Dataset Information

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The role of online health communities (OHCs) in patient empowerment is growing and has been increasingly studied in recent years. Research has focused primarily on individualistic conception of patients' empowerment, with much less attention paid to the role of OHCs in the development of patients' collective empowerment. Although OHCs have immense potential for empowerment that goes beyond the individual, the concept and scale of collective empowerment in OHCs have not yet been developed or validated.

Objective

This study aimed to develop an instrument for measuring collective empowerment in online health communities (CE-OHC) and to test its quality by investigating its factorial structure, reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity.

Methods

The CE-OHC scale was developed according to a strict methodology for developing valid and reliable scales. An initial set of 20 items was first tested in the pilot study conducted in 2016 using a sample of 280 registered users of Slovenia's largest OHC. A refined version with 11 items was tested in the main study conducted in 2018 on a random sample of 30,000 registered users of the same OHC. The final sample comprised 784 users. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to investigate the factorial structure, discriminant validity, and convergent validity of the scale. Cronbach alpha coefficient was used to determine the CE-OHC scale's internal consistency. To establish the predictive validity, ordinary least squares regression was performed to test the role of CE-OHC in users' civic participation.

Results

The EFA resulted in a two-factor solution, and the two factors-knowledge of resources and resource mobilization for collective action-together explain 63.8% of the variance. The second-order CFA demonstrated a good fit to the data (root mean square error of approximation=0.07) and the scale had a good internal consistency (alpha=.86). Although evidence of the scale's convergent validity was partially provided, discriminant validity of the scale remained unconfirmed. Overall, CE-OHC was confirmed to be a predictor of users' civic participation, but the influence was somewhat weak and inconsistent across two subscales.

Conclusions

The proposed CE-OHC scale is a reliable and relatively valid instrument and serves as a good baseline to advance the measurement of collective empowerment in OHC contexts. This is the first scale developed for this purpose, and future research should focus on the development of a clear nomological network of the collective empowerment construct in relation to the OHC settings.

SUBMITTER: Atanasova S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6893566 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation.

Atanasova Sara S Petric Gregor G

Journal of medical Internet research 20191120 11

<h4>Background</h4>The role of online health communities (OHCs) in patient empowerment is growing and has been increasingly studied in recent years. Research has focused primarily on individualistic conception of patients' empowerment, with much less attention paid to the role of OHCs in the development of patients' collective empowerment. Although OHCs have immense potential for empowerment that goes beyond the individual, the concept and scale of collective empowerment in OHCs have not yet bee ...[more]

PMID: 31746772

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Project description:BackgroundThe use of online resources has changed how people manage health care processes. Patients seek information about health conditions, guidance in treatment, and support from peers online, complementary to traditional health care trajectories. Online communities have the potential to contribute to the quality of care by increasing patient empowerment; however, there is a gap in research regarding in what way online communities contribute to patient empowerment.ObjectiveWe synthesized research regarding how online communities contribute to patient empowerment to address the research question "In what ways can participation in online communities support patient empowerment?" by studying how patient empowerment is operationalized in different studies. The definition of patient empowerment used in this paper is enablement for people to develop mastery over actions and control over decisions that influence their lives. The mastery is both through processes and outcomes of the development.MethodsA systematic review was conducted by searching in the following databases: Scopus, ACM Digital Library, EBSCO (CINAHL and MEDLINE), PubMed, and Web of Science. In total, there were 1187 papers after excluding duplicates, and through selection processes using an analytical framework with definitions of patient empowerment and related concepts, 33 peer-reviewed papers were included.ResultsFindings indicated that online communities support patient empowerment both as a process and as outcomes of these processes. Additionally, it was seen as a complement to traditional health care and encouragement for health care professionals to have a more positive attitude toward patients' usage. There was a mix between deductive (19/33, 58%), inductive (11/33, 33%), and a mixed approach (3/33, 9%) of studying patient empowerment in various forms. The online communities in most papers (21/33, 64%) were well-established and represented patients' initiatives.ConclusionsThere is a need to include professionals' perspectives regarding how health care can embrace patient empowerment through online communities. This systematic review's main contribution is the proposal of a new framework and conceptualization of how patient empowerment in online communities can be understood from different hierarchical levels.

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Dataset Information

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation.

Background

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation.

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