Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lee, Sze Hang

Titel

The Use of Intimate Partner Violence Websites: Website Awareness, Visibility, Information Quality, Perceived Usefulness, and Frequency of Use

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This study aimed to determine the information needs of the intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors, as well as the awareness, visibility, information quality, perceived usefulness, and frequency of use of the IPV websites in Canada. The data in this study were collected in four stages. Firstly, a group of 139 Canadian IPV websites were identified and categorized into 36 groups. Secondly, the visibility of the websites was measured based on the average value of three factors: (1) the inlink counts; (2) the search engine rankings; and (3) the number of social media mentions of the websites. Thirdly, the quality of the websites was evaluated based on the average value of five quality indicators: (1) Accessibility; (2) Relevance ; (3) Readability; (4) Interactivity; and (5) Privacy and Data Protection. Fourthly, a group of 20 IPV websites was selected from the 139 websites for survey purpose. A total of 87 IPV survivors were recruited to provide insights into their information needs, website awareness, perceived usefulness and frequency of use of the 20 IPV websites through an online survey. This study found that the higher the visibility or quality, the higher the usage. Both perceived usefulness and frequency of use of the known websites were statistically significantly higher than those of the unknown websites. Furthermore, the findings of this study revealed evidence of minimal use of the IPV websites, which may be explained by the low awareness and low perceived usefulness of the IPV websites. Based on the findings, this study recommended that online social media marketing campaigns and outreach activities should be carried out by website owners to promote website awareness. Various strategies should also be employed to improve the visibility and quality of the websites. Given that the most desired type of information was legal resources, libraries should dedicate resources to satisfy the information needs of IPV survivors. The findings make academic contributions by producing an empirically supported evidence and benchmark for future studies.