Department of Telecommunications, University of Georgia.
Health Commun. 2011 Mar;26(2):185-97. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2010.544283.
Past studies on the efficacy of participation in online cancer support groups have primarily focused on the role of expression in the accrual of health benefits for participants. Unfortunately, few steps have been taken to determine whether this observed effect arises solely from the internal mental processes underlying the act of expressing or, perhaps, owes something to a nuanced, multidimensional understanding of expression that includes reception of responses to what is expressed. To test for the multilayered effect, we attend to one of the key concepts in the online support community scholarship: empathy. Our findings suggest that it is a combination of empathy expression and reception that is crucial to attaining optimal benefits for cancer patients. Further, our finding supports the buffering hypothesis that empathic expression provides a salutary effect for patients who experienced a higher degree of concern associated with their cancer diagnosis and follow-up treatments.
过去关于参与在线癌症支持小组的功效的研究主要集中在表达对参与者获得健康益处的作用上。不幸的是，很少有步骤来确定这种观察到的效果是否仅仅来自于表达行为背后的内在心理过程，或者是否可能归因于对表达的细微、多维的理解，包括对所表达内容的回应的接收。为了测试这种多层次的效果，我们关注在线支持社区学术研究中的一个关键概念：同理心。我们的研究结果表明，同理心表达和接收的结合对于癌症患者获得最佳益处至关重要。此外，我们的发现支持了缓冲假设，即同理心表达为那些经历与癌症诊断和后续治疗相关的更高程度的关注的患者提供了有益的效果。
