Health Information on the Internet –
State-of-the-Art and Analysis
Nadine Blinn, Andreas Eckhardt, Mirko Kühne, Christoph Rosenkranz
Business & Information System Engineering (2013) 5(4)
Anhang (verfügbar online über http://link.springer.com)
Methodology of Literature Review
In the first stage of the selection of pure research sources, a comprehensive list of sources from the German-language field of business informatics and the English-language equivalent of Information Systems Research was compiled. The sources were taken from national and international journals, conference proceedings of international and national conferences as well as German-language book-length studies. The selection of scholarly journals and conference proceedings from the fields of business informatics or Information Systems Research was based on the MIS Journal Ranking list[1], which was supplemented with the “Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals”[2]. In addition, German-language scholarly journals and conferences were identified using the subject lists “Wirtschaftsinformatik und Informationsmanagement” (Business Informatics and Information Management) as well as “Gesundheitsökonomie” (Health Economics) from the VHB JOURQUAL 2[3] (under consideration of the journal impact factor). Further domain-specific journals were included based on their content and their history regarding the subject of Internet-based health information. Table 1-A lists all sources identified in journals and conference proceedings which were consulted for thematically relevant articles. In addition, for each publication the number of articles found to be relevant is also given.
In the next step, thematically relevant articles were selected from those previously identified journals and conference proceedings. First of all, a reasonable timeframe for the analysis was decided upon. It was decided that publications from 1990 onwards should form the object of enquiry, since the subject of health information on the Internet began to be of interest for scholars and professionals at the beginning of the 1990s. In the search for thematically relevant articles the online literature databases EBSCOhost, WISO and Springer Link were used. An initial rough list of 677 articles was drawn up based on the search of article titles containing terms such as “Internet” and/or “Health/Gesundheit”. In order to carry out the analysis in as detailed a way as possible, the list of articles was manually checked and the relevant articles were selected. For a final selection of relevant publications for the list, all articles were then analysed for their content. To this end, all 677 articles on the rough list were checked manually for relevance. In the initial stage, the articles were checked by the four authors independently of one another using title, abstract, key words and (if necessary) the full text. Following this, the four individual lists were consolidated into one, a process which entailed a detailed discussion of any incongruities. A total of 315 articles from scholarly journals and conference proceedings were identified as relevant.
Since two of the authors had access to the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main, German-language book-length studies were also included in the search. Firstly, in line with the method used in the selection of journals and conferences, all search terms in all possible permutations in title, keywords and table of contents were entered into the catalogue of the German National Library. In this process, only works published after 1990 were considered. The search produced 3050 results. These results were then also evaluated for relevance using title, abstract and keywords. This produced a final list which, following the deletion of irrelevant results, contained 102 books. These 102 books were then borrowed in stages from the National Library and checked by two of the authors for relevance. This led to a final total of 37 relevant studies.
Table 1-A Selected journals and conferences with number of articles
MIS Journal
Ranking / AI Magazine / 0
Artificial Intelligence / 0
Communications of the ACM / 3
Decision Sciences / 0
Decision Support Systems / 8
European Journal of Information Systems / 2
IEEE Transactions / 2
Information Systems Research / 1
Journal of Management Information Systems / 3
Management Science / 2
MIS Quarterly / 2
Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals / Information Systems Journal / 2
Journal of Information Technology / 0
Journal of the Association for Information Systems / 2
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems / 0
German-language scholarly journals / HMD: Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik / 11
Schmalenbachs Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (zfbf) / 0
WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK / 6
Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft (ZfB) / 0
Domain-specific scholarly journals / American Journal of Public Health / 4
British Medical Journal / 7
European Journal of Health Economics / 3
Health Care Management Review / 2
Journal of Health Economics / 1
Journal of Medical Internet Research / 108
Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association / 92
Medizinische Klinik / 12
Pflege & Gesellschaft / 2
Sociology of Health & Illness / 4
The Journal of the American Medical Association / 12
Conference proceedings / AMCIS / 4
ECIS / 11
ICIS / 3
PACIS / 2
WI / 4
Total: 315
In the final stage, all 352 studies identified as relevant (articles in scholarly journals and conference proceedings as well as book-length studies) were read by the four authors independently of one another. Following this, each author worked independently on an initial evaluation and on classifying the works according to the categories defined by the analysis’ set of criteria. For instance, each study was clearly assigned to a TEMPEST category. If a study could be placed into more than one category, then the category that reflected its main focus - from the author’s point of view - was selected. The categorization of each article was then finally reviewed and compared as a committee. In addition, the individual results were discussed and consolidated in several meetings attended by all four authors. When differences arose in the classification, the majority determined the classification, or a decision was reached together.
The appendix also comprises two files:
Blinn_ Fig_1-A.vsd
Blinn_ Tab_2-A.xlsx
[1] http://ais.affiniscape.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=432
[2] http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=346
[3]http://vhbonline.org/service/jourqual/jq2/