For my directed studies class we were required to critically review a paper we read in relation to our chosen topic “online forums and communities relating to health issues” I was responsible for researching the sub-topic of “the promotion and awareness of online communities” unfortunately I could find no paper relating directly to this subtopic but I felt it would be irresponsible of me to do a project without the necessary research done, so i decided I would study the overall topic and do my review in relation to that, this gave me a better understanding of what needed to be done for my subtopic as I understood exactly what it was we were studying.
The paper I read was..
Health related virtual communities and electronic support groups: systematic review of the effects of online peer to peer interactions
this paper in my opinion was extremely informative, it was also a very reliable source of information of the topic as it has taken its information and results from reliable studies of different kinds in great detail.they combined and compared the results and evaluated them in order to achieve better samples. they screened 12288 abstracts and examined 76 full texts but only 45 met the criteria to be included in the study. this gave me confidence in the quality of information they included in the paper as the standard to be included was kept as such a demanding level, the final draft of papers were then divided into three groups for examination. this graph was given to show the selection process
each group was then studied individually for eventual comparison. This paper stated that the doubts people have about online health communities and acknowledges them but it also reports that in the studies chosen for the article that there are no negative effects or harm caused. This made me wonder if the studies chosen were biased towards the online communities as i had always believed that there is risk involved with online health forums as incorrect information may be taken in by the reader.
The paper was broken down in a way that made it easily read but it also gave a lot of information in a wide array of subjects which made it a little hard to take in at times, it also showed a lot statistics and results which backed up information given. i felt that this paper was written well using language which could be understood by the majority and also gave detailed information, it was a great source of information in relation to online health information vs offline sources.
this gave me a specific understanding of the overall topic which in turn also helped me in my subtopic.