Hi everyone,
My name is Hanmei. I am a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia and currently working on a project investigating the use of online health forums.
The aim of the study is to
verify whether the use of online health forums differs among people affected by different medical conditions . Drawn from the literature and findings from our previous research, we hypothesise that patients with minor and non-chronic illnesses are more likely to engage in an information-centred strategy while patients with severe and chronic illnesses are more likely to engage in a people-centred strategy. If the hypothesis is supported, the finding from this study can potentially advise the management of online health forums to strategically direct their resource to render more targeting service, based on different types of medical conditions. That is why we need people from a wide range of medical background and fibromyalgia is one type of conditions that we are looking for.
We are very interested in learning about
your opinions and experience. We would like to invite voluntary participants:
- who are
patients or care givers,
- have
visited Healing Well forum in the past 7 days,
to complete a 30-minute online survey. Participants will be asked about
their perception of the message and the person that they have the best memory of during their most recent visit to the forum. All participants who complete the survey will have a chance to win one out of four $50 gift cards of their choice (as long as I can purchase it online), as our way to say thank you.
This study has been approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (#1238574). For more information, please
visitpeople.eng.unimelb.edu.au/hanmeif/recruitingAd.html. To access the survey, please visit
www.surveymonkey.com/s/ohforum.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at h.fan at student.unimelb.edu.au.
If you know someone who fit into the criteria and would like to participate, please forward the message or the links above.
You can indicate whether you would like to receive a copy of the findings and you will receive an email from us approximately in March or April next year.
Thank you very much for your time and support!
This message has been approved by the Administration (Peter Waite) of Healing Well forum.Warm regards,
Hanmei Fan
PhD Candidate
Department of Computer and Information Systems
University of Melbourne
people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/hanmeif/