Analysis of Acupuncture Treatment Center Reviews Using Text Mining

focus on age-specific characteristics

Abstract

[Introduction] This study aimed to collect reviews of acupuncture clinics from the review website "Shinkyuu Compass" and elucidate the characteristics of different age groups using text-mining techniques. [Methods] The study collected 67,428 reviews posted until September 15, 2022. After excluding 408 reviews without age details and 18 with inappropriate content, 67,002 reviews were analyzed. The data was categorized into seven age groups, ranging from teenagers to people in their 70s. Only nouns were extracted from the reviews using morphological analysis, and their frequency of occurrence was calculated to create rankings based on frequency. The correlation between age and noun ranking was investigated using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. [Results] As a result, the 30s age group posted the most reviews, with a prominent presence of cosmetics-related words. The overall results showed a frequent appearance of cosmetics-related words regardless of age, with an increasing trend in the frequency of words related to specific physical symptoms as age increased. The study found variations in the words in the reviews across different age groups. Characteristic words for each age group were: "first" for teenagers, "fatigue" for people in their 20s, "infertility" for those in their 30s, "sagging" for the 40s, "symptoms" for the 50s, "shoulder & back" for the 60s, and "pain" for the 70s. The word "cosmetics" consistently appeared in the top rankings across all ages. The study suggests a shift in focus words with age while consistently showing a prevalence of cosmetics-related words. [Discussion] This study analyzed review data using text mining to investigate age-specific characteristics. Cosmetics-related words were frequently mentioned, and there was a tendency to increase words related to physical symptoms with age. These results provide important implications for more accurate information dissemination and service provision by acupuncture clinics.