Michelle Bak’s Preliminary Exam

PhD candidate Michelle Bak will present her preliminary proposal, "Promoting Health Behavior through Theory-based Sociotechnical Systems." Bak's preliminary examination committee includes Assistant Professor Jessie Chin (chair), Associate Professor Dong Wang, Ian Brooks, research scientist and director of the Center for Health Informatics, Affiliate Associate Professor Jana Diesner, and Suma Bhat, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Abstract

Motivation, the mental state that drives individuals to initiate, sustain, and direct their behavior, is represented differently across various frameworks. In the context of information retrieval systems, user motivation is reflected in the system’s ability to deliver information relevant to user queries. However, existing search retrieval systems fail to capture latent user intents influenced by their motivational states, which are critical factors that necessitate distinct information needs across different states of motivation. This highlights the importance of applying health behavior change theories, frameworks used to understand, predict, and influence motivations for adopting health behaviors, in explaining and predicting users’ motivation during information search. Given the increasing use of digital health solutions and the potential of large language models (LLMs) in health care to identify user intents semantically, this dissertation evaluates and improves the capabilities of LLMs in understanding motivational states related to health behaviors guided by the TTM, with the goal of promoting healthy diets among these individuals who are ambivalent toward behavior change.