Choosing your network: social preferences in an online health community

Choosing Your Sports Partners: Assessing Selection Preferences Through Observational and Experimental Studies

Previous research has demonstrated the positive impact of doing sports together on maintaining physical activity levels. Yet, there remains a gap in understanding the selection processes leading to sports partnerships. We address this question using a two-study design. Study 1 examines longitudinal ego-network data; we analyze data of 1,222 sports partnerships among 409 Dutch university students. We find that emotional closeness, rather than skill similarity, is a key determinant of sports partnership continuation over time. We do not find that the sports setting in which sports partnerships are embedded (i.e. sports clubs, informal groups, commercial gyms, unorganized settings) affect the stability of sports partnerships. Study 2 employs a discrete choice experiment, in which individuals are tasked to choose a sports partner out of choice-sets consisting of three sports partners who vary in the types of motivations and resources they offer (i.e. social comparison, knowledge, companionship, encouragement). People express a strong preference for sports partners who emphasize social aspects of sports, but as individuals become more active, sports partners who emphasize social comparison and who are knowledgeable about sports gain attractiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for tailored strategies leveraging social networks to promote sports participation.

Understanding the Impact of Social Networks on the Spread of Obesity

Previous research has highlighted the significant role social networks play in the spread of non-communicable chronic diseases. In our research, we seek to explore the impact of these networks in more detail and gain insight into the mechanisms that drive this. We use obesity as a case study. To achieve this, we develop a generalisable hybrid simulation and optimisation approach aimed at gaining qualitative and quantitative insights into the effect of social networks on the spread of obesity. Our simulation model has two components. Firstly, an agent-based component mimics the dynamic structure of the social network within which individuals are situated. Secondly, a system dynamics component replicates the relevant behaviours of those individuals. The parameters from the combined model are refined and optimised using longitudinal data from the United Kingdom. The simulation produces projections of Body Mass Index broken down by different age groups and gender over a 10-year period. These projections are used to explore a range of scenarios in a computational study designed to address our research aims. The study reveals that, for the youngest population sub-groups, the network acts to magnify the impact of external and social factors on changes in obesity, whereas, for older sub-groups, the network mitigates the impact of these factors. The magnitude of that impact is inversely correlated with age. Our approach can be used by public health decision makers as well as managers in adult weight management services to enhance initiatives and strategies intended to reduce obesity. Our approach is generalisable to understand the impact of social networks on similar non-communicable diseases.

To Make and Keep Friends: The Role of Health Status in Adolescent Network Tie Formation and Persistence

Health status may shape network structure through network dynamics (tie formation and persistence) and direction (sent and received ties), net of typical network processes. We apply Separable Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (STERGMs) to National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health survey data (n = 1,779) to differentiate how health status shapes network sent and received tie formation and persistence. Results indicate that networks are shaped by withdrawal of adolescents experiencing poor health, highlighting the importance of separating distinct and directed processes of friendship formation and persistence when considering how health relates to adolescent social life.

Mobile health community loyalty development process in China: an empirical study from information seeking perspective

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

A covariance-based structural equation model was developed to explore the mobile health community loyalty development process from information seeking perspective and tested with LISREL 9.30 for the 191 mobile health platform user samples.

Findings

The empirical results demonstrate that the information seeking perspective offers an interesting explanation for the mobile health community loyalty development process. All hypotheses in the proposed research model are supported except the relationship between privacy and trust. The two types of mobile health community loyalty—attitudal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are explained with 58 and 37% variance.

Originality/value

This paper has brought out the information seeking perspective in the loyalty formation process in mobile health community and identified several important constructs for this perspective for the loyalty formation process including information quality, communication with doctors and communication with patients.

Health-based homophily in public housing developments

Public housing residents in the United States face disproportionately high risks for disease, presenting an urgent need for interventions. Evidence suggests interventions leveraging social networks can be successful when relationships are homophilous, as this leads to pooling of risk behaviors among interconnected alters. Yet, we know little about networks of public housing residents. To assess the feasibility of network-based interventions, we investigate the incidence of health-based homophily in public housing developments in Boston, Massachusetts. Employing multilevel models (HLM), we find that respondents report their own health characteristics to be similar to their network partners on oral health, weight, and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and foods. We discuss the implications of our findings for health-based interventions in low-income communities.

How to achieve sustainable buyer-seller relationship in social commerce? The effect of network closure on ties evolution

The fact that most buyer-seller ties in the social commerce community are easy to form but hard to keep has brought the "social bubble" into social commerce. Following the literature streams of network closure and social commerce and based on the longitudinal dataset of an online social commerce community over a year, this article explores the buyer-seller ties evolution in the social commerce community through two stages, that is, ties emergence versus ties persistence. In this study, the authors build a hazard model and estimate with a semiparametric partial likelihood method. Our results show an asymmetric effect of network closure mechanisms across different stages of buyer-seller ties evolution. In the early stage of buyer-seller ties, due to the information asymmetry, buyers usually rely on informative signals that either reflect the "popular others" (i.e., the popularity and content sharing) or the "ideal self" (i.e., the value homophily and status homophily) to form ties with sellers, which makes the community more "transactional." As very few ties can survive through the periods of 3 months or more, the normative social influence, which relies heavily on the structure of extant relationships among community members, becomes the dominant driver of ties persistence, which makes the community more "social." This study contributes to the ongoing research of network analysis and social commerce. It provides valuable tactics to sellers who want to develop long-term relationships with buyers in the social commerce community.

Homophily and polarization on political twitter during the 2017 Norwegian election

Ideological homophily on social media has been receiving increased scholarly interest, as it is associated with the formation of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and increased ideological polarization. And yet, no linkage necessarily exists between ideological homophily, echo chambers, and polarization. Despite political interactions on social media taking place to a large extent between like-minded individuals, cross-cutting interactions are also frequent. Using Twitter data, we investigated the extent to which ideological homophily, echo chambers, and polarization occur together and characterize the network of political Twitter users during the 2017 election in Norway. Despite the presence of some degree of ideological homophily, we did not find evidence of echo chambers in the Norwegian political Twittersphere during the 2017 election. And yet, the retweet network is characterized by a significant degree of polarization across ideological blocs. Our findings support the thesis according to which polarization on social media may have drivers other than the technological deterministic effect of social media affordances enhancing the formation of online echo chambers.

The impact of online health community engagement on lifestyle changes: A serially mediated model

Background

Due to reduced physical labor and increased food availability, making healthy lifestyle changes is becoming increasingly challenging. Prior studies have suggested that strong ties (such as friends or family members) help promote positive lifestyle behavior changes while weak ties like online friends hardly make a difference in activating healthy lifestyle changes. More recent studies have found evidence of positive lifestyle changes brought about by health APPs. Yet, the process through which online health community (OHC) engagement is related to healthy lifestyle changes has not been fully explored.

Methods

Drawing on social network theory and the self-efficacy literature, we argued that the information and emotional support which users obtained from OHCs is positively associated with health self-efficacy, which in turn is positively associated with lifestyle changes. Then we constructed a serially mediated model between OHC engagement and healthy lifestyle changes and collected 320 valid questionnaires through an online survey. We tested the model by applying structural equation modeling via Mplus 8.3, which uses bootstrapping (5,000 samples) to test the significance of the mediated paths.

Results

This study demonstrated that the informational and emotional support that users receive from OHC engagement positively affects healthy lifestyle changes via the mediating role of health self-efficacy. We also found that healthy lifestyle changes are an outcome of enhanced health self-efficacy through the effect of informational and emotional support from OHC engagement.

Conclusions

Our findings help explain how OHC users make healthy lifestyle changes by utilizing the informational and emotional support to develop health self-efficacy. The results also highlight the value of informational and emotional support as important resources which users acquire from OHC engagement. Thus, we suggest that OHC users utilize the informational and emotional support to enhance health self-efficacy and facilitate healthy lifestyle changes. Future research could explore the dynamic process through which OHC engagement influences lifestyle changes by designing longitudinal research and addressing the limitations of the present study.

If you move, I move: The social influence effect on residential mobility

There are many theories that account for why households move between residential areas. In this paper, we advance on this by formulating a new mechanism whereby a household’s probability of leaving a neighborhood is informed by the number of other households who have previously left that neighborhood. We call this mechanism: the social influence (SI) effect. By applying matching to Swedish register data for Stockholm County (1998–2017), and after adjusting for theoretically relevant confounders from the existing literature, we find that SI has a significant effect on neighborhood out-mobility. Furthermore, we find that the SI effect is moderated by the visibility with which others’ behaviors is observed, measured as the number of previous out-movers, the distance to ego, and its salience in the social environment. Our study also discusses some ways in which SI might be entangled with other mechanisms, and outlines future directions from which studies of residential segregation dynamics might be approached.

Guanxi in an age of digitalization: toward assortation and value homophily in new tie-formation

How do people form personal ties? A consensus holds in sociological and social network scholarship that in-person networks are dominated by status homophily and that guanxi networks rely extensively on balance. This article argues that social networking sites (SNSs) reconceptualize the character of homophily and tie-formation altogether in guanxi networks. Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews with Hong Kong youth from 2017 to 2020, this article examines how the technical capabilities of SNSs and principles of guanxi culture come together to erode status boundaries, create access to larger networks, and cause spillovers of information and tie strength. As a result, the basis of tie-formation in guanxi networks on SNSs shifts from balance to assortation and status homophily to value homophily. In this transformed calculus of tie-formation, two typologies of values rise to the fore: substantive values that reflect opinions and interests, as well as structural values that reflect networkability.

Coarse Graining on Financial Correlation Networks

Community structure detection is an important and valuable task in financial network studies as it forms the basis of many statistical applications such as prediction, risk analysis, and recommendation. Financial networks have a natural multi-grained structure that leads to different community structures at different levels. However, few studies pay attention to these multi-part features of financial networks. In this study, we present a geometric coarse graining method based on Voronoi regions of a financial network. Rather than studying the dense structure of the network, we perform our analysis on the triangular maximally filtering of a financial network. Such filtered topology emerges as an efficient approach because it keeps local clustering coefficients steady and it underlies the network geometry. Moreover, in order to capture changes in coarse grains geometry throughout a financial stress, we study Haantjes curvatures of paths that are the farthest from the center in each of the Voronoi regions. We performed our analysis on a network representation comprising the stock market indices BIST (Borsa Istanbul), FTSE100 (London Stock Exchange), and Nasdaq-100 Index (NASDAQ), across three financial crisis periods. Our results indicate that there are remarkable changes in the geometry of coarse grains.

Assessing Social Network Influences on Adult Physical Activity Using Social Network Analysis: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE

Social network analysis (SNA) can measure social connectedness and assess impact of interpersonal connections on health behaviors, including physical activity (PA). This paper aims to systematically review adult PA studies using SNA to understand important social network concepts relative to PA.

DATA SOURCE

A search was performed using PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Web of Science.

STUDY INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION CRITERIA

To be included in the search, articles needed to 1) include a measure of PA, 2) conduct an SNA in which specific relationships were measured, and 3) conduct an analysis between social network measures and PA.

DATA EXTRACTION

Key study elements including network design and results were extracted.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Data were synthesized to answer 2 questions: 1) how has adult PA been investigated using SNA approaches and 2) how is an adult's social network associated with PA behaviors?

RESULTS

A final sample of 28 articles remained from an initial 11 085 articles. Network size, homophily, network composition, and network exposure to PA were all associated with individual level PA across studies. Lastly, longitudinal and intervention studies showed a more complex picture of social influence and diffusion of PA behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

Adults' PA behaviors are influenced by their networks. Capitalizing on this influence, researchers should engage not just individual behavior change but also the social influences present within the person's life.

Staying Active While Staying Home: The Use of Physical Activity Technologies During Life Disruptions

One impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns was a restriction on people's ability to engage in physical activity in previously routine ways. This paper presents a two-stage mixed-method study exploring how people used technology to stay physically active during this period. We found that activity trackers reminded people to be active, while virtual coaching (i.e., video tutorials and online classes) helped them stay connected. The lockdown increased people's awareness of their activity levels and removed barriers to exercise, for example by giving them greater control over their time. However, it also created new challenges, with lack of time and space, injuries due to sudden changes in activity, and anxiety around lockdown, putting limits on physical activity. We highlight future directions that must be addressed to maximise the benefits of physical activity technologies for people trying to stay active during major life disruptions.

Create Solidarity Networks: Dialogs in Reddit to Overcome Depression and Suicidal Ideation among Males

The emerging scientific literature examines masculinity and gender roles as risk factors for suicide ideation or suicide in young adults and adolescents. In this vein, recent studies show that certain traditional masculine norms are related to poorer mental health-related outcomes, which influences suicide and suicide ideation. This study contributes with new understandings about the associations between masculinity and suicidal ideation among males through Reddit debates in English. The posts with more interactions referring to masculinity in the topics gender and education have been selected on Reddit, emphasizing transformative personal experiences potentially helping avoid suicide ideation. Through the analysis of Reddit posts, it is shown how users can generate spaces to express the diverse ways to live with masculinity. The discussions on Reddit in the different areas selected demonstrate the existence of proposals on how to overcome fears and facilitate relaxation of norms regarding self-reliance to encourage help-seeking when feeling depressed and therefore at greater risk of suicide ideation. The results highlight the potential importance of platforms such as Reddit to create solidarity networks, showing multiple ways of being a man and demystifying dominant masculinity by sharing different experiences.

Perceived Costs versus Actual Benefits of Demographic Self-Disclosure in Online Support Groups

Millions of U.S. adults join online support groups to attain health goals, but the social ties they form are often too weak to provide the support they need. What impedes the strengthening of ties in such groups? We explore the role of demographic differences in causing the impediment and demographic self-disclosure in removing it. Using a field study of online quit-smoking groups complemented by three laboratory experiments, we find that members tend to hide demographic differences, concerned about poor social integration that will weaken their ties. However, the self-disclosures of demographic differences that naturally occur during group member discussions actually strengthen their ties, which in turn facilitates attainment of members' health goals. In other words, social ties in online groups are weak not because members are demographically different, but because they are reluctant to self-disclose their differences. If they do self-disclose, this breeds interpersonal connection, trumping any demographic differences among them. Data from both laboratory and field about two types of demographic difference-dyad-level dissimilarity and group-level minority status-provide convergent support for our findings.

Using Digital Platforms to Promote Blood Donation: Motivational and Preliminary Evidence from Latin America and Spain

The lack of blood donors is a global problem that prevents the demand for blood prompted by an ageing population and increased life expectancy from being met. The aim of this study was to conduct an initial exploration of the reasons for using digital platforms in blood donation. Using a Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework, microdata for 389 participants from Latin American countries and Spain, and Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), the study obtained three main prediction paths. The first two started from feelings of trust in the digital community and a positive mood state associated with a modern lifestyle, and they were linked to attitudes and behavioural control in the explanation of the intention to donate and actual blood donation. The third path started from modern lifestyles, and was linked to the subjective norm in the prediction of intention and actual donation. These paths represent one of the very first attempts to predict intentions of donation and collaborative donation by taking a PLS-SEM approach. By determining the paths underpinning collaborative blood donors' motives, the results of this study provide strong support for the usefulness of the TPB model within the context of digital platform use and blood donation.

The Role of Virtual Communities in Gambling and Gaming Behaviors: A Systematic Review

Gambling opportunities are facilitated by the growth of the Internet and social media platforms. Digital games also increasingly include monetary features, such as microtransactions, blurring the line between gambling and gaming. The Internet provides a variety of virtual communities for gamblers and gamers, but comprehensive research on these communities and their relevance in gambling and monetary gaming behaviors remains scarce. This paper summarizes research of online gambling and monetary gaming communities based on a systematic literature review. A systematic literature search was conducted from five databases: Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Social Science Premium Collection, and EBSCOhost. The search was limited to empirical articles that focused on gambling or gaming involving money and examined online interaction between gamblers or gamers. Preliminary search resulted in 1056 articles, from which 55 were selected for the analyses based on pre-determined criteria. According to results, online communities serve different functions in gambling and gaming behaviors. Gambling communities are typically forums for discussing and sharing gambling experiences, strategies, and tips as well as gambling problems, while gaming communities are inherently embedded inside a game being an essential part of the gaming experience. Identification with virtual communities influences gambling behavior and monetary gaming behavior through mechanisms of perceived norms, social influence, and community feedback. Whereas some gambling communities may provide protection from excessive gambling habits, gaming communities seem to solely motivate gaming behavior and purchase intentions. The role of online communities should be acknowledged in prevention and treatment of gambling and gaming problems.

Perception of peer advice in online health communities: Access to lay expertise

When seeking advice online about health concerns, forums dedicated to medical themes are increasingly becoming an appreciated source of information for many individuals. In online health communities, patients can ask questions or otherwise seek advice that is particularly relevant to them. While they may find some of the advice useful, other advice may be perceived as less valuable. By studying the advice-seeking, advice-giving, and advice-evaluation behaviours in one of the largest online health communities in Europe, this paper looks at what determines which advice is perceived as helpful, and why. Drawing on network theory, we analysed the interaction data of 108,569 users over twelve consecutive years based on all publicly available information of an established Q&A online health community. Utilising zero-inflated negative binominal modelling, our results show that advice received from others, who have similar predominant interests, is valued more when reaching out for lay expertise. If this advice is given by peers, who can also draw on expertise from other health areas, allowing for a combination of diverse "lay" expertise, the advice is valued even more. Advice provided by those who are quick to obtain the latest knowledge available in the larger community further reinforces these effects. Our findings offer an original view to understand the influence of lay expertise exchanged via online health communities and hold implications for both policy-makers and medical practitioners regarding their approach to patient-initiated use of social media for health-related reasons.

Communication that changes lives: an exploratory research on a Chinese online hypertension community

Purpose

Online health communities (OHCs) are attracting more and more healthy consumers, including patients, their families, caregivers and the general public. This paper aims to explore the themes and characteristics of patient-generated content (PGC) in Chinese OHCs.

Design/methodology/approach

Baidu Tieba for hypertension was selected as the research site. Online ethnography (netnography) approach was utilized to explore the PGC and health communication in the online hypertension community. The final database included 300 randomly sampled threads and their 3,187 reply posts and was further analyzed from three perspectives: health information needs, attitudes and psychological reactions to hypertension and social support exchange.

Findings

The members' health information needs were mainly concentrated on five aspects: causes, symptoms, measuring instrument, tests and diagnosis and treatment. Their attitudes and psychological reactions to hypertension varied with the context, for example, disease stage, health condition. Within the health communication, three types of social support – information support, emotional support and network support – were generated, transmitted and exchanged among members.

Practical implications

OHCs are able to serve as important source of health information and tool for health education. The implications and suggestions for health promotion of individuals, health information services optimization of OHCs and national health strategy plans were also discussed.

Originality/value

This is the first netnography study in information field on Chinese online hypertension community. This study provides a new perspective to explore the needs, attitudes and social support behaviors of Chinese hypertension population and also enables the Chinese experience of using OHCs to reduce health disparities to come to the world.

A new approach to capturing pain disclosure in daily life in-person and online

This feasibility study employed a new approach to capturing pain disclosure in face-to-face and online interactions, using a newly developed tool. In Study 1, 13 rheumatoid arthritis and 52 breast cancer patients wore the Electronically Activated Recorder to acoustically sample participants' natural conversations. Study 2 obtained data from two publicly available online social networks: fibromyalgia (343,439 posts) and rheumatoid arthritis (12,430 posts). Pain disclosure, versus non-pain disclosure, posts had a greater number of replies, and greater engagement indexed by language style matching. These studies yielded novel, multimethod evidence of how pain disclosure unfolds in naturally occurring social contexts in everyday life.

A Multi-Modal Family Peer Support-Based Program to Improve Quality of Life among Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients: A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study

Background: Pediatric brain tumor (PBT) survivors and their families are at risk for diminished psychosocial and quality of life outcomes. Community-based programs that leverage peer support in the context of integrative modalities such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) represent a promising avenue for meeting the multidimensional needs of survivors and their families. Methods: Parents and children were enrolled in a 12-week program that included weekly group TCM, a moderated private Facebook support group designed through social support and modeling theory, and weekly parent-only health behavior education and yoga. Process measures and quantitative and qualitative survey data was collected to gauge participant adherence, acceptability, and satisfaction, as well as exploratory outcomes. Results: Eleven parents completed surveys at all time points. Six of nine families attended at least 80% of the group TCM sessions, and eight of nine families interacted in the Facebook support group at least five days a week. Parents reported high levels of satisfaction and perceived benefits for the program. Baseline emotional distress, health behaviors, and QoL measurements improved during the three-month intervention. Qualitative data indicated parents perceived both in-person and the Facebook group peer support contributed to the benefits of the program. Conclusion: This feasibility study demonstrated that a multimodal peer support-based intervention that included in-person and online group interaction is feasible and acceptable to parents of pediatric brain tumor patients. Further research on interventions for caregivers that include in-person and online group-based peer support is warranted, with the goal of exploring similar outcomes in other childhood cancer diagnoses.

An agent-based model about the effects of fake news on a norovirus outbreak

BACKGROUND

Concern about health misinformation is longstanding, especially on the Internet.

METHODS

Using agent-based models, we considered the effects of such misinformation on a norovirus outbreak, and some methods for countering the possible impacts of "good" and "bad" health advice. The work explicitly models spread of physical disease and information (both online and offline) as two separate but interacting processes. The models have multiple stochastic elements; repeat model runs were made to identify parameter values that most consistently produced the desired target baseline scenario. Next, parameters were found that most consistently led to a scenario when outbreak severity was clearly made worse by circulating poor quality disease prevention advice. Strategies to counter "fake" health news were tested.

RESULTS

Reducing bad advice to 30% of total information or making at least 30% of people fully resistant to believing in and sharing bad health advice were effective thresholds to counteract the negative impacts of bad advice during a norovirus outbreak.

CONCLUSION

How feasible it is to achieve these targets within communication networks (online and offline) should be explored.

Factors of Engagement and Patient-Reported Outcomes in a Stage IV Breast Cancer Facebook Group

This study examines the factors of online engagement, and the relationship between online engagement and health expectations in a Stage IV breast cancer Facebook group. Members of the Facebook group completed a survey that assessed tie strength, homophily, and health expectations. A content analysis measured optimal social support, and Facebook analytics measured engagement. The results show optimal social support and tie strength are positively related to engagement. However, only optimal social support explains variance in engagement independent of tie strength and homophily. Additionally, the more engaged members are, the more positive their health expectations. The results emphasize the value of optimal social support and engagement in online support groups for individuals with Stage IV breast cancer.

Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together Within a Team-Based Physical Activity Intervention? A Social Network Analysis

BACKGROUND

Homophily is the tendency to associate with friends similar to ourselves. This study explored the effects of homophily on team formation in a physical activity challenge in which "captains" signed up their Facebook friends to form teams.

METHODS

This study assessed whether participants (n = 430) were more similar to their teammates than to nonteammates with regard to age, sex, education level, body mass index, self-reported and objectively measured physical activity, and negative emotional states; and whether captains were more similar to their own teammates than to nonteammates. Variability indices were calculated for each team, and a hypothetical variability index, representing that which would result from randomly assembled teams, was also calculated.

RESULTS

Within-team variability was less than that for random teams for all outcomes except education level and depression, with differences (SDs) ranging from +0.15 (self-reported physical activity) to +0.47 (age) (P < .001 to P = .001). Captains were similar to their teammates except in regard to age, with captains being 2.6 years younger (P = .003).

CONCLUSIONS

Results support hypotheses that self-selected teams are likely to contain individuals with similar characteristics, highlighting potential to leverage team-based health interventions to target specific populations by instructing individuals with risk characteristics to form teams to help change behavior.

A Relational View of Psychological Empowerment and Sense of Community in Academic Contexts: A Preliminary Study

Scholars need to pay attention to understand the factors that shape the interactions between individuals and social groups. Constructs like Psychological Sense of Community (PSoC) and Psychological Empowerment (PE) are powerful constructs used to evaluate the antecedents and the consequences of individual attachment to social settings. In parallel, recent advances in network analysis show that the position occupied within whole networks and ego-centric networks are relational factors that affect the subjective perception of membership to social groups. Studies that are conducted in organizational and community settings show strong associations between PSoC and PE. However, these connections have rarely been evaluated within natural settings such as the classroom context. On the other hand, although the theoretic basis of PSoC and PE claims that both processes are formed in a relational way, there are few studies that empirically evaluate the effects of social connectedness on the emergence of PSoC-referred to the classroom-and PE referred to academic-task development. The aim of this research is to determine the effects that the position occupied in formal and informal exchange networks induce on PSoC and PE dimensions. Sixty-four students enrolled in a master degree program (women = 68.8%, Mean age = 26.09, SD = 3.88) participated in this cross-sectional study. Multivariate analyses and network analyses were performed to test the hypotheses under study. The main research finding is that PSoC and PE are synergistic constructs that mutually shape to each other. In relational terms, by sending several nominations in informal networks, it is possible to generate notable impacts on some PSoC dimensions, while receipt of a wide number of nominations in formal contact networks is associated with high levels of PE. In addition, individuals who present high levels of PE are located in the core of formal exchange networks. These results are discussed in order to design actions to increase PSoC and PE in postgraduate academic settings.

Enhancing Online Patient Support through Health-Care Knowledge in Online Health Communities: A Descriptive Study

Online health communities (OHCs) should utilize health-care knowledge for enhancing online patient support. To examine the use of existing OHCs to identify the challenges and strategies of enhancing online patients’ decision-making support, we conducted a descriptive study to evaluate the information availability, user availability and knowledge usability in 100 carefully-selected health-related websites. On the basis of criteria for effective OHCs, we used three evaluation instruments for health-care professionals to review and score the websites. Questionnaire results were examined from the perspective of information, user and knowledge support. Results corroborate that over 80% of the websites facilitate effective social functions, whereas only 33% provide health-care decision-making services to online patients. Approximately 46% of them satisfy four or five effective OHCs’ criteria. Three of them only offer the functions of patients’ charts and journals to support health data management. Although the existing OHCs are facilitated with good social interaction and support, only a few can assist patients in making effective health-care decisions, not to mention properly using health-care knowledge support.

Your Health Buddies Matter: Preferential Selection and Social Influence on Weight Management in an Online Health Social Network

A growing number of online social networks are designed with the intention to promote health by providing virtual space wherein individuals can seek and share information and support with similar others. Research has shown that real-world social networks have a significant influence on one's health behavior and outcomes. However, there is a dearth of studies on how individuals form social networks in virtual space and whether such online social networks exert any impact on individuals' health outcomes. Built on the Multi-Theoretical Multilevel (MTML) framework and drawing from literature on social influence, this study examined the mechanisms underlying the formation of an online health social network and empirically tested social influence on individual health outcomes through the network. Situated in a weight management social networking site, the study tracked a health buddy network of 709 users and their weight management activities and outcomes for 4 months. Actor-based modeling was used to test the joint dynamics of preferential selection and social influence among health buddies. The results showed that baseline, inbreeding, and health status homophily significantly predicted preferential selection of health buddies in the weight management social networking site, whereas self-interest in seeking experiential health information did not. The study also found peer influence of online health buddy networks on individual weight outcomes, such that an individual's odds of losing weight increased if, on average, the individual's health buddies were losing weight.

Mechanisms of Communicating Health Information Through Facebook: Implications for Consumer Health Information Technology Design

BACKGROUND

Consumer health information technology (IT) solutions are designed to support patient health management and have the ability to facilitate patients' health information communication with their social networks. However, there is a need for consumer health IT solutions to align with patients' health management preferences for increased adoption of the technology. It may be possible to gain an understanding of patients' needs for consumer health IT supporting their health information communication with social networks by explicating how they have adopted and adapted social networking sites, such as Facebook, for this purpose.

OBJECTIVE

Our aim was to characterize patients' use of all communication mechanisms within Facebook for health information communication to provide insight into how consumer health IT solutions may be better designed to meet patients' communication needs and preferences.

METHODS

This study analyzed data about Facebook communication mechanisms use from a larger, three-phase, sequential, mixed-methods study. We report here on the results of the study's first phase: qualitative interviews (N=25). Participants were over 18, used Facebook, were residents or citizens of the United States, spoke English, and had a diagnosis consistent with type 2 diabetes. Participants were recruited through Facebook groups and pages. Participant interviews were conducted via Skype or telephone between July and September 2014. Data analysis was grounded in qualitative content analysis and the initial coding framework was informed by the findings of a previous study.

RESULTS

Participants' rationales for the use or disuse of a particular Facebook mechanism to communicate health information reflected six broad themes: (1) characteristics and circumstances of the person, (2) characteristics and circumstances of the relationship, (3) structure and composition of the social network, (4) content of the information, (5) communication purpose, and (6) attributes of the technology.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study showed that participants consider multiple factors when choosing a Facebook mechanism for health information communication. Factors included what information they intended to share, what they were trying to accomplish, attributes of technology, and attributes and communication practices of their social networks. There is a need for consumer health IT that allows for a range of choices to suit the intersectionality of participants' rationales. Technology that better meets patients' needs may lead to better self-management of health conditions, and therefore, improve overall health outcomes.

A call for research exploring social media influences on mothers' child feeding practices and childhood obesity risk

There is increasing interest in leveraging social media to prevent childhood obesity, however, the evidence base for how social media currently influences related behaviors and how interventions could be developed for these platforms is lacking. This commentary calls for research on the extent to which mothers use social media to learn about child feeding practices and the mechanisms through which social media influences their child feeding practices. Such formative research could be applied to the development and dissemination of evidence-based childhood obesity prevention programs that utilize social media. Mothers are identified as a uniquely important target audience for social media-based interventions because of their proximal influence on children's eating behavior and their high engagement with social media platforms. Understanding mothers' current behaviors, interests, and needs as they relate to their social media use and child feeding practices is an integral first step in the development of interventions that aim to engage mothers for obesity prevention. This commentary highlights the importance of mothers for childhood obesity prevention; discusses theoretical and analytic frameworks that can inform research on social media and mothers' child feeding practices; provides evidence that social media is an emerging context for social influences on mothers' attitudes and behaviors in which food is a salient topic; and suggests directions for future research.

The gene patent controversy on Twitter: a case study of Twitter users' responses to the CHEO lawsuit against Long QT gene patents

Background

The recent Canadian lawsuit on patent infringement, filed by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), has engendered a significant public debate on whether patenting genes should be legal in Canada. In part, this public debate has involved the use of social networking sites, such as Twitter. This case provides an opportunity to examine how Twitter was used in the context of this gene patent controversy.

Methods

We collected 310 English-language tweets that contained the keyword “gene patents” by using TOPSY.com and Twitter’s built-in search engine. A content analysis of the messages was conducted to establish the users’ perspectives on both CHEO’s court challenge and the broader controversy over the patenting of human DNA. More specifically, we analyzed the users’ demographics, geographic locations, and attitudes toward the CHEO position on gene patents and the patentability of human genes in principle.

Results

Our analysis has shown that messages tweeted by news media and health care organizations were re-tweeted most frequently in Twitter discussions regarding both the CHEO patent infringement lawsuit and gene patents in general. 34.8 % of tweets were supportive of CHEO, with 52.8 % of the supportive tweets suggesting that gene patents contravene patients’ rights to health care access. 17.6 % of the supportive tweets cited ethical and social concerns against gene patents. Nearly 40 % of tweets clearly expressed that human genes should not be patentable, and there were no tweets that presented perspectives favourable toward the patenting of human genes.

Conclusion

Access to healthcare and the use of genetic testing were the most important concerns raised by Twitter users in the context of the CHEO case. Our analysis of tweets reveals an expectation that the CHEO lawsuit will provide an opportunity to clear the confusion on gene patents by establishing a legal precedent on the patentability of human genes in Canada. In general, there were no tweets arguing in favour of gene patents. Given the emerging role of social media in framing the public dialogue on these issues, this sentiment could potentially have an impact on the nature and tone of the Canadian policy debate.

Technologies to measure and modify physical activity and eating environments

CONTEXT

The explosion of technologic advances in information capture and delivery offers unparalleled opportunities to assess and modify built and social environments in ways that can positively impact health behaviors. This paper highlights some potentially transformative current and emerging trends in the technology arena applicable to environmental context-based assessment and intervention relevant to physical activity and dietary behaviors.

EVIDENCE ACQUISITION

A team of experts convened in 2013 to discuss the main issues related to technology use in assessing and changing built environments for health behaviors particularly relevant to obesity prevention. Each expert was assigned a specific domain to describe, commensurate with their research and expertise in the field, along with examples of specific applications. This activity was accompanied by selective examination of published literature to cover the main issues and elucidate relevant applications of technologic tools and innovations in this field.

EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS

Decisions concerning which technology examples to highlight were reached through discussion and consensus-building among the team of experts. Two levels of impact are highlighted: the "me" domain, which primarily targets measurement and intervention activities aimed at individual-level behaviors and their surrounding environments; and the "we" domain, which generally focuses on aggregated data aimed at groups and larger population segments and locales.

CONCLUSIONS

The paper ends with a set of challenges and opportunities for significantly advancing the field. Key areas for progress include data collection and expansion, managing technologic considerations, and working across sectors to maximize the population potential of behavioral health technologies.

The Social Origins of Networks and Diffusion

Recent research on social contagion has demonstrated significant effects of network topology on the dynamics of diffusion. However, network topologies are not given a priori. Rather, they are patterns of relations that emerge from individual and structural features of society, such as population composition, group heterogeneity, homophily, and social consolidation. Following Blau and Schwartz, the author develops a model of social network formation that explores how social and structural constraints on tie formation generate emergent social topologies and then explores the effectiveness of these social networks for the dynamics of social diffusion. Results show that, at one extreme, high levels of consolidation can create highly balkanized communities with poor integration of shared norms and practices. As suggested by Blau and Schwartz, reducing consolidation creates more crosscutting circles and significantly improves the dynamics of social diffusion across the population. However, the author finds that further reducing consolidation creates highly intersecting social networks that fail to support the widespread diffusion of norms and practices, indicating that successful social diffusion can depend on moderate to high levels of structural consolidation.

Using social media for support and feedback by mental health service users: thematic analysis of a twitter conversation

BACKGROUND

Internet based social media websites represent a growing space for interpersonal interaction. Research has been conducted in relation to the potential role of social media in the support of individuals with physical health conditions. However, limited research exists exploring such utilisation by individuals with experience of mental health problems. It could be proposed that access to wider support networks and knowledge could be beneficial for all users, although this positive interpretation has been challenged. The present study focusses on a specific discussion as a case study to assess the role of the website www.twitter.com as a medium for interpersonal communication by individuals with experience of mental disorder and possible source of feedback to mental health service providers.

METHOD

An electronic search was performed to identify material contributing to an online conversation entitled #dearmentalhealthprofessionals. Output from the search strategy was combined in such a way that repeated material was eliminated and all individual material anonymised. The remaining textual material was reviewed and combined in a thematic analysis to identify common themes of discussion.

RESULTS

515 unique communications were identified relating to the specified conversation. The majority of the material related to four overarching thematic headings: The impact of diagnosis on personal identity and as a facilitator for accessing care; Balance of power between professional and service user; Therapeutic relationship and developing professional communication; and Support provision through medication, crisis planning, service provision and the wider society. Remaining material was identified as being direct expression of thanks, self-referential in its content relating to the on-going conversation or providing a link to external resources and further discussion.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study demonstrates the utility of online social media as both a discursive space in which individuals with experience of mental disorder may share information and develop understanding, and a medium of feedback to mental health service providers. Further research is required to establish potential individual benefit from the utilisation of such networks, its suitability as a means of service provision feedback and the potential role for, and user acceptability of, mental health service providers operating within the space.