Investigating social cues and pre-assessment criteria for reusing social science data

In contrast to other disciplines, data reuse is less common in the social sciences. Online social cues (an indicator of a particular social significance) can provide a possible solution to this problem by providing additional information for data assessment and screening. This study generalized three cues (impression data cues, interaction data cues, and impression publisher cues) that serve the data reuse and three relative reuse criteria (data quality, data relevance, and source reliability). We focused on the influence of online social cues and their match effects with the criteria of perceived usefulness and reuse assessment performance. In total, 220 participants (41 young scholars and 179 students) were randomly sampled for a data reuse experiment, and their behavior, eye-movement, and perception data were collected using the experimental platform and eye-tracking device. Results confirmed the positive effects of cues and the match effects on enhancing users’ perceived usefulness and reuse assessment performance. This study shed light on the theoretical understanding of online social cues in improving data reuse and also provided practical implications for scientific data-sharing platforms to design different types of cues.