Text Data Mining of Risk Behaviors During the Outbreak of Infectious Disease in Epidemiological Case Reports

This pilot study trialed research methods for a large study that aims to identify risk behaviors during an outbreak of infectious disease in epidemiological case reports. Among epidemiological case reports published by website of china public media between 1 January 2021 and 5 March 2021, 100 case reports were randomly selected and analyzed. We identified the most frequently used measurements by the assessment team in the reports. These included human-to-human and/or object-to-human transmission, periodic review of personal health needs and a system to ensure health behaviors recipients used right ways to deal with risk behaviors. We identified weakness of the epidemiological case reports in only using person's complaint as a measurement of risk behaviors, not including risk behaviors measures. This pilot study confirms that qualitative data analysis of officially published epidemiological case reports, facilitated by semi-automatic data mining methods, can be used to understand and improve the quality of personal health management in case reports in context.