Business Management & Organisation Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
Business Management & Organisation Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2021 May;277:113117. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113117. Epub 2020 Sep 2.
When seeking advice online about health concerns, forums dedicated to medical themes are increasingly becoming an appreciated source of information for many individuals. In online health communities, patients can ask questions or otherwise seek advice that is particularly relevant to them. While they may find some of the advice useful, other advice may be perceived as less valuable. By studying the advice-seeking, advice-giving, and advice-evaluation behaviours in one of the largest online health communities in Europe, this paper looks at what determines which advice is perceived as helpful, and why. Drawing on network theory, we analysed the interaction data of 108,569 users over twelve consecutive years based on all publicly available information of an established Q&A online health community. Utilising zero-inflated negative binominal modelling, our results show that advice received from others, who have similar predominant interests, is valued more when reaching out for lay expertise. If this advice is given by peers, who can also draw on expertise from other health areas, allowing for a combination of diverse "lay" expertise, the advice is valued even more. Advice provided by those who are quick to obtain the latest knowledge available in the larger community further reinforces these effects. Our findings offer an original view to understand the influence of lay expertise exchanged via online health communities and hold implications for both policy-makers and medical practitioners regarding their approach to patient-initiated use of social media for health-related reasons.
当人们在网上寻求健康问题的建议时，专门针对医学主题的论坛越来越成为许多人的一个受欢迎的信息来源。在在线健康社区中，患者可以提出问题或寻求特别适合他们的建议。虽然他们可能会发现一些建议有用，但其他建议可能被认为价值较低。通过研究欧洲最大的在线健康社区之一的寻求建议、提供建议和评估建议的行为，本文探讨了是什么决定了哪些建议被认为是有帮助的，以及为什么。本文利用网络理论，基于一个成熟的问答式在线健康社区的所有公开信息，分析了 108569 名用户在 12 年中的交互数据。利用零膨胀负二项式模型，我们的研究结果表明，在寻求非专业知识时，从具有相似主要兴趣的其他人那里获得的建议更有价值。如果这些建议是由同龄人提供的，他们也可以借鉴其他健康领域的专业知识，从而结合多样化的“非专业”知识，那么这些建议的价值就更高。那些能够快速获取更大社区中最新知识的人提供的建议进一步强化了这些效果。我们的研究结果提供了一种理解通过在线健康社区交换的非专业知识的影响的新视角，并对政策制定者和医疗从业者在处理患者出于健康原因而使用社交媒体的问题上具有启示意义。
