Authors: Jacqueline L Bender M Carolina JimenezMarroquin Lorraine E Ferris Joel Katz Alejandro R Jadad
Publish Date: 2012/11/23
Volume: 21, Issue: 5, Pages: 1253-1263
Abstract
Using Google we identified websites with a string of computermediated communication terms and individual queries of three to five words of online community terms This was complemented by a review of website resource lists and personal libraries Two reviewers independently extracted information on their general characteristics and number of members and message board posts A coding scheme guided content analysisWe found 111 websites Most sites n = 64 658 had a broad focus eg health cancer or general One third n = 38 342 were exclusive to breast cancer and 11 catered to specific disease characteristics The majority were American n = 79 752 nonprofit 550 and moderated 695 Most moderators 857 were staff or community members eight sites were moderated by health professionals Greater than onethird of sites n = 40 36 were initiated by breast cancer survivors or loved ones Breast cancerspecific sites contained a total of 4186275 posts Onethird n = 10 contained 934 of posts displaying over 100000 posts each As of April 3 2012 eight sites were discontinuedThis work is a component of JLB’s PhD thesis at the University of Toronto JLB has full control over all primary data and agrees to allow the journal to review the data if requested JLB wishes to acknowledge the guidance of her PhD thesis committee LE Ferris PhD CPsych LLM ADR LLM Admin Law J Katz PhD CPsych and AR Jadad MD DPhil FRCPC This work was supported by CIHR Strategic Doctoral Fellowships in Health Care Technology and Place and Cell Signaling in Mucosal Inflammation and Pain
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