Effect of Title Content on Clicking Behavior
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Date
2019-12
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Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Introduction: Many studies have shown a correlation between higher level of education and better health, so this study will serve to see if higher education influences health via what information is consumed. More specifically, this study intended to determine how the content of headlines influences clicking behavior and how level of education affects which articles were selected. The intent was to observe whether there is any correlation between the education level of participants and the quality of health-related information to which they expose themselves. There were three hypotheses: 1, Content source will not affect selection; 2, Articles with clickbait style titles (defined by their emphasis on grabbing a reader’s attention or sensationalism rather than factual reporting) will have a higher rate of selection overall; 3, Students with higher level of education will select for more reliable source based or title more often than students with lower level of education.
Methods: The study was conducted via an online survey in which participants selected among four article choices based on title, source, and article description. The article titles and descriptions were taken from real news sources and all pertained to dieting. The survey was sent to a total of 2890 students and 129 responses were received.
Results: The results did not yield any significant correlation between grade level or number of years of college completed and what article was selected. The two articles selected most frequently were the one with a clickbait title and an unreliable source and the one with a scientific title and a reliable source.
Conclusion: While the results did confirm that the source did not appear to influence the selection of articles, interestingly the wording of the title did not appear to affect the results of this study either. This may have been because there were only four choices to choose from. This was originally done to prevent any errors of habituation where participants simply choose at random in order to complete the study, but a replication of this study might consider having more articles to choose from in each category (the combinations of reliable/unreliable source and clickbait/scientific title) so that so participants selecting for a specific topic that interests them does not influence the results.
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Keywords
selective exposure, health and wellness, online articles