Neuroepidemiology Unit (NEU), Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne , Carlton, Australia.
School of Allied Health, Australian Catholic University , Fitzroy, Australia.
Inform Health Soc Care. 2020 Oct 1;45(4):374-384. doi: 10.1080/17538157.2020.1755975. Epub 2020 Jun 8.
We aimed to describe website traffic and qualitatively analyze an e-health community discussion forum. Participants in this study were people affected by multiple sclerosis visiting the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis (OMS) website. This mixed methods study combined descriptive analysis of website traffic over 7 years and 1 month, and qualitative analysis of 1 week of posts in the meditation topic, coded into theme groups using qualitative thematic analysis. There were 166 meditation topics posted with 21,530 initial views of primary post and 785 sub-post responses. Meditation posts and sub-posts received 368,713 replies. Number of views increased from 4,684 in 2011 to over 80,000 in 2017, a considerably greater rate of increase than overall traffic. Qualitative analysis of posts on the meditation forum identified themes of barriers and enablers to utilization of meditation resources. Enablement themes dominated, observed across six of the seven theme groups with various forms of positive social and emotional support to learn and practice meditation. One theme, negative emotion, was identified as a barrier. The OMS peer-to-peer patient online discussion forum serves important functions in encouraging, educating and enabling its growing online community. Our analysis may help improve and innovate online support for lifestyle management in many chronic diseases.
我们旨在描述网站流量，并对电子健康社区讨论论坛进行定性分析。本研究的参与者是受多发性硬化症影响的人群，他们访问了多发性硬化症克服（OMS）网站。这项混合方法研究结合了对 7 年 1 个月的网站流量的描述性分析，以及对冥想主题中 1 周帖子的定性分析，使用定性主题分析将帖子编码为主题组。共发布了 166 个冥想主题，有 21530 次对主帖的初始浏览和 785 次子帖回复。冥想帖和子帖共收到 368713 次回复。浏览量从 2011 年的 4684 次增加到 2017 年的 8 万多次，增长率明显高于整体流量。对冥想论坛帖子的定性分析确定了利用冥想资源的障碍和促进因素主题。启用主题占主导地位，在七个主题组中的六个主题组中都观察到了不同形式的积极社交和情感支持，以学习和实践冥想。一个主题，即负面情绪，被确定为障碍。OMS 患者对患者的在线讨论论坛在鼓励、教育和促进其不断发展的在线社区方面发挥着重要作用。我们的分析可能有助于改善和创新许多慢性疾病的生活方式管理的在线支持。
