To stay or leave?: the relationship of emotional and informational support to commitment in online health support groups

Today many people with serious diseases use online support groups to seek social support. For these groups to be sustained and effective, member retention and commitment is important. Our study examined how different types and amounts of social support in an online cancer support group are associated with participants’ length of membership. We first built machine learning models to automatically identify the extent to which messages contained emotional and informational support. Agreement with human judges was high (r > 0.76). We then

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Yi-Chia Wang, Robert Kraut, John M. Levine
• Keywords: Cancer Support Group, CSCW 2012, Human Judges, Member Retention, Social Sciences