Toward Predicting Social Support Needs in Online Health Social Networks

Factors Affecting Users' Continuous Usage in Online Health Communities: An Integrated Framework of SCT and TPB

BACKGROUND

Online health communities (OHCs) provide a new channel for users to obtain more health-related information and support, playing an important role in alleviating hospital congestion and uneven medical resource distribution, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. An in-depth study of users' continuous usage is of great value for the long-term development of OHCs.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that influence users' continuous usage in online health communities based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and social cognitive theory (SCT).

METHODS

Data from 480 users with experience in online health communities were collected through a questionnaire survey, and structural equations were applied to verify the model hypotheses empirically.

RESULTS

Self-efficacy and controllability have significant effects on users' continuous intention; attitude has a significant relationship with continuous intention; social norms have a positive effect on continuous intention. Moreover, the relationship between continuous intention and behavior is positive. Self-efficacy and outcome expectations have significant positive associations with continuous usage. Finally, system quality, information quality, and social interaction ties have significant and positive relationships to continuous usage.

CONCLUSION

To improve the level of user's continuous usage, online health service providers can improve the quality of the community by organizing the website's page layout, navigation menus, and site elements to ensure users quickly search and find what they want meanwhile try to change people's cognition gradually, in addition, decision and policymakers should provide more favorable policies to stimulate and help provider in building and managing strategic plans for sustaining a thriving online community. A supportive climate in society through public service advertisements and others for the sake of OHCs is necessary.

LIMITATIONS

(1) This study collected data through a cross-sectional survey. Thus, it lacked the process of capturing the changes in participants' attitudes toward all variables. (2) The environmental factors in SCT theory need to be more comprehensive, containing online factors without offline factors. (3) The dates were obtained from China, which neglects the different cultural content.

Traditional Machine Learning Models and Bidirectional Encoder Representations From Transformer (BERT)-Based Automatic Classification of Tweets About Eating Disorders: Algorithm Development and Validation Study

BACKGROUND

Eating disorders affect an increasing number of people. Social networks provide information that can help.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to find machine learning models capable of efficiently categorizing tweets about eating disorders domain.

METHODS

We collected tweets related to eating disorders, for 3 consecutive months. After preprocessing, a subset of 2000 tweets was labeled: (1) messages written by people suffering from eating disorders or not, (2) messages promoting suffering from eating disorders or not, (3) informative messages or not, and (4) scientific or nonscientific messages. Traditional machine learning and deep learning models were used to classify tweets. We evaluated accuracy, F1 score, and computational time for each model.

RESULTS

A total of 1,058,957 tweets related to eating disorders were collected. were obtained in the 4 categorizations, with The bidirectional encoder representations from transformer-based models had the best score among the machine learning and deep learning techniques applied to the 4 categorization tasks (F1 scores 71.1%-86.4%).

CONCLUSIONS

Bidirectional encoder representations from transformer-based models have better performance, although their computational cost is significantly higher than those of traditional techniques, in classifying eating disorder-related tweets.

Personality, Attitudes, and Behaviors Predicting Perceived Benefit in Online Support Groups for Caregivers: A Mixed-Methods Study (Preprint)

Background

Online support groups (OSGs) are distance-delivered, easily accessible health interventions offering emotional, informational, and experience-based support and companionship or network support for caregivers managing chronic mental and physical health conditions.

Objective

This study aimed to examine the relative contribution of extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, positive attitudes toward OSGs on social networking sites, and typical past OSG use patterns in predicting perceived OSG benefit in an OSG for parents and caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Methods

A mixed methods, longitudinal design was used to collect data from 81 parents across Canada. Attitudes toward OSGs and typical OSG use patterns were assessed using the author-developed Attitudes Toward OSGs subscale (eg, “Online support groups are a place to get and give emotional support”) and Past Behaviors in OSGs subscale (eg, “How often would you typically comment on posts?”) administered at baseline—before OSG membership. The personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism were assessed at baseline using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory. Perceived OSG benefit was assessed using the author-developed Perceived OSG Benefit scale (eg, “Overall, did you feel supported by other members in this group?”), administered 2 months after the initiation of OSG membership.

Results

A hierarchical regression analysis found that extraversion was the only variable that significantly predicted perceived OSG benefit (R²=0.125; P<.001).

Conclusions

The key suggestions for improving future OSGs were facilitating more in-depth, customized, and interactive content in OSGs.

Impacts of physician promotion on the online healthcare community: Using a difference-in-difference approach

In this study, we use a difference-in-difference approach to explore how physician promotion, the advancement of a physician's offline reputation, affects patient behavior toward physicians in online healthcare communities; this allows us to explore how patients interpret the signals created by physician promotion. The study sample was collected from over 140,000 physician online profiles after 25 months of continuous observation, with 280 physicians who were promoted at month 13 as the treatment group and a control group obtained by propensity score matching. Our results show that a physician's promotion causes more patients to choose that physician, makes patients willing to give more psychological rewards, and makes them tend to give that physician a higher online rating. This implies that patient behavior is susceptible to the signal of physician promotion because the quality of the physician is unlikely to have changed significantly in the short term. These findings extend prior research on reputation in online communities and have crucial implications for theory and practice.

Comprehension, Perception, and Projection

Health social networks (HSNs) allow individuals with health information needs to connect and discuss health-related issues online. Political-technology intertwinement (e.g. GDPR and Digital Technology) highlights that users need to be aware, understand, and willing to provide electronic consent (eConsent) when sharing personal information online. The objective of this study is to explore the ‘As-Is’ factors which impact individuals’ decisional autonomy when consenting to the privacy policy (PP) and Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) on a HSN. We use a Situational Awareness (SA) lens to examine decision autonomy when providing eConsent. A mixed-methods approach reveals that technical and privacy comprehension, user perceptions, and projection of future consequences impact participants’ decision autonomy in providing eConsent. Without dealing with the privacy paradox at the outset, decision awareness and latterly decision satisfaction is negatively impacted. Movement away from clickwrap online consent to customised two-way engagement is the way forward for the design of eConsent.

Analytical framework for mental health feature extraction methods in social networks

Today, with the development of internet technology, a new kind of social relations and interactions have been formed in the newly emerged social networks. Through social networks, the users can share different types of content, including personal information, text, image, video, music, poem, and other related information, which express their mental states, emotions, feelings, and thoughts. Thus, a new and essential aspect of human life is being formed in a virtual space in social networks, which must be explored from several viewpoints, such as mental disorders. Analyzing mental disorders according to the social network data can guide us to gain new approaches to improve the public health of the whole society. To this aim, developing mental health feature extraction (MHFE) methods in a social network is essential and is now becoming an active research area. Therefore, in this paper, a review of existing techniques and methods in MHFE is presented, and a comprehensive framework is provided to classify these approaches. Furthermore, to analyze and evaluate each approach in extraction methods, an appropriate set of functional criteria is proposed, which leads to a more accurate understanding and correct use of them.

Portraits d’enfance, portraits d’adolescence : pratiques de lecture et pratiques culturelles à travers les étapes du développement humain

L’enfance, l’adolescence et même la préadolescence sont des moments de vie particuliers qui sont marqués, selon certaines recherches, par des pratiques de lecture et des pratiques d’activités technologiques propres à ces âges. En amont de ces pratiques, il reste le lecteur, le jeune, la personne qui vit des changements psychologiques et physiologiques propres à son étape de développement. Ces moments de changements influencent les besoins, les intérêts et les goûts en matière de lecture de ces jeunes. Connaître leurs étapes de développement et leurs besoins, c’est comprendre davantage le public des jeunes, prendre conscience de l’importance de l’étape de développement de ces usagers comme personnes et ainsi avoir la possibilité d’interagir plus profondément et dynamiquement avec eux.

À partir d’études statistiques sur les pratiques de lecture des enfants, des préadolescents et des adolescents, cet article présente ces pratiques en lien avec les étapes de développement reliées à l’âge. Une meilleure connaissance théorique des dimensions physiologique, cognitive, affective et sociale des jeunes permettra un fondement plus fin de nos pratiques académiques et professionnelles dans nos interventions auprès des jeunes.

Exploring the Factors Influencing Consumers to Voluntarily Reward Free Health Service Contributors in Online Health Communities: Empirical Study

BACKGROUND

Rewarding health knowledge and health service contributors with money is one possible approach for the sustainable provision of health knowledge and health services in online health communities (OHCs); however, the reasons why consumers voluntarily reward free health knowledge and health service contributors are still underinvestigated.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to address the abovementioned gap by exploring the factors influencing consumers' voluntary rewarding behaviors (VRBs) toward contributors of free health services in OHCs.

METHODS

On the basis of prior studies and the cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST), we incorporated two health service content-related variables (ie, informational support and emotional support) and two interpersonal factors (ie, social norm compliance and social interaction) and built a proposed model. We crawled a dataset from a Chinese OHC for mental health, coded it, extracted nine variables, and tested the model with a negative binomial model.

RESULTS

The data sample included 2148 health-related questions and 12,133 answers. The empirical results indicated that the effects of informational support (β=.168; P<.001), emotional support (β=.463; P<.001), social norm compliance (β=.510; P<.001), and social interaction (β=.281; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effects of social interaction on informational support (β=.032; P=.02) and emotional support (β=-.086; P<.001) were significant. The moderating effect of social interaction on social norm compliance (β=.014; P=.38) was insignificant.

CONCLUSIONS

Informational support, emotional support, social norm compliance, and social interaction positively influence consumers to voluntarily reward free online health service contributors. Social interaction enhances the effect of informational support but weakens the effect of emotional support. This study contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing in OHCs by exploring the factors influencing consumers' VRBs toward free online health service contributors and contributes to the CEST literature by verifying that the effects of experiential and rational systems on individual behaviors can vary while external factors change.

How New and Expecting Fathers Engage With an App-Based Online Forum: Qualitative Analysis

Background

Breastfeeding is important for infants, and fathers are influential in supporting their partner in their decision to breastfeed and how long they breastfeed for. Fathers can feel excluded from traditional antenatal education and support opportunities but highly value social support from peers. Online health forums can be a useful source of social support, yet little is known about how fathers would use a conversation forum embedded in a breastfeeding-focused app. Milk Man is a mobile app that aimed to increase paternal support for breastfeeding using a range of strategies, including a conversation forum.

Objective

The aim of this study was to examine how fathers used a breastfeeding-focused conversation forum contained within a mobile app throughout the perinatal period.

Methods

A qualitative analysis of comments posted by users in the online forum contained within the Milk Man app was conducted. The app contained a library of information for fathers, as well as a conversation forum. Thematic analysis was used to organize and understand the data. The NVivo 11 software package was used to code comments into common nodes, which were then organized into key themes.

Results

In all, 208 contributors (35.5% [208/586] of those who had access to the app) posted at least once within the forum. In total, 1497 comments were included for analysis. These comments were coded to 3799 individual nodes and then summarized to 54 tree nodes from which four themes emerged to describe how fathers used the app. Themes included seek and offer support, social connection, informational support provision, and sharing experiences. Posting in the forum was concentrated in the antenatal period and up to approximately 6 weeks postpartum.

Conclusions

These data show that fathers are prepared to use a breastfeeding-focused online forum in a variety of ways to facilitate social support. Fathers can be difficult to reach in the perinatal period, yet engaging them and increasing social support is important. This research demonstrates the acceptability of an innovative way of engaging new and expecting fathers.

Patient Continued Use of Online Health Care Communities: Web Mining of Patient-Doctor Communication

BACKGROUND

In practice, online health communities have passed the adoption stage and reached the diffusion phase of development. In this phase, patients equipped with knowledge regarding the issues involved in health care are capable of switching between different communities to maximize their online health community activities. Online health communities employ doctors to answer patient questions, and high quality online health communities are more likely to be acknowledged by patients. Therefore, the factors that motivate patients to maintain ongoing relationships with online health communities must be addressed. However, this has received limited scholarly attention.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that drive patients to continue their use of online health communities where doctor-patient communication occurs. This was achieved by integrating the information system success model with online health community features.

METHODS

A Web spider was used to download and extract data from one of the most authoritative Chinese online health communities in which communication occurs between doctors and patients. The time span analyzed in this study was from January 2017 to March 2017. A sample of 469 valid anonymous patients with 9667 posts was obtained (the equivalent of 469 respondents in survey research). A combination of Web mining and structural equation modeling was then conducted to test the research hypotheses.

RESULTS

The results show that the research framework for integrating the information system success model and online health community features contributes to our understanding of the factors that drive patients' relationships with online health communities. The primary findings are as follows: (1) perceived usefulness is found to be significantly determined by three exogenous variables (ie, social support, information quality, and service quality; R²=0.88). These variables explain 87.6% of the variance in perceived usefulness of online health communities; (2) similarly, patient satisfaction was found to be significantly determined by the three variables listed above (R²=0.69). These variables explain 69.3% of the variance seen in patient satisfaction; (3) continuance use (dependent variable) is significantly influenced by perceived usefulness and patient satisfaction (R²=0.93). That is, the combined effects of perceived usefulness and patient satisfaction explain 93.4% of the variance seen in continuance use; and (4) unexpectedly, individual literacy had no influence on perceived usefulness and satisfaction of patients using online health communities.

CONCLUSIONS

First, this study contributes to the existing literature on the continuance use of online health communities using an empirical approach. Second, an appropriate metric was developed to assess constructs related to the proposed research model. Additionally, a Web spider enabled us to acquire objective data relatively easily and frequently, thereby overcoming a major limitation of survey techniques.

Understanding a Nonlinear Causal Relationship Between Rewards and Physicians' Contributions in Online Health Care Communities: Longitudinal Study

Background

The online health care community is not just a place for the public to share physician reviews or medical knowledge, but also a physician-patient communication platform. The medical resources of developing countries are relatively inadequate, and the online health care community is a potential solution to alleviate the phenomenon of long hospital queues and the lack of medical resources in rural areas. However, the success of the online health care community depends on online contributions by physicians.

Objective

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of incentive mechanisms on physician’s online contribution behavior in the online health community. We addressed the following questions: (1) from which specialty area are physicians more likely to participate in online health care community activities, (2) what are the factors affecting physician online contributions, and (3) do incentive mechanisms, including psychological and material rewards, result in differences of physician online contributions?

Methods

We designed a longitudinal study involving a data sample in three waves. All data were collected from the Good Doctor website, which is the largest online health care community in China. We first used descriptive statistics to investigate the physician online contribution behavior in its entirety. Then multiple linear and quadratic regression models were applied to verify the causal relationship between rewards and physician online contribution.

Results

Our sample included 40,300 physicians from 3607 different hospitals, 10 different major specialty areas, and 31 different provinces or municipalities. Based on the multiple quadratic regression model, we found that the coefficients of the control variables, past physician online contributions, doctor review rating, clinic title, hospital level, and city level, were .415, .189, –.099, –.106, and –.143, respectively. For the psychological (or material) rewards, the standardized coefficient of the main effect was 0.261 (or 0.688) and the standardized coefficient of the quadratic effect was –0.015 (or –0.049). All estimates were statistically significant (P<.001).

Conclusions

Physicians with more past physician online contribution, with higher review ratings, coming from lower level clinics, not coming from tertiary hospitals, and not coming from big cities were more willing to participate in online health care community activities. To promote physician online contribution, it is necessary to establish an appropriate incentive mechanism including psychological and material rewards. Finally, our findings suggest two guidelines for designing a useful incentive mechanism to facilitate physician online contribution. First, material reward is more useful than psychological reward. Second, as indicated by the concave-down-increasing causal relationship between rewards and physician online contribution, although an appropriate reward is effective in encouraging willingness on the part of physicians to contribute to the online health care community, the effect of additional rewards is limited.