Understanding why authors of medical research articles use hypes and how these influence readers

2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K00735
• Research Institution: University of Tsukuba
• Principal Investigator: Millar Neil 筑波大学, システム情報系, 准教授 (70751981)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: Medical discourse / Medical ethics

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

Phase 1 is nearing completion - Elucidating authors’ motives for the use of hypes. This involved selecting hyped articles published by medical researchers at the investigator's institution. Hype were analysed and categorised based on our our previously published methodology. A total of seven Japanese authors took part in semi-structured interviews exploring their writing practices an motivations for using hype. In addition three professional manuscript editors were interviewed. Interview data has been transcribed and qualitatively analysed drawing on an ethnographic framework. In the next stage, the project collaborator will collect comparable data in Canada. A manuscript reporting results is in preparation and results will be presented at the 2019 COMET conference in June.

Current Status of Research Progress

1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.

Reason

The project is progressing smoothly and broadly in accordance with the proposal. We chose to employ interviews rather than a questionnaire as we felt that this would give a more in-depth understanding of authors' motivations and writing processes. Unfortunately, our collaborator in Venezuela has not been able to participate actively in the project due to the political situation in that country.
In addition to the interviews, we have also collected corpus data to assess if and how use of hype has evolved in RCTs over the past 30 years.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

Phase 2 of the project will involve elucidating readers’ perceptions of research articles containing hypes. In line with our proposal, we will conduct an experiment in which participants are asked to read and comment on ‘hyped’ and ‘’un- hyped’ versions of the same text. The experiment will assess how different types of hypes (e.g. hypes targeted at different aspects of the research) influence different types of readers (e.g. novice vs. expert; native English speaker vs. non-native speaker).
In addition to this, we hope to asses if and how the use of hype has changed over recent years in RCTs. This was not part of the original proposal. However, reviewing the literature, we identified this additional gap.

Causes of Carryover

Incurred expenses were less than expected this year as (1) the PI performed transcription himself, (2) we were unable to compensate participants for taking part in the study as we felt that this would change the dynamic of the interview and negatively impact on interviewer-interviewee trust, and (3) no presentation was made at an international conference - I will be presenting in June of this year.
Funds taken over to the current year will be used in participation in conferences and employing research assistants to help with the creation of an online experiment for Phase 2 of the project.