Dataset Information

Pregnancy and health in the age of the Internet: A content analysis of online "birth club" forums.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Although studies report that more than 90% of pregnant women utilize digital sources to supplement their maternal healthcare, little is known about the kinds of information that women seek from their peers during pregnancy. To date, most research has used self-report measures to elucidate how and why women to turn to digital sources during pregnancy. However, given that these measures may differ from actual utilization of online health information, it is important to analyze the online content pregnant women generate. OBJECTIVE:To apply machine learning methods to analyze online pregnancy forums, to better understand how women seek information from a community of online peers during pregnancy. METHODS:Data from seven WhatToExpect.com "birth club" forums (September 2018; January-June 2018) were scraped. Forum posts were collected for a one-year period, which included three trimesters and three months postpartum. Only initial posts from each thread were analyzed (n = 262,238). Automatic natural language processing (NLP) methods captured 50 discussed topics, which were annotated by two independent coders and grouped categorically. RESULTS:The largest topic categories were maternal health (45%), baby-related topics (29%), and people/relationships (10%). While pain was a popular topic all throughout pregnancy, individual topics that were dominant by trimester included miscarriage (first trimester), labor (third trimester), and baby sleeping routine (postpartum period). CONCLUSION:More than just emotional or peer support, pregnant women turn to online forums to discuss their health. Dominant topics, such as labor and miscarriage, suggest unmet informational needs in these domains. With misinformation becoming a growing public health concern, more attention must be directed toward peer-exchange outlets.

SUBMITTER: Wexler A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7156049 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Pregnancy and health in the age of the Internet: A content analysis of online "birth club" forums.

Wexler Anna A Davoudi Anahita A Weissenbacher Davy D Choi Rebekah R O'Connor Karen K Cummings Holly H Gonzalez-Hernandez Graciela G

PloS one 20200414 4

<h4>Background</h4>Although studies report that more than 90% of pregnant women utilize digital sources to supplement their maternal healthcare, little is known about the kinds of information that women seek from their peers during pregnancy. To date, most research has used self-report measures to elucidate how and why women to turn to digital sources during pregnancy. However, given that these measures may differ from actual utilization of online health information, it is important to analyze t ...[more]

PMID: 32287266

Similar Datasets

Project description:Increasingly, individuals experiencing loneliness are seeking support on online forums-some of which focus specifically on discussions around loneliness (loneliness forums); loneliness may influence how these individuals communicate in other online forums not focused on loneliness (non-loneliness forums). In order to provide effective and appropriate online interventions around loneliness, it is important to understand how users who publish posts in a loneliness forum communicate in the loneliness forum and non-loneliness forums they belong to. In this paper, using language features, the following analyses are conducted: (1) Posts published on an online loneliness forum on Reddit, /r/Lonely are compared to posts (published by the same users and around the same time period) on two Reddit online forums i.e. an advice seeking forum, /r/AskReddit and a forum focused on discussions around depression (depression forum), /r/depression. (2) Interventions related to loneliness may vary depending on if an individual is lonely and depressed or lonely but not depressed; language use differences in posts published in /r/Lonely by the following set of users are identified: (a) users who post in both /r/Lonely and a depression forum and (b) users who post in /r/Lonely but not in the depression forum. The findings from this work gain new insights, for example: (i) /r/Lonely users tend to seek advice/ask questions related to relationships in the advice seeking forum, /r/AskReddit and (ii) users who are members of the loneliness forum but not the depression forum tend to publish posts (on the loneliness forum) on topic themes related to work/job, however, those who are members of the loneliness and depression forums tend to use more words associated with anger, negation, death, and post on topic themes related to affection relative to relationships in their loneliness forum posts. Some of the findings from this work also align with prior work e.g. users who express loneliness in online forums tend to make more reference to self. These findings aid in gaining insights into how users communicate on these forums and their support needs, thereby informing loneliness interventions.

Project description:ObjectiveRecently there have been calls to strengthen integration of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention messages, spurred by increasing use of long-acting reversible contraception. To assess the extent to which public health/clinical messages about unintended pregnancy prevention also address STI prevention, we conducted a content analysis of web-based health promotion information for young people.Study designWebsites identified through a systematic Google search were eligible for inclusion if they were operated by a United States-based organization with a mission related to public health/clinical services and the URL included: 1) original content; 2) about sexual and reproductive health; 3) explicitly for adolescents and/or young adults. Using defined protocols, URLs were screened and content was selected and analyzed thematically.ResultsMany of the 32 eligible websites presented information about pregnancy and STI prevention separately. Concurrent discussion of the two topics was often limited to statements about (1) strategies that can prevent both outcomes (abstinence, condoms only, condoms plus moderately or highly effective contraceptive methods) and (2) contraceptive methods that confer no STI protection. We also identified framing of condom use with moderately or highly effective contraceptive methods for back-up pregnancy prevention but not STI prevention. STI prevention methods in addition to condoms, such as STI/HIV testing, vaccination, or pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis, were typically not addressed with pregnancy prevention information.ConclusionsThere may be missed opportunities for promoting STI prevention online in the context of increasing awareness of and access to a full range of contraceptive methods.ImplicationsStrengthening messages that integrate pregnancy and STI prevention may include: describing STI prevention strategies when noting that birth control methods do not prevent STIs; promoting a full complement of STI prevention strategies; and always connecting condom use to STI prevention, even when promoting condoms for back-up contraception.

Dataset Information

Pregnancy and health in the age of the Internet: A content analysis of online "birth club" forums.

Publications

Pregnancy and health in the age of the Internet: A content analysis of online "birth club" forums.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets