Understanding barriers and facilitators of appropriate antibiotic use: a qualitative analysis of an online parenting forum

PURPOSE

Antibiotic use and misuse are common in pregnant women and young children. Few studies have assessed real-world discussions of antibiotics in these populations. Using social media posts of pregnant women and parents, our goal was to identify key themes about facilitators and barriers to appropriate antibiotic usage.

METHODS

A purposive sample of public posts and comments relevant to antibiotic use was collected from the BabyCenter United States social media site. Using a directed content analysis, themes related to facilitators and barriers to appropriate antibiotic use were identified.

RESULTS

Seven hundred and twenty-six posts and 5227 comments were analysed. Themes centred around individual factors, interpersonal factors, and structural factors. Individual factors included knowledge and beliefs. Though misinformation was present, most parents were aware of appropriate antibiotic usage and perceived antibiotics as safe and effective. Some hesitance around using antibiotics led to recommendations for home remedies or over-the-counter treatments. Interpersonal factors focused on a lack of available offline peer support, the expertise of providers, as well as a potential lack of attention from those providers. Structural factors, including access to care, also impacted parents' antibiotic use and misuse.

CONCLUSION

Though most parents demonstrated appropriate knowledge about antibiotics and a willingness to follow guidelines, negative experiences with their providers, a lack of support from peers, and structural factors presented as potential barriers to appropriate antibiotic use. Implementing avenues for peer support for parents, allowing more time for providers to address parents' concerns, and improving access to providers could improve appropriate antibiotic use in parents.

Social noise: the influence of observers on social media information behavior

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of social noise. Under the influence of social noise, a social media user may adjust information behavior based on external cues, attempting to present themselves in a more desirable way to increase their social capital.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative study informed by an ethnographic approach was used to examine social media information behavior. Participants were observed using Facebook, followed by semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was theoretically grounded in thematic analysis but also adaptive to observations in the data.

Findings

Four constructs of social noise were identified in the data. Identity curation emerged as the overarching consideration for individuals. The constructs cultural commitments and relationship management both had a strong presence within the data as well. The fourth construct, conflict management, was identified as social media users decided how to respond to individuals or information with which they did not agree.

Originality/value

This study reveals that social media users' awareness of observation by others does impact their information behavior. Efforts to craft a personal reputation, build or maintain relationships, pursue important commitments and manage conflict all influence the observable information behavior of social media users. As a result, observable social media information behavior may not be an accurate reflection of an individual's true thoughts and beliefs.

Investigating mediated public engagement with science on the "science" subreddit: From the participants' perspective

While public engagement with science activities traditionally inhabits physical environments (i.e., museum exhibits), as the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, new types of public engagement with science mediated through information technologies have emerged. Instead of having scientific findings filtered through traditional mediators, scientists have begun to take advantage of social media in order to communicate directly with the general public. This paper focuses on technology mediated public engagement with science in an online environment, specifically the sub-Reddit called “r/science”, on a popular platform, Reddit, in which we investigated the factors contributing to user engagement and perceived effects of science communication from the users’ perspectives. The survey instrument including user engagement scales, perceived effects of science communication, and demographics were distributed among 2000 participants in the r/science Ask Me Anything (AMA) series. We analyzed 146 survey responses using descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression. The findings indicated that the participants were generally engaged compared to ones in other studies that used the same user engagement scales and perceived positive effects on science communication, except when it came to building trust. Furthermore, we found that time spent on this particular platform appeared to be the most important factor when it came to positive perceived effects of r/science AMAs. This type of mediated public engagement has been insufficiently investigated, most particularly in terms of the examination of participants’ perspectives. This void is addressed in this study. The findings from the study will also be informative to similar platforms that support mediated public engagement with science.

Visual analysis of information world maps: An exploration of four methods

Information researchers increasingly use participatory, arts-based methods to better understand the social contexts of individuals and populations. However, it remains rare to engage in qualitative analysis of the resulting visual artefacts. This article explores approaches to analysing visual media generated through a specific arts-based method, information world mapping (IWM), an interdisciplinary draw-and-talk technique that elicits data about individuals’ social information worlds. Here, we test four approaches to analysing visual media generated through IWM: directed qualitative content analysis (QCA), compositional interpretation, conceptual analysis and visual discourse analysis using situational analysis (SA). QCA was effective in creating an overview of participants’ information practices, yet raised concern regarding interpretive bias. Using an inductive taxonomy for compositional interpretation, we identified genre conventions for IWMs. Conceptual analysis resulted primarily in a reflection of the research procedures and epistemology. SA, while time-consuming, generated a large amount of rich data, including discourses and power relations that were not identified in previous analysis of textual data. In a reversal of our previous stance that cautioned against IWM analysis, we encourage other researchers to consider integrated or secondary visual analysis of IWMs.

Researchers' participation in and motivations for engaging with research information management systems

Researchers’ participation in online RIMSs

This article examined how researchers participated in research information management systems (RIMSs), their motivations for participation, and their priorities for those motivations. Profile maintenance, question-answering, and endorsement activities were used to define three cumulatively increasing levels of participation: Readers, Record Managers, and Community Members. Junior researchers were more engaged in RIMSs than were senior researchers. Postdocs had significantly higher odds of endorsing other researchers for skills and being categorized as Community Members than did full and associate professors. Assistant professors were significantly more likely to be Record Managers than were members of any other seniority categories. Finally, researchers from the life sciences showed a significantly higher propensity for being Community Members than Readers and Record Managers when compared with researchers from engineering and the physical sciences, respectively.

Researchers’ motivations to participate in RIMSs

When performing activities, researchers were motivated by the desire to share scholarship, feel competent, experience a sense of enjoyment, improve their status, and build ties with other members of the community. Moreover, when researchers performed activities that directly benefited other members of a RIMS, they assigned higher priorities to intrinsic motivations, such as perceived self-efficacy, enjoyment, and building community ties. Researchers at different stages of their academic careers and disciplines ranked some of the motivations for engaging with RIMSs differently. The general model of research participation in RIMSs; the relationships among RIMS activities; the motivation scales for activities; and the activity, seniority, and discipline-specific priorities for the motivations developed by this study provide the foundation for a framework for researcher participation in RIMSs. This framework can be used by RIMSs and institutional repositories to develop tools and design mechanisms to increase researchers’ engagement in RIMSs.