The role of off-topic discussions in online health support groups: insights from a content analysis of an online rectal cancer group

Use of a Mobile Health Intervention by Older Versus Younger People with HIV: Analysis of Usage, Social Support, and Network Interactions

BACKGROUND

People with HIV in the United States are aging, with risk for negative health outcomes from social isolation. PositiveLinks is a mobile health (mHealth) intervention that includes an anonymous Community Message Board (CMB) for peer-to-peer conversations. We investigated differences in CMB usage and social support between younger (<50 years) and older (≥50) members.

METHODS

We assessed the relationship between age groups and app use using chi-square tests. CMB posts were analyzed qualitatively to categorize forms of social support. To have a visual understanding of this relationship, we created a network diagram to display interactions among PL members.

RESULTS

Among 87 participants, 31 (42.5%) were in the older age group. Older members launched the app more often at 6 months (445.5 vs. 240.5 mean launches per participant, p ≤ 0.001) and 12 months (712.3 vs. 292.6 launches, p ≤ 0.001) compared with younger members. Older members also demonstrated more CMB posts at 6 months (47.4 vs. 7.6 mean posts per participant, p = 0.02) and 12 months (77.5 vs. 10.6 posts, p = 0.04). Of 1861 CMB posts, 7% sought support and 72% provided support. In addition, the network visualization showed that four participants, who were in the older age group, had more post generation than others and most of their posts provided support.

CONCLUSIONS

Older PL members demonstrated significantly more app use than younger members, including CMB posts for social support. This durable app engagement indicates that mHealth can enable social connection among people living with chronic disease across the lifespan.

Seeking or contributing? Evidence of knowledge sharing behaviours in promoting patients' perceived value of online health communities

BACKGROUND

Health knowledge, as an important resource of online health communities (OHCs), attracts users to engage in OHCs and improve the traffics within OHCs, thereby promoting the development of OHCs. Seeking and contributing health knowledge are basic activities in OHCs and are helpful for users to solve their health-related problems, improve their health conditions and thus influence their evaluation of OHCs (ie perceived value of OHCs). However, how do patients' health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing behaviours together with other factors influence their perceived value of OHCs? We still have little knowledge.

OBJECTIVE

In order to address the above gap, we root the current study in social cognitive theory and prior related literature on health knowledge sharing in OHCs and patients' perceived value. We treat health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing behaviours as behavioural factors and structural social capital as an environmental factor and explore their impacts on patients' perceived value of OHCs.

DESIGN

We have built a theoretical model composed of five hypotheses. We have designed a questionnaire composed of four key constructs and then collected data via an online survey.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

We have distributed the questionnaire in two Chinese OHCs. We obtained a sample of 352 valid responses that were completed by patients having a variety of conditions.

RESULTS

The empirical results indicate that health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing have positive impacts on patients' perceived value of OHCs. The impact of health knowledge seeking on patients' perceived value of OHCs is greater than the impact of health knowledge contributing. In addition, structural social capital moderates the effects of health knowledge seeking and health knowledge contributing on patients' perceived value of OHCs. It weakens the effect of health knowledge seeking but enhances the effect of health knowledge contributing on patients' perceived value of OHCs.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings contribute to the literature on patients' perceived value of OHCs and on the role of structural social capital in OHCs. For OHC managers, they should provide their users more opportunities to seek or contribute health knowledge in their communities.

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.