Title:	CITATIONS IN ONLINE PATIENT GROUPS
Author(s):	Roy Rada
ISBN:	972-8924-16-X
Editors:	Pedro Isaías, Maggie McPherson and Frank Bannister
Year:	2006
Edition:	2
Keywords:	online groups, citations, literacy, patients
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	106
Last Page:	109
Language:	English
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Paper Abstract:	Citations in a patient message are part of the informational, as contrasted with the empathetic, character of a message. Certain patients will be attracted to groups that are more informational than empathetic but may have difficulty determining which of the myriad of available online groups tend to be informational. To explore parameters that might help guide patients in their choice of group, two hypotheses are tested: 1) online patient groups can be distinguished from one another by the extent to which their messages make citations, and 2) if one group makes more citations per message than another group, then that group’s messages will have longer words. Four patient groups were selected, and from each 40 messages were arbitrarily selected. The number of citations in each message was manually determined, and the average word length of each message was computed. The hypotheses are supported; namely, some groups make significantly more citations than others, and the groups that make more citations use longer words. These results suggest tools for semi-automatically characterizing online groups by their literacy level and may help people decide which group they want to join.
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