Dual effects of social support seeking in patient-centric online healthcare communities: A longitudinal study

Liu, Na; Yu, Tong; Chan, Hock Chuan

doi:10.1016/j.im.2020.103270

Cited by 14 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…Since online healthcare service can be regarded as the information seeking process of patients [ 28 ], it is essential for patients to understand doctors’ information through doctor-patient communication. In doctor-patient communication, many studies concern the language used by doctors [ 2 , 26 ].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In E-health, text-based electronic communication is an important and effective way [ 37 ]. The role of doctor-patient communication texts should be emphasized for the following two reasons: (1) medical services provided by doctors are mainly delivered through doctor-patient communication texts, which would influence the process of service [ 57 ]; (2) doctor-patient communication texts contain most of the medical information that patients seek for in E-health [ 28 , 49 ], which would directly influence the service outcome [ 57 ]. The communication texts are received and processed by patients to retrieve medical knowledge and advice [ 49 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Should doctors use or avoid medical terms? The influence of medical terms on service quality of E-health

Zhang

Wang

Yan

2021

Electron Commer Res

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With epidemics and pandemics like COVID-19, many offline healthcare services have been suspended and shifted to online, where patients and doctors typically communicate by typing texts. The limited communication poses a threat to the service quality of E-health, and also raises higher demand on the language skills of doctors, in which medical terms are a common concern. Traditional studies of offline healthcare mostly hold a negative attitude towards the use of medical terms by doctors. However, should we still advise doctors to avoid using medical terms in E-health? To answer this question, this paper conducts a study combining technical and empirical analyses based on real data. In this paper, a novel unsupervised text-mining method is proposed to automatically identify medical terms with crowd wisdom from large-scale doctor-patient communication texts. Then, a TREC-type experiment is carried out to validate the proposed method in terms of Precision, Recall, and -measure, demonstrating that it can identify accurate and comprehensive medical terms. Based on the identified medical terms, an empirical analysis is conducted to verify the influence of medical terms used by doctors on the service quality of E-health. The analysis results show that for patients with low health literacy, the use of medical terms by doctors would decrease their service quality. However, for patients with high health literacy, the use of medical terms by doctors can significantly increase their service quality, revealing that doctors could improve their service quality in E-health by adjusting their medical term usage according to the health literacy of patients.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Should doctors use or avoid medical terms? The influence of medical terms on service quality of E-health

Zhang

Wang

Yan

2021

Electron Commer Res

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“…, 2018). Users in OHCs can seek social support through initiating threads or being exposed to the threads initiated by other users (Liu et al. , 2020a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social support received indirectly may not be necessary for users to cope with the problems and negative feelings in self-management (Liu et al. , 2020a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unconscious or conscious? The impacts of habit and social support receipt on older adults' continued participation in online health communities

Zuo

2022

AJIM

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PurposeOnline health communities (OHCs) can be complementary to healthcare systems to improve the health behaviors of older adults with chronic diseases. This study aims to examine the impacts of habit and social support receipt on older adults' continued participation in OHCs. Particularly, the authors discussed the influences of social support received in two ways: social support received by initiating threads (direct social support receipt) and social support received by being exposed to the threads initiated by others (indirect social support receipt).Design/methodology/approachBased on the dual-process model (i.e. conscious process and unconscious process), the authors developed the research model. Data from one of the biggest online diabetes communities in Europe were collected. Besides, we used the support vector machine algorithm for social support classification and used the Cox proportion hazards model for model validation.FindingsOlder adults' continued participation is influenced by habit and indirect informational support. Habit moderates the relationship between direct informational support receipt and older adults' continued participation. Furthermore, direct and indirect emotional support receipt are both not associated with older adults' continued participation, regardless of their habit strength.Originality/valueThis is the first study investigating older adults' continued participation in OHCs based on the dual-process model. The findings of this study reveal that older adults' continued participation is determined by both the habit and specific conscious evaluation of benefits based on the social support receipt.

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Consumer (dis)engagement coping profiles using online services in managing health‐related stressors

Keeling

Ruyter

Laing

2022

Psychology and Marketing

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Dual effects of social support seeking in patient-centric online healthcare communities: A longitudinal study

Cited by 14 publications

References 86 publications

Should doctors use or avoid medical terms? The influence of medical terms on service quality of E-health

Should doctors use or avoid medical terms? The influence of medical terms on service quality of E-health

Unconscious or conscious? The impacts of habit and social support receipt on older adults' continued participation in online health communities

Consumer (dis)engagement coping profiles using online services in managing health‐related stressors

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