Qualitative study of online discussion forums about acne

Abstract

In this issue of the BJD, Santer et al.1 report on a study where they conducted an inductive thematic analysis of online posts collected from open access UK forums, in which users discussed the use of oral antibiotics for acne. Qualitative researchers are increasingly making use of online forums, which provide a searchable resource that can be used by people for advice and information, with the potential to impact both positively and negatively on people's health behaviours. 2 Santer et al.selected four types of forums, including a general forum, an acne specific forum, a medical forum and a parenting focused forum, so as to include a range of diverse perspectives. The final data corpus included 65 discussions from 294 participants, resulting in 136 pages of data.