Table 3.

A Taxonomy of Clarification Questions Utilized During Need Negotiation

Question Type	Goal	EHR Data Clarification Examples
Relevance threshold	To establish the user’s relevance threshold, a mapping of a continuous scale into a binary decision	What is the A1c threshold for the diabetes patients that you are looking for?
Ambiguity in conjoined facets	To establish the relationship type between conjoined facets	Do you only want patients that have both a diagnosis of diabetes and hypertension or patients with a diabetes diagnosis with or without a hypertension diagnosis?
Example concept	To ensure an identified facet is relevant to the user’s information need	Would patients without Diabetes diagnoses, but taking a medication for diabetes be of interest to you?
Closely related or subset concept	To expand or narrow the scope of the user’s information need on the specificity of a particular facet	Do you want patients with both types of Diabetes? Type 1 and 2?
Related topical aspects	To establish the user’s interest in facets that are conceptually related, but not directly requested	Does it matter what treatment protocol the diabetic patients are on?
Acceptability of summaries	To define both the user’s expectation of the information retrieved	Do you just want to know how many patients fit your criteria?