@article{ref1,
title="Content-based recommender support system for counselors in a suicide prevention chat helpline: design and evaluation study",
journal="Journal of medical internet research",
year="2021",
author="Salmi, Salim and Mérelle, Saskia and Brinkman, Willem-Paul and Gilissen, Renske",
volume="23",
number="1",
pages="e21690-e21690",
abstract="BACKGROUND: The working environment of a suicide prevention helpline requires high emotional and cognitive awareness from chat counselors. A shared opinion among  counselors is that as a chat conversation becomes more difficult, it takes more  effort and a longer amount of time to compose a response, which, in turn, can lead  to writer's block. <br><br>OBJECTIVE: This study evaluates and then designs supportive  technology to determine if a support system that provides inspiration can help  counselors resolve writer's block when they encounter difficult situations in chats  with help-seekers. <br><br>METHODS: A content-based recommender system with sentence  embedding was used to search a chat corpus for similar chat situations. The system  showed a counselor the most similar parts of former chat conversations so that the  counselor would be able to use approaches previously taken by their colleagues as  inspiration. In a within-subject experiment, counselors' chat replies when  confronted with a difficult situation were analyzed to determine if experts could  see a noticeable difference in chat replies that were obtained in 3 conditions: (1)  with the help of the support system, (2) with written advice from a senior  counselor, or (3) when receiving no help. In addition, the system's utility and  usability were measured, and the validity of the algorithm was examined. <br><br>RESULTS: A  total of 24 counselors used a prototype of the support system; the results showed  that, by reading chat replies, experts were able to significantly predict if  counselors had received help from the support system or from a senior counselor  (P=.004). Counselors scored the information they received from a senior counselor  (M=1.46, SD 1.91) as significantly more helpful than the information received from  the support system or when no help was given at all (M=-0.21, SD 2.26). Finally,  compared with randomly selected former chat conversations, counselors rated the ones  identified by the content-based recommendation system as significantly more similar  to their current chats (β=.30, P<.001). <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Support given to counselors  influenced how they responded in difficult conversations. However, the higher  utility scores given for the advice from senior counselors seem to indicate that  specific actionable instructions are preferred. We expect that these findings will  be beneficial for developing a system that can use similar chat situations to  generate advice in a descriptive style, hence helping counselors through writer's  block.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1438-8871",
doi="10.2196/21690",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/21690"
}