title: How online crowds influence the way individual consumers answer health questions: an online prospective study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate whether strength of social feedback, i.e. other people who concur (or do not concur) with one's own answer to a question, influences the way one answers health questions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Online prospective study. Two hundred and twenty-seven undergraduate students were recruited to use an online search engine to answer six health questions. Subjects recorded their pre- and post-search answers to each question and their level of confidence in these answers. After answering each question post-search, subjects were presented with a summary of post-search answers provided by previous subjects and were asked to answer the question again.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There was a statistically significant relationship between the absolute number of others with a different answer (the crowd's opinion volume) and the likelihood of an individual changing an answer (P<0.001). For most questions, no subjects changed their answer until the first 10-35 subjects completed the study. Subjects' likelihood of changing answer increased as the percentage of others with a different answer (the crowd's opinion density) increased (P=0.047). Overall, 98.3% of subjects did not change their answer when it concurred with the majority (i.e. >50%) of subjects, and that 25.7% of subjects changed their answer to the majority response when it did not concur with the majority. When subjects had a post-search answer that did not concur with the majority, they were 24% more likely to change answer than those with answers that concurred (P<0.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides empirical evidence that crowd influence, in the form of online social feedback, affects the way consumers answer health questions.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, University of New South Wales , Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: A Y S
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.forename: T M Y
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Coiera
keywords: Consumer decision making; crowd influence; majority influence; online information searching; social feedback