McCaig Duncan, Elliott Mark T, Siew Cynthia Sq, Walasek Lukasz, Meyer Caroline
Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
JMIR Ment Health. 2019 Apr 22;6(4):e12555. doi: 10.2196/12555.
Understanding the characteristics of commenters on mental health-related online forums is vital for the development of effective psychological interventions in these communities. The way in which commenters interact can enhance our understanding of their characteristics.
Using eating disorder-related (EDR) forums as an example, this study detailed a methodology that aimed to determine subtypes of mental health-related forums and profile their commenters based on the other forums to which they contributed.
The researchers identified all public EDR forums (with ≥500 contributing commenters between March 2017 and February 2018) on a large Web-based discussion platform (Reddit). A mixed-methods approach comprising network analysis with community detection, text mining, and manual review identified subtypes of EDR forums. For each subtype, another network analysis with community detection was conducted using the EDR forum commenter overlap between 50 forums on which the commenters also commented. The topics of forums in each detected community were then manually reviewed to identify the shared interests of each subtype of EDR forum commenters.
Six subtypes of EDR forums were identified, to which 14,024 commenters had contributed. The results focus on 2 subtypes-proeating disorder and thinspiration-and communities of commenters within both subtypes. Within the proeating disorder subtype, 3 communities of commenters were detected that related to the body and eating, mental health, and women, appearance, and mixed topics. With regard to the thinspiration group, 78.17% (849/1086) of commenters had also commented on pornographic forums and 16.66% (181/1086) had contributed to proeating disorder forums.
The article exemplifies a methodology that provides insight into subtypes of mental health-related forums and the characteristics of their commenters. The findings have implications for future research and Web-based psychological interventions. With the publicly available data and code provided, researchers can easily reproduce the analyses or utilize the methodology to investigate other mental health-related forums.
了解心理健康相关在线论坛评论者的特征对于在这些社区开展有效的心理干预至关重要。评论者的互动方式有助于我们更好地理解他们的特征。
以饮食失调相关（EDR）论坛为例，本研究详细介绍了一种方法，旨在确定心理健康相关论坛的子类型，并根据评论者参与的其他论坛来描述他们的特征。
研究人员在一个大型网络讨论平台（Reddit）上识别出所有公开的EDR论坛（2017年3月至2018年2月期间有≥500名参与评论者）。采用包括网络分析与社区检测、文本挖掘和人工审查在内的混合方法确定EDR论坛的子类型。对于每个子类型，使用评论者也参与评论的50个论坛之间的EDR论坛评论者重叠情况进行另一次网络分析与社区检测。然后对每个检测到的社区中的论坛主题进行人工审查，以确定EDR论坛评论者每个子类型的共同兴趣。
确定了EDR论坛的六个子类型，14,024名评论者参与其中。结果聚焦于两个子类型——支持饮食失调和瘦灵感——以及这两个子类型内的评论者群体。在支持饮食失调子类型中，检测到三个评论者群体，分别与身体和饮食、心理健康以及女性、外表和混合主题相关。对于瘦灵感群体，78.17%（849/1086）的评论者也参与了色情论坛的评论，16.66%（181/1086）的评论者参与了支持饮食失调论坛的评论。
本文举例说明了一种方法，该方法能深入了解心理健康相关论坛的子类型及其评论者的特征。研究结果对未来研究和基于网络的心理干预具有启示意义。通过提供公开可用的数据和代码，研究人员可以轻松重现分析过程或利用该方法调查其他心理健康相关论坛。
