Osadchiy Vadim, Mills Jesse Nelson, Eleswarapu Sriram Venkata
Division of Andrology, Department of Urology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California,, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Consortium for Health Activity on Social Media, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California,, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Mar 10;22(3):e16728. doi: 10.2196/16728.
Couples struggling with infertility are increasingly turning to the internet for infertility-related content and to connect with others. Most of the published data on infertility and the internet only address the experiences of women, with limited studies focusing exclusively on internet discussions on male factor infertility.
The aim of this study was to understand the concerns and experiences of discussants on an online male infertility community and to provide insight into their perceptions of interactions with health care professionals.
Using the large-scale data analytics tool BigQuery, we extracted all posts in the r/MaleInfertility community (877 members) of the social media website and discussion board Reddit from November 2017 to October 2018. We performed a qualitative thematic analysis and quantitative semantic analysis using Language Inquiry and Word Count 2015 of the extracted posts to identify dominant themes and subthemes of discussions. Descriptive statistics and semantic analytic Z-scores were computed.
From the analysis of 97 posts, notable themes and subthemes emerged: 70 (72%) posts shared personal experiences, including feeling emasculated or isolated or describing a negative (28/97, 29%), positive (13/97, 13%), or neutral (56/97, 58%) experience with a health care professional; 19% (18/97) of the posts posed questions about personal semen analysis results. On the basis of semantic analysis, posts by men had higher authenticity scores (Z=3.44; P<.001), suggesting more honest or personal texts, but lower clout scores (Z=4.57; P<.001), suggesting a more tentative or anxious style of writing, compared with posts by women.
To our knowledge, this study represents the first evaluation of a social media community focused exclusively on male infertility using mixed methodology. These results suggest a role for physicians on social media to engage with patients and connect them to accurate resources, in addition to opportunities to improve in-office patient education.
正在与不孕症作斗争的夫妇越来越多地转向互联网获取与不孕相关的内容，并与他人建立联系。大多数已发表的关于不孕症和互联网的数据仅涉及女性的经历，专门关注男性因素不孕症的互联网讨论的研究有限。
本研究的目的是了解在线男性不育症社区讨论者的担忧和经历，并深入了解他们对与医疗保健专业人员互动的看法。
我们使用大规模数据分析工具BigQuery，提取了2017年11月至2018年10月社交媒体网站和讨论板Reddit的r/男性不育症社区（877名成员）中的所有帖子。我们使用2015年语言查询和词数工具对提取的帖子进行了定性主题分析和定量语义分析，以确定讨论的主要主题和子主题。计算了描述性统计数据和语义分析Z分数。
通过对97篇帖子的分析，出现了显著的主题和子主题：70篇（72%）帖子分享了个人经历，包括感到 emasculated（无能或自卑）或孤立，或描述与医疗保健专业人员的负面（28/97，29%）、正面（13/97，13%）或中性（56/97，58%）经历；19%（18/97）的帖子对个人精液分析结果提出了问题。基于语义分析，与女性帖子相比，男性帖子的真实性得分更高（Z=3.44；P<.001），表明文本更诚实或更具个人色彩，但影响力得分更低（Z=4.57；P<.001），表明写作风格更试探性或焦虑。
据我们所知，本研究代表了首次使用混合方法对专门关注男性不育症的社交媒体社区进行的评估。这些结果表明，除了有机会改善门诊患者教育外，医生在社交媒体上与患者互动并将他们与准确的资源联系起来也能发挥作用。
