Quality of weight loss advice on internet forums.

BACKGROUND: Adults use the Internet for weight loss information, sometimes by participating in discussion forums. Our purpose was to analyze the quality of advice exchanged on these forums. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of messages posted to 18 Internet weight loss forums during 1 month in 2006. Advice was evaluated for congruence with clinical guidelines; potential for causing harm; and subsequent correction when it was contradictory to guidelines (erroneous) or potentially harmful. Message- and forum-specific characteristics were evaluated as predictors of advice quality and self-correction. RESULTS: Of 3368 initial messages, 266 (7.9%) were requests for advice. Of 654 provisions of advice, 56 (8.6%) were erroneous and 19 of these 56 (34%) were subsequently corrected. Forty-three (6.6%) provisions of advice were harmful, and 12 of these 43 (28%) were subsequently corrected. Messages from low-activity forums (fewer messages) were more likely than those from high-activity forums to be erroneous (10.6% vs 2.4%, P < .001) or harmful (8.4% vs 1.2%, P < .001). In high-activity forums, 2 of 4 (50%) erroneous provisions of advice and 2 of 2 (100%) potentially harmful provisions of advice were corrected by subsequent postings. Compared with general weight loss advice, medication-related advice was more likely to be erroneous (P = .02) or harmful (P = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Most advice posted on highly active Internet weight loss forums is not erroneous or harmful. However, clinical and research strategies are needed to address the quality of medication-related advice.

Quality of weight loss advice on internet forums.

BACKGROUND: Adults use the Internet for weight loss information, sometimes by participating in discussion forums. Our purpose was to analyze the quality of advice exchanged on these forums. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of messages posted to 18 Internet weight loss forums during 1 month in 2006. Advice was evaluated for congruence with clinical guidelines; potential for causing harm; and subsequent correction when it was contradictory to guidelines (erroneous) or potentially harmful. Message- and forum-specific characteristics were evaluated as predictors of advice quality and self-correction. RESULTS: Of 3368 initial messages, 266 (7.9%) were requests for advice. Of 654 provisions of advice, 56 (8.6%) were erroneous and 19 of these 56 (34%) were subsequently corrected. Forty-three (6.6%) provisions of advice were harmful, and 12 of these 43 (28%) were subsequently corrected. Messages from low-activity forums (fewer messages) were more likely than those from high-activity forums to be erroneous (10.6% vs 2.4%, P < .001) or harmful (8.4% vs 1.2%, P < .001). In high-activity forums, 2 of 4 (50%) erroneous provisions of advice and 2 of 2 (100%) potentially harmful provisions of advice were corrected by subsequent postings. Compared with general weight loss advice, medication-related advice was more likely to be erroneous (P = .02) or harmful (P = .01). CONCLUSIONS: Most advice posted on highly active Internet weight loss forums is not erroneous or harmful. However, clinical and research strategies are needed to address the quality of medication-related advice.

Fòrums UOC

Fòrums UOC pretén donar una aproximació més natural de la interacció de les persones. Per una banda es modernitza el sistema de fòrums agrupant els missatges relacionats en converses per tal de facilitar el seguiment dels fils de comunicació i organitzar la informació.

Torrenting values, feelings and thoughts : cyber nursing and virtual self care in a breast augmentation forum

Earlier research shows that breast augmentation is positively correlated with positive psychological states. The aim of this study was to explore the shared values, feelings, and thoughts within the culture of breast enlargement among women visiting Internet-based forums when considering and/or undergoing esthetic plastic surgery. The study used a netnographic method for gathering and analyzing data. The findings show that the women used the Internet forum to provide emotional support to other women. Through electronic postings, they cared for and nursed each others’ anxiety and feelings throughout the whole process. Apart from the process, another central issue was that the women's relationships were frequently discussed; specifically their relationship to themselves, their environment, and with the surgeons. The findings suggest that Internet forums represent a channel through which posters can share values, feelings, and thoughts from the position of an agent of action as well as from a position as the object of action. These dual positions and the medium endow the women with a virtual nursing competence that would otherwise be unavailable. By introducing the concept of torrenting as a means of sharing important self-care information, the authors provide a concept that can be further explored in relation to post modern self-care strategies within contemporary nursing theories and practice.

Aplicando Métodos de Mineração Visual de Texto em conteúdo de Fórum de Discussão

We are included in a society where the use of the Internet became very important to our everyday life. The relationships nowadays usually happen through technological devices instead of face to face contact, for instance, Internet forums where people can discuss online. However, the global analysis is a big challenge, due to the large amount of data. This work investigates the use of visual representations to support an exploratory analysis of contents in messages from discussions forums. This analysis considers the thematic and the chronology. The target forums refer to the educational area and the analysis happens manually, i.e. by direct reading message-by-message. The proprieties of perception and cognition of the human visual system allow a person the capacity to conduct high-level tasks in information extraction from a graphical or visual representation of data. Therefore, this work was based on Visual Analytics, an area that aims create techniques that amplify these human abilities. For that reason we used software that creates a visualization of data from a forum. This software allows a forum content analysis. But, during the work, we identified the necessity to create a new tool to clean the data, because the data had a lot of unnecessary information. After cleaning the data we created a new visualization and held an analysis seeking a new knowledge. In the end we compared the new visualization with the manual analysis that had been made. Analyzing the results, it was evident the potential of visualization use, it provides a better correlation between the information, enabling the acquisition of new knowledge that was not identified in the initial analysis, providing a better use of the forum content

A method for extracting semantic information from on-line art music discussion forums

In this paper a method for extracting semantic informationfrom online music discussion forums is proposed. The semantic relations are inferred from the co-occurrence of musical concepts in forum posts, using network analysis. The method starts by defining a dictionary of common music terms in an art music tradition. Then, it creates a complex network representation of the online forum by matchingsuch dictionary against the forum posts. Once the complex network is built we can study different network measures, including node relevance, node co-occurrence andterm relations via semantically connecting words. Moreover, we can detect communities of concepts inside the forum posts. The rationale is that some music terms are more related to each other than to other terms. All in all, this methodology allows us to obtain meaningful and relevantinformation from forum discussions.

Combining Internet Monitoring Processes, Packaging and Isotopic Analyses to Determine The Market Structure: Example of Gamma Butyrolactone

The Internet is becoming more and more popular among drug users. The use of websites and forums to obtain illicit drugs and relevant information about the means of consumption is a growing phenomenon mainly for new synthetic drugs. Gamma Butyrolactone (GBL), a chemical precursor of Gamma Hydroxy Butyric acid (GHB), is used as a "club drug" and also in drug facilitated sexual assaults. Its market takes place mainly on the Internet through online websites but the structure of the market remains unknown. This research aims to combine digital, physical and chemical information to help understand the distribution routes and the structure of the GBL market. Based on an Internet monitoring process, thirty-nine websites selling GBL, mainly in the Netherlands, were detected between January 2010 and December 2011. Seventeen websites were categorized into six groups based on digital traces (e.g. IP addresses and contact information). In parallel, twenty-five bulk GBL specimens were purchased from sixteen websites for packaging comparisons and carbon isotopic measurements. Packaging information showed a high correlation with digital data confirming the links previously established whereas chemical information revealed undetected links and provided complementary information. Indeed, while digital and packaging data give relevant information about the retailers, the supply routes and the distribution close to the consumer, the carbon isotopic data provides upstream information about the production level and in particular the synthesis pathways and the chemical precursors. A three-level structured market has been thereby identified with a production level mainly located in China and in Germany, an online distribution level mainly hosted in the Netherlands and the customers who order on the Internet.

The Legal Implications of Internet Marketing : Exploiting the Digital Marketplace Within the Boundaries of the Law

Au cours des dernières années, le domaine de la consommation a grandement évolué. Les agents de marketing ont commencé à utiliser l’Internet pour influencer les consommateurs en employant des tactiques originales et imaginatives qui ont rendus possible l’atteinte d'un niveau de communication interpersonnelle qui avait précédemment été insondable. Leurs interactions avec les consommateurs, en utilisant la technologie moderne, se manifeste sous plusieurs formes différentes qui sont toutes accompagnés de leur propre assortiment de problèmes juridiques. D’abord, il n'est pas rare pour les agents de marketing d’utiliser des outils qui leur permettent de suivre les actions des consommateurs dans le monde virtuel ainsi que dans le monde physique. Les renseignements personnels recueillis d'une telle manière sont souvent utilisés à des fins de publicité comportementale en ligne – une utilisation qui ne respecte pas toujours les limites du droit à la vie privée. Il est également devenu assez commun pour les agents de marketing d’utiliser les médias sociaux afin de converser avec les consommateurs. Ces forums ont aussi servi à la commission d’actes anticoncurrentiels, ainsi qu’à la diffusion de publicités fausses et trompeuses – deux pratiques qui sont interdites tant par la loi sur la concurrence que la loi sur la protection des consommateurs. Enfin, les agents de marketing utilisent diverses tactiques afin de joindre les consommateurs plus efficacement en utilisant diverses tactiques qui les rendent plus visible dans les moteurs de recherche sur Internet, dont certaines sont considérés comme malhonnêtes et pourraient présenter des problèmes dans les domaines du droit de la concurrence et du droit des marques de commerce. Ce mémoire offre une description détaillée des outils utilisés à des fins de marketing sur Internet, ainsi que de la manière dont ils sont utilisés. Il illustre par ailleurs les problèmes juridiques qui peuvent survenir à la suite de leur utilisation et définit le cadre législatif régissant l’utilisation de ces outils par les agents de marketing, pour enfin démontrer que les lois qui entrent en jeu dans de telles circonstances peuvent, en effet, se révéler bénéfiques pour ces derniers d'un point de vue économique.

Den litteraturvetenskapliga receptionsforskningen och internet : en metoddiskussion

Reader-Response Criticism and the Internet: A Methodological Discussion This article explores connections between Internet-based research and reader-response criticism, aiming to critically discuss the methodologies used in this particular field of research. First, the history of reader-response studies is briefly presented, with reference to theorists such as Richards, Rosenblatt, Robbe-Grillet, Iser and Jauss. It is noted that, for the past 15 years, people have utilised the Internet as a basis for the discussion of literary and reading-related topics. Researchers in this field may access reviews and commentaries on open web-based venues such as personal homepages, blogs and online forums (i.e. message boards and discussion sites). The material available on these sites is interesting because of its "spontaneous" nature; that is, such material has been formulated and uploaded without the interference of the researcher. The article presents one concrete example of an Internet-based reader-response study, discussing a number of pros and cons of the chosen methodology– including some important ethical considerations that arise when the researcher’s corpus is composed of material taken from the Internet. One of the conclusions of the paper is that many aspects of the general public’s web-based responses to literature are yet to be explored by the research community.

Das Internet als Forschungsinstrument für die Afrikanistik

L’internet est reconnue de manière générale comme un instrument de recherche valable. Bien que les langues africaines ne soient pas bien représentées sur internet il y a assez d’informations qui peuvent être découvertes dans la recherche sur terrain virtuel. Des petits vocabulaires et des descriptions de plusieurs langues africaines sont écrits par des auteurs individuels, des départements d’universités et des agences de voyages. Des textes en langues africaines sont en majorité publiés par des missionaries ou des ONGs. Ces données tendent à refléter les variantes standards des langues utilisées. Ce sont des contributions dans des forums qui sont témoins d’un langage proche de la langue parlée. On recherche les données linguistiques en utilisant les noms des langues respectives combinés avec des termes tels que “langue”, “grammaire”, “cours” ou le nom d’un auteur comme terme de recherche. Des chaînes de mots (en guillemets) qui sont très courantes dans le langage parlé et/ou écrit peuvent constituer de bons termes de recherche pour trouver des textes ou des contributions dans des forums.

Internet-based individually versus group guided self-help treatment for social anxiety disorder: protocol of a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders and causes subjective suffering and economic burden worldwide. Although effective treatments are available, a lot of cases go untreated. Internet-based self-help is a low-threshold and flexible treatment alternative for SAD. Various studies have already shown that internet-based self-help can be effective to reduce social phobic symptoms significantly. Most of the interventions tested include therapist support, whereas the role of peer support within internet-based self-help has not yet been fully understood. There is evidence suggesting that patients' mutual exchange via integrated discussion forums can increase the efficacy of internet-based treatments. This study aims at investigating the added value of therapist-guided group support on the treatment outcome of internet-based self-help for SAD. METHODS/DESIGN: The study is conducted as a randomized controlled trial. A total of 150 adults with a diagnosis of SAD are randomly assigned to either a waiting-list control group or one of the active conditions. The participants in the two active conditions use the same internet-based self-help program, either with individual support by a psychologist or therapist-guided group support. In the group guided condition, participants can communicate with each other via an integrated, protected discussion forum. Subjects are recruited via topic related websites and links; diagnostic status will be assessed with a telephone interview. The primary outcome variables are symptoms of SAD and diagnostic status after the intervention. Secondary endpoints are general symptomology, depression, quality of life, as well as the primary outcome variables 6 months later. Furthermore, process variables such as group processes, the change in symptoms and working alliance will be studied. DISCUSSION: The results of this study should indicate whether group-guided support could enhance the efficacy of an internet-based self-help treatment for SAD. This novel treatment format, if shown effective, could represent a cost-effective option and could further be modified to treat other conditions, as well.

Assessing participation in online discussion forums: a proposal for multidimensional analysis

This paper aims to assess the discussion forums being used in the programme Especialista Universitario online sobre Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, taught at the University of Alicante, on the basis of the analysis model suggested by Kay (2004). In such a model, it is essential to represent graphically the forum activity so that the visual representation may improve analysis. This research has allowed reaching results which define the forum activity and has contributed with a proposal for multi analysis in the area of assessing participation in communication within online discussion forums.

Isotopes in medicine-- are they worth the trouble? : a summary of talks presented at the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy sponsored by the Atomic Industrial Forums of the United States and Japan and the Far East Atomic Energy Mission of the United States Atomic Energy Commission : May and June, 1957, Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines /

"Contract No. AT(40-1)-Gen-33."