Abstract
BackgroundVirtual environments (VEs) facilitate interaction and support among individuals with chronic illness, yet the characteristics of these VE interactions remain unknown.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to describe social interaction and support among individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) who interacted in a VE.MethodsData included VE-mediated synchronous conversations and text-chat and asynchronous emails and discussion board posts from a study that facilitated interaction among individuals with T2D and diabetes educators (N=24) in 2 types of sessions: education and support.ResultsVE interactions consisted of communication techniques (how individuals interact in the VE), expressions of self-management (T2D-related topics), depth (personalization of topics), and breadth (number of topics discussed). Individuals exchanged support more often in the education (723/1170, 61.79%) than in the support (406/1170, 34.70%) sessions or outside session time (41/1170, 3.50%). Of all support exchanges, 535/1170 (45.73%) were informational, 377/1170 (32.22%) were emotional, 217/1170 (18.55%) were appraisal, and 41/1170 (3.50%) were instrumental. When comparing session types, education sessions predominately provided informational support (357/723, 49.4%), and the support sessions predominately provided emotional (159/406, 39.2%) and informational (159/406, 39.2%) support.ConclusionsVE-mediated interactions resemble those in face-to-face environments, as individuals in VEs engage in bidirectional exchanges with others to obtain self-management education and support. Similar to face-to-face environments, individuals in the VE revealed personal information, sought information, and exchanged support during the moderated education sessions and unstructured support sessions. With this versatility, VEs are able to contribute substantially to support for those with diabetes and, very likely, other chronic diseases.
Highlights
This experiment varied whether individuals interacted with virtual representations of themselves or of others in an immersive virtual environment
Immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) allows individuals to interact with virtual human representations—including virtual representations of their physical selves (VRSs) and virtual representations of others (VROs)—three-dimensionally in real time
Additional tests of simple effects indicate that the difference in minimum distance between the VRO condition and the low-similarity VRS condition was significant (M = 0.31, SD = 0.14, p < .05)
Summary
This experiment varied whether individuals interacted with virtual representations of themselves or of others in an immersive virtual environment. We examined participant interactions with VRSs and VROs in terms of interpersonal distance behavior, embarrassment, and liking toward the virtual representation.
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