Patterns of Patient and Caregiver Mutual Support Connections in an Online Health Community

TL;DR

This study analyzes how patients and caregivers form mutual support connections in an online health community, revealing role-based patterns that can inform system design for better peer support.

Contribution

It provides the first social network analysis of peer connection patterns between patients and caregivers in an online health community without explicit support for finding peers.

Findings

Connections are more likely between users with the same role.

Same-role connections tend to be more interactive.

Role influences the likelihood and nature of peer communication.

Abstract

Online health communities offer the promise of support benefits to users, in particular because these communities enable users to find peers with similar experiences. Building mutually supportive connections between peers is a key motivation for using online health communities. However, a user's role in a community may influence the formation of peer connections. In this work, we study patterns of peer connections between two structural health roles: patient and non-professional caregiver. We examine user behavior in an online health community where finding peers is not explicitly supported. This context lets us use social network analysis methods to explore the growth of such connections in the wild and identify users' peer communication preferences. We investigated how connections between peers were initiated, finding that initiations are more likely between two authors who have the same role and who are close within the broader communication network. Relationships are also more likely to form and be more interactive when authors have the same role. Our results have implications for the design of systems supporting peer communication, e.g. peer-to-peer recommendation systems.