web elements. I think an alternative way could be looking at some objective data, for example for flight ticket agency websites, for the more successful ones (which has more views, more transactions, etc.), what are the difference in design elements of their websites.
To relate this reading to other papers we’ve read, I think including markers of trustworthiness and avoiding pitfalls of amateurism aligns with the framing of choices, in which people tend to choose options with more certainty.
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