Scoping review protocol on the use of social media for health research purposes

Athletes' access to, attitudes towards and experiences of help-seeking for mental health: a scoping review protocol

INTRODUCTION

Athletes are not immune to mental health issues but are less likely to seek help than non-athletes and experience barriers including lack of access to services, lack of knowledge as to how to access services and negative past experiences for help-seeking. Formal (eg, university counsellors, general practitioners and psychologists) and semi-formal (eg, academic tutor, sports coach and physiotherapist) sources of support provided in healthcare, the sport context and higher education are key places for athletes to seek help for mental health, and there is a need to synthesise the evidence on athletes' access, attitudes to and experiences of these services, to understand how to improve these services specific to athletes' mental health needs. This protocol outlines a scoping review that will be used to map the evidence, identify gaps in the literature and summarise findings on athletes' access, attitudes to and experiences of help-seeking for their mental health.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

The methodological frameworks of Arksey and O'Malley (2005), Levac et al (2010) and the Joanna Briggs Institute (2020 and 2021) were used to inform this scoping review protocol alongside the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols checklist and published scoping review protocols within sport and health. The six stages of Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework have been used for this scoping review. The searches were conducted between 30 March 2022 and 3 April 2022 in the following databases: APA PsycINFO (via OVID), Embase (via Ovid), MEDLINE (via Ovid), APA PsycArticles Full Text (via OVID), Web of Science Core Collection, SPORTDiscus (via EBSCO), CINAHL (via EBSCO), Scopus, ProQuest (Education Database), ProQuest (Education Collection), ProQuest (Health & Medical Collection), ProQuest (Nursing & Allied Health database), ProQuest (Psychology Database), ProQuest (Public Health Database) and ProQuest (Sports Medicine & Education). The main inclusion criteria of this review are: papers that focus on past help-seeking behaviour, attitudes towards help-seeking and future behavioural intentions, papers that refer to formal and semi-formal sources of support and peer-reviewed literature, primary research articles, systematic or scoping reviews and interventions. During title and abstract screening and full-text review, at least two reviewers will be involved. Data to be extracted from studies includes: details of the study population, whether the paper focuses on formal and/or semi-formal sources of support and whether the focus is on access, attitudes or experiences to help-seeking for mental health.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The evidence will be mapped numerically and through content analysis to describe studies and highlight key concepts, themes and gaps in the literature. The published scoping review will be disseminated to relevant stakeholders and policymakers including those in healthcare, the sporting context and the higher education system. The resulting outputs will be in the form of both peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed publications (eg, multimedia in the form of a blog post and at conferences). The dissemination plan will be informed by patient and public involvement. Ethics approval was not required for this study.

Medical Education e-Professionalism (MEeP) framework; from conception to development

BACKGROUND

Medical professionalism education intends to produce virtuous and humanistic healthcare professionals who demonstrate perseverance and professional integrity. However, today's medicine has embodied a mammoth transformation of medical practice towards sns and the digital realm. Such paradigm shift has challenged the medical professional's values, behaviors, and identities, and the distinct boundaries between personal and professional lives are blurred. This study aims to develop a framework for healthcare professionals coping with the challenges of medical professionalism in the digital realm.

METHODS

We followed a systematic approach for the development of a framework about e-professionalism. Qualitative data was collected from a systematic review and a delphi study, while quantitative data was collected by administering a validated questionnaire social networking sites for medical education (snsme). Subsequently, categorization of the selected data and identifying concepts, deconstruction and further categorizing concepts (philosophical triangulation), integration of concepts (theoretical triangulation), and synthesis and resynthesis of concepts were performed.

RESULTS

The initial process yielded six overlapping concepts from personal, professional, character (implicit) and characteristic (explicit) domains: environment, behavior, competence, virtues, identity, and mission. Further integration of data was done for the development of the medical education e-professionalism (meep) framework with a central concept of a commitment to mission. The mission showed deep connections with values (conformity, beneficence, universalism, and integrity), behaviours (communication, self-awareness, tolerance, power), and identity (reflection, conscientiousness, self-directed, self-actualization). The data demonstrated that all medical professionals require updated expertise in sns participation.

CONCLUSION

The meep framework recognises a mission-based social contract by the medical community. This mission is largely driven by professional values, behaviors and identity. Adherence to digital standards, accountability, empathy, sensitivity, and commitment to society are essential elements of the meep framework.

The Use of Social Media for Health Research Purposes: Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

As social media are increasingly used worldwide, more and more scientists are relying on them for their health-related projects. However, social media features, methodologies, and ethical issues are unclear so far because, to our knowledge, there has been no overview of this relatively young field of research.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review aimed to provide an evidence map of the different uses of social media for health research purposes, their fields of application, and their analysis methods.

METHODS

We followed the scoping review methodologies developed by Arksey and O'Malley and the Joanna Briggs Institute. After developing search strategies based on keywords (eg, social media, health research), comprehensive searches were conducted in the PubMed/MEDLINE and Web of Science databases. We limited the search strategies to documents written in English and published between January 1, 2005, and April 9, 2020. After removing duplicates, articles were screened at the title and abstract level and at the full text level by two independent reviewers. One reviewer extracted data, which were descriptively analyzed to map the available evidence.

RESULTS

After screening 1237 titles and abstracts and 407 full texts, 268 unique papers were included, dating from 2009 to 2020 with an average annual growth rate of 32.71% for the 2009-2019 period. Studies mainly came from the Americas (173/268, 64.6%, including 151 from the United States). Articles used machine learning or data mining techniques (60/268) to analyze the data, discussed opportunities and limitations of the use of social media for research (59/268), assessed the feasibility of recruitment strategies (45/268), or discussed ethical issues (16/268). Communicable (eg, influenza, 40/268) and then chronic (eg, cancer, 24/268) diseases were the two main areas of interest.

CONCLUSIONS

Since their early days, social media have been recognized as resources with high potential for health research purposes, yet the field is still suffering from strong heterogeneity in the methodologies used, which prevents the research from being compared and generalized. For the field to be fully recognized as a valid, complementary approach to more traditional health research study designs, there is now a need for more guidance by types of applications of social media for health research, both from a methodological and an ethical perspective.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

RR2-10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040671.