Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature
HCI often requires scholars to build upon research from fields outside their expertise, creating the risk that foundational work is misunderstood and misrepresented. The prevailing goal of “exergames” research towards ameliorating obesity appears to be built on just such a misunderstanding of health...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
| Published: |
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42578/ |
| _version_ | 1848796517877415936 |
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| author | Marshall, Joe Linehan, Conor |
| author_facet | Marshall, Joe Linehan, Conor |
| author_sort | Marshall, Joe |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | HCI often requires scholars to build upon research from fields outside their expertise, creating the risk that foundational work is misunderstood and misrepresented. The prevailing goal of “exergames” research towards ameliorating obesity appears to be built on just such a misunderstanding of health research. In this paper, we analyse all citations to a single influential study, which has been extensively cited to justify research on exergames. We categorise the 375 citations based on whether they represent the findings of that study accurately or inaccurately. Our findings suggest that 69% of exergames papers citing this study misrepresent the findings, demonstrating a systematic failure of scholarship in exergames research. We argue that exergaming research should cease focusing on games as treatment for obesity, and that HCI publications should demand more critical and scholarly engagement with research from outside HCI. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:49:15Z |
| format | Conference or Workshop Item |
| id | nottingham-42578 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:49:15Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-425782020-05-04T18:44:46Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42578/ Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature Marshall, Joe Linehan, Conor HCI often requires scholars to build upon research from fields outside their expertise, creating the risk that foundational work is misunderstood and misrepresented. The prevailing goal of “exergames” research towards ameliorating obesity appears to be built on just such a misunderstanding of health research. In this paper, we analyse all citations to a single influential study, which has been extensively cited to justify research on exergames. We categorise the 375 citations based on whether they represent the findings of that study accurately or inaccurately. Our findings suggest that 69% of exergames papers citing this study misrepresent the findings, demonstrating a systematic failure of scholarship in exergames research. We argue that exergaming research should cease focusing on games as treatment for obesity, and that HCI publications should demand more critical and scholarly engagement with research from outside HCI. 2017-05-06 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Marshall, Joe and Linehan, Conor (2017) Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature. In: CHI 2017: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 6-11 May 2017, Denver, Colorado, USA. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3025453.3025691 |
| spellingShingle | Marshall, Joe Linehan, Conor Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title | Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title_full | Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title_fullStr | Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title_full_unstemmed | Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title_short | Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| title_sort | misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42578/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42578/ |