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. Aninitial 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. Analysis reveals 2-factor structure: Knowledge of resources and Resource mobilization for collective action. CE-OHC is reliable and valid enough measurement instrument for investigation of empowerment processes in OHCs.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36474205
Online health communities (OHC) have become one of key resources to receive health-related information, social support and advice from other users of OHCs, also doctors. Studies have demonstrated that different socio-psychological processes in OHCs lead to individual empowerment of patients. Although studies identified various factors of individual empowerment, the role of different forms of capital, which can induce or inhibit empowerment, has been neglected. The intention of this contribution is on the basis of web-survey data gathered on users of largest OHC in Slovenia, to show how various forms of participation, e-health literacy, social and ecnomic capital influence development of individual empowerment of users of OHCs.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36400733
OHCs have become new venues of communication between patients or caregivers on one hand and health professionals (doctors) on the other. The research currently does not give much attention to the fact that OHCs have broadened and diversified channels for professional-patient interactions, which has transformed the perceptions of face-to-face medical encounters. The main aim of this study is two-fold. First, we aim to identify crucial social processes in online doctorpatient relationship in OHCs that (might) have beneficial as well as negative effect on face-to-face medical encounters in health care settings. Based on the identified crucial social processes in OHCs, the second aim of this study is related to the investigation of the effect of these processes on different forms of patient empowerment in (face-to-face) relationship with the doctor. The study combines data collected with in-depth semi-structured interviews with users and health professional moderators of the biggest OHC in Slovenia, Med.Over.Net, and a cross-sectional Web-based survey on a simple random sample of registered users of Med.Over.Net. This study demonstrates that social processes in OHCs do not have a uniform effect on doctor-patient relationship. OHCs and online professional-patient interactions should not be seen as venues that present a threat to, or a substitution for, face-to-face medical encounters but as important spaces that contribute, complement and advance interactions between doctors and patients.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36134749