Virtual health counselors offer the potential to provide users with information and counseling in complex areas such as disease management and health education. However, ensuring user engagement is challenging, particularly when the volume of information and length of counseling sessions increase. Agenda setting a clinical counseling technique where a patient and clinician collaboratively decide on session topics is an effective approach to tailoring discussions for individual patient needs and sustaining engagement. We explore the effectiveness of agenda setting in a virtual counselor system designed to counsel women for breast cancer genetic testing. In a between subjects study, we assessed three versions of the system with varying levels of user control in the system's agenda setting approach. We found that participants' knowledge improved across all conditions. Although our results showed that any type of agenda setting was perceived as useful, regardless of user control, interviews revealed a preference for more collaboration and user involvement in the agenda setting process. Our study highlights the importance of using patient-centered approaches, such as tailored discussions, when using virtual counselors in healthcare.

翻译：虚拟健康咨询师有望在疾病管理和健康教育等复杂领域为用户提供信息和咨询服务。然而，确保用户参与度具有挑战性，尤其是在信息量和咨询会话时长增加的情况下。议程设置作为一种临床咨询技术，即患者与临床医生协作决定会话主题，是一种根据患者个体需求定制讨论并维持参与度的有效方法。我们在一个旨在为女性提供乳腺癌基因检测咨询的虚拟咨询师系统中，探究了议程设置的有效性。在一项被试间研究中，我们评估了该系统在议程设置方法中具有不同用户控制水平的三个版本。我们发现，在所有实验条件下参与者的知识水平均有所提升。尽管结果显示无论用户控制程度如何，任何类型的议程设置均被视为有用，但访谈揭示出用户更倾向于在议程设置过程中进行更多协作和参与。我们的研究强调了在医疗保健领域使用虚拟咨询师时，采用以患者为中心的方法（如定制化讨论）的重要性。