Hystersisters: messages of social support in an online health support group for women

ABSTRACT

Background: Online social support groups have become a popular source of health information for patients and the comments exchanged there can be regarded as a kind of social support.

Purpose: The aim of this qualitative study was to explore and categorize messages of social support exchanged by hysterectomy patients who visited http://www.hystersisters.com during a six-week period. Two questions were examined: (a) which types of social support are most frequently exchanged on hystersisters.com? and (b) in what ways do women exchange social support on hystersisters.com?

Method: A total of 200 messages posted were selected for analysis. Using Cutruna and Suhr’s coding framework and a grounded theory approach, messages were categorized within the coding framework and then analyzed to explore other emerging themes.

Results: Findings revealed that informational and emotional support were exchanged most frequently, followed by esteem support, with network and tangible aid as the least frequently exchanged forms of support. Affection and relational support were the most frequently used sub-categories of social support overall, creating a unique sense of community that helped users to transcend their circumstances. Findings also revealed that the sharing of advice and encouragement through personal narratives promoted reciprocal self-disclosure and community-building.

Conclusions: Further study should investigate which forms of social support are most effective in health-related online support groups and whether these forms of support result in feelings of self-efficacy, better interactions with health providers, and/or improved health outcomes. Recommendations for practitioners and suggestions for future research are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Online social support groups
• health communication
• social support
• internet and health
• health education
• women’s health
• interpersonal communication
• computer-mediated communication

Acknowledgment

The author thanks Kathy Kelley, webmaster of hystersisters.com.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethics approval

All of the research reported in this article has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. Because the site users in this study were not individually identifiable, their postings were publicly available, and the researcher had no interaction with them, the Institutional Research Board (IRB) of the researcher's institution did not require human subjects review. The founder and CEO of hystersisters.com authorized the researcher to gather and share data from the discussion boards. Users of the site were not made aware that their postings might be used in research. All content and tables are created by the author. All datasets were gathered and analyzed by the author. This article has been submitted to only the Journal of Communication in Healthcare.

Notes on contributor

Caroline S. Parsons is an assistant professor at The University of Alabama in the Department of Communication Studies. Her research focuses on interpersonal communication, health communication, and social support.

ORCID

Caroline S. Parsons http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6295-8308