{"id":142081,"date":"2018-10-04T08:01:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T12:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=142081"},"modified":"2018-10-04T08:02:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T12:02:38","slug":"role-feedback-health-information-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/10\/role-feedback-health-information-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Feedback in Health Information Sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharing health information such as dieting and fitness activities on social media sites can result in improved health outcomes; but those outcomes could suffer depending on the comments, according to a study by UConn researchers published in the journal Health Communication<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf users share tracked health information and receive supportive comments, particularly [social] network support, they can improve their health outcomes,\u201d the researchers say. \u201cWhen people\u2019s sharing of health information falls on deaf ears, however, their health can suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If users share tracked health information and receive supportive comments … they can improve their health outcomes. — Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch et al.<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The study, \u201cCount Your Calories and Share Them: Health Benefits of sharing mHealth Information on Social Networking Sites,\u201d was led by UConn researchers Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, assistant professor of communication, and John Christensen, associate professor of communication, and their colleague Andrew High, associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University.<\/p>\n

The researchers described the study as one of the first empirical tests of the social network sharing component of the integrated theory of mHealth (mobile health), which was introduced in 2016 by researchers at the University of Colorado in Denver to improve the development and evaluation of mobile health programs. According to recently published reports, there are 259,000 health applications available for mobile devices (Research2guidance 2016) for the 77 percent of adults who own them in the United States (Pew Research Center 2017).<\/p>\n

The study used responses from online participants ages 18 to 74, and focused on activities using major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, mHealth is \u201ca marked shift\u201d in how health information is delivered through text message, social media, and mobile applications. Health information is generally defined as health promotion and disease management programs, while most mHealth apps are self-monitoring tools where individuals track some type of health behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cSharing was not universally beneficial,\u201d Oeldorf-Hirsch says. \u201cWe saw that sharing had these positive relationships between health outcomes for certain types of support, but that also depended on the type of feedback that people got on social media sites. We focused on feedback comments \u2013 likes on Facebook \u2013 that indicate people are supporting things they\u2019re doing. We do see that those interact, meaning that just sharing is not enough, but it also depends on the feedback people are getting.\u201d<\/p>\n

She notes the study indicated a drawback for what is described as informational support\u00a0\u2013 advice an individual may not want to hear \u2013 noting that this type of commenting can be \u201ctoo much feedback that doesn\u2019t make you feel better; we don\u2019t always want more information about what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oeldorf-Hirsch adds that the study is a cross-sectional survey, \u201ca one-time point look\u201d at how comments may affect health outcomes, and while there is a link between sharing feedback on information and outcomes, it is unclear if simply sharing information will cause better health. The study also indicates that individuals only share their information with a few close friends, and what they share is limited.<\/p>\n

The researchers say that future studies on sharing health information via social media should develop standard scales to measure sharing and feedback frequency, while also determining ways to gather variations in the quality of improved health outcomes.<\/p>\n

Listen to Oeldorf-Hirsch discussing the study with Ken Best of the UConn360 podcast:<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/MOBILE-HEALTH-OELDORF-HERSH-EDIT-v3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more podcasts about all things UConn, go to\u00a0uconn.edu\/uconn360-podcast<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new UConn study says sharing health information through social media can lead to improved health, but only if feedback is positive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":142280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2231,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-142081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-health-well-being","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 13:59:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142081"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142199,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142081\/revisions\/142199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/142280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142081"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=142081"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=142081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}