Web-based Communities Research Articles

Prevalence of gastroprotective agent (GPA) use in adults with arthritis in the United States

Objective:The prevalence of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and concurrent gastroprotective agent (GPA) use in the US is not known. As such, the prevalence of GPA use among arthritis patients taking NSAIDs was examined.Methods:Men and women aged ≥40 with self-reported arthritis and members of a web-based community panel were invited via e-mail to participate in a web survey. Interested panelists consented and completed the survey. Participants using NSAIDs in the last 30 days were eligible. Questions regarding NSAID and GPA use were asked, likewise adherence to GPA (Morisky scale), comorbid conditions, gastrointestinal (GI) history, and other risk factors. Descriptive analyses and logistic regressions were performed to assess associations with GPA use and adherence.Results:Invitations were sent to 7605 adults; 4108 (54%) responded; 2208 completed. Final sample was 1525 (76%) with osteoarthritis (OA), 354 (18%) with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and 121 (6%) with both OA and RA. Mean age was 62.0; 64% were female; 83% white; 25% worked full-time, and 39% were retired. Mean duration with arthritis was 13.0 years; 47% and 19% experienced arthritis symptoms ‘daily’ and ‘almost always’, respectively. Nearly 43% reported using a GPA and 39% of daily NSAID users reported taking a GPA. Fifty-eight participants (2.9%) were classified as low GI risk, 342 (17.1%) were moderate risk, and 1600 (80.0%) were high risk. Variables significantly associated with GPA use included older age; male gender; being white (vs. Hispanic); taking an NSAID at least daily; taking fewer NSAIDs; taking a Cox-2 inhibitor or prescription NSAID; history of GI conditions; prescription antiplatelet use; and having GI symptoms. Similar variables were associated with GPA adherence.Conclusion:Less than half of adult men and women in the US taking a daily NSAID used GPAs and only 37% of high-risk participants were taking GPAs.

The Beast Within

This paper will introduce a little-known online phenomenon: the socio-spiritual Therianthropy movement. Therianthropes are individuals who identify as part human and part non-human animal in a biological, mental, and metaphysical capacity. Therianthropes have, in essence, an anthrozoomorphic identity that draws upon the spiritual and supernatural associations of the animal kingdom. I discuss Therianthropes as animal-human “shape-shifters” to highlight the sacred and liminal identity these individuals have formulated through their engagement with “popular occulture.” Therianthropy, as both a web-based community and an identity, exemplifies the postmodern bent of new spiritual directions in the re-enchanted West.

Building group capacity for problem solving and police–community partnerships through survey feedback and training: a randomized control trial within Chicago’s community policing program

To examine whether group capacity for problem solving and partnership building could be enhanced at police–community meetings by providing the results from community surveys and training for group facilitators. A randomized control trial was conducted in 51 police beats in Chicago’s community policing program, CAPS. Unlike control beats, results from web-based community surveys were provided at beat meetings in the feedback and training beats, with facilitators in training beats also receiving training and exercises to guide problem solving about survey results. Analysis included OLS and logistic regression of data from questionnaires administered to police and resident participants, as well as observations at beat meetings, which measured resident capacity, attitudes about the police–community partnership, and problem-solving activities. Support for hypothesized effects was found with greater resident confidence in their ability to achieve outcomes and solve local problems, as well as officers viewing their relationships with residents at beat meetings more favorably. Effects, however, were inconsistent and limited to the feedback group. While additional training and support provided in training beats indicated fuller engagement in problem solving, possible negative effects on attitudes were observed. Failure to find more effects is discussed in terms of implementation and resistance. Officer resistance to and a shift in organizational priorities away from community policing worked against achieving full program implementation. The beat meeting context provided a traditional framework for police–resident interactions that precluded more comprehensive use of community data and possibly heightened dissatisfaction with the level of problem solving that occurred.

Social networking for web-based communities

In the 21st century, a new technology was introduced to facilitate communication, collaboration, and interaction between individuals and businesses. This technology is called social networking; this technology is now part of Internet commodities like email, browsing and blogging. From the 20th century until now, the internet has shaped the way organisations, academics and health sectors to interact, communicate, connect, and exchange knowledge around the world. Social networking can reduce enterprises cost, increase profit, and assist to develop new communication forms between consumers, stakeholders, vendors, suppliers, universities and health departments. However, this technology can create new challenges for education and its governance and management. Social networking is considered to be as a precursor to the new ways of 3D virtual presence that will gradually supplant the telephone and video conferencing and finally even diminish the face-to-face communication. This article examines these opportunities, challenges, and threats of social networking in organisation, education and healthcare sectors.

Si-nais talking dirty: Hong Kong middle-class working mothers on- and offline

Based on participant observation and content analysis of a web-based community of Hong Kong middle-class working mothers, I discuss narratives of ‘ si-naihood’ (married motherhood), which have emerged from their online and offline interactions. This web-based space-time provided an unusual window into the multiplicities of motherhood articulation. The study found that although traditional motherhood narratives predominated, alternative narratives, which have emerged through ‘talking-dirty’, banter and teasing throw light on how sexual selves and si-naihood are articulated. While more or less routinely and consciously reproducing traditionally defined ‘ si-naihood’, their performance occasionally ‘let slip’ and revealed the arduous yet fragile nature of this identity. Issues emerging from my role as ‘accidental researcher’ as well as the socio-cultural trajectory of the identity of si-nai in 21st-century Hong Kong are also discussed.

Social networks as spaces for informal teacher professional development: challenges and opportunities

With the spread of the Web 2.0 there has been a proliferation of web-based communities for learning, across platforms that enable the creation of virtual communities. However, unlike business, the emergence of educational networking is still beginning. Recent research shows that social networks are powerful educational tools that offer teachers the opportunity to develop their knowledge and competences, contributing to lifelong learning and professional development in informal settings. In order to investigate the potential of educational networking as a source for teachers’ growth, a social network named PROEDI (http://www.proedi.com) was created in the beginning of 2011. In this project, the Interconnected model of teacher professional growth (Clarke and Hollingsworth, 2002) was the basic framework for the analysis of professional growth in informal settings. In this paper, the conceptual framework of the research is presented, as is some evidence obtained on the analysis of discussion forums created inside the community that underpin a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that social networking offer for teacher education.

Patient assessment of physician performance of epilepsy quality-of-care measures

To identify gaps in physician practice of epilepsy care, an online survey was sent to members of a Web-based epilepsy community to ascertain whether their physician performed 8 quality measures for epilepsy care. A total of 221 of 348 recently active epilepsy patients (64%) completed the survey. More than 80% of patients agreed they knew their seizure type, epilepsy syndrome, current seizure frequency, and had an EEG and neuroimaging. Fewer (60%) recalled being asked about medication side effects at each visit and safety issues annually. Only 48% report referral to an epilepsy surgery specialist and only 46% of appropriate patients had discussed reproductive issues with epilepsy. This demonstrates some potential gaps in epilepsy care and these data have been submitted to the American Academy of Neurology and the National Quality Forum.

Supporting Professional Development in Special Education with Web-Based Professional Learning Communities: New Possibilities with Web 2.0

This article describes the challenges in organizing professional learning communities (PLCs) in special education, identifies the teacher and student benefits of using a PLC approach to professional development, and discusses the promise and pitfalls of organizing web-based PLCs to engage distributed stakeholders in the practice of special education. The author used two Web 2.0 applications, a wiki and a Ning, to provide the infrastructure and support community-building efforts. Although the PLC membership has grown to about 200 members during the past four years, data collected via Web 2.0 show that most of the members participate as observers only, relying almost entirely on the network administrator to direct and manage all facets of community work. The development of web-based PLCs to support the practice of special education may be dependent upon the building of school-based leadership in addition to the meaningful participation of school administrators and teacher educators in community work.

Factors Associated with Gastroprotective Agent Use and Adherence among Adults with Arthritis Taking NSAIDs in the United States

Purpose: To examine factors associated with gastroprotective agent (GPA) use and adherence among adults with arthritis taking NSAIDs. Methods: A Web-based community panel of US men and women age ≥40 with self-reported arthritis was invited via e-mail to participate in a Web survey. Interested panelists consented and completed the screening questions. Respondents who reported NSAID use in the last 30 days were eligible to continue the survey. NSAID and GPA use were asked, as were questions about comorbid conditions, gastrointestinal (GI) history, and other risk factors. Logistic regressions were performed to assess the associations of predictor variables with GPA use and adherence. Results: Invitations were sent to 7,605 adults with arthritis; 4,108 (54%) responded; 2,208 completed. The final sample consisted of 2,000 participants: 1,525 (76%) with osteoarthritis, 354 (18%) with rheumatoid arthritis and 121 (6%) with both. Mean age was 62.0 years; 64% were female; 83% were white; 25% worked full-time and 39% were retired. Mean duration with arthritis was 13.0 years; 47% and 19% experienced arthritis symptoms “daily” and “almost always”, respectively. The most frequently-used NSAIDs were ibuprofen (54%), aspirin (35%) and naproxen (33%). GPA use was more frequent among higher frequency NSAID users; 36% of single NSAID users and 43% of participants taking 4+ NSAIDs reported taking GPAs. The most frequently-used GPAs were omeprazole (48%), esomeprazole (17%), and ranitidine (17%); 39% of daily NSAID users reported taking a GPA. Variables significantly associated with GPA use were: older age (odds ratio (OR) 1.02); male gender (OR 0.76); being white (vs. Hispanic) (OR 0.24); taking an NSAID at least daily (OR 1.5 for daily use; 2.2 for 2x daily use; and 1.8 for use ≥ 3 times per day); taking fewer NSAIDs (OR 0.83); taking a COX-2 inhibitor (OR 1.6) or a prescription NSAID (OR 1.9); history of ulcer (OR 2.2), Barrett's esophagus (OR 8.8), or GERD (OR 12.6); prescription antiplatelet use (OR 1.9); and more frequent GI symptoms as indicated by GSRS total score (OR 1.5). Variables significantly associated with GPA adherence were: (OR 1.02); inflammatory bowel disease (OR 1.57); GERD (OR 1.72); less frequent GI symptoms (OR 0.62); prescription antiplatelet use (OR 1.97); and prescription NSAID use (OR 1.65). Conclusion: Slightly more than 1/3 of daily NSAID users routinely take GPAs. Older age; taking a prescription NSAID; history of GERD; prescription antiplatelet use; and GI symptoms were all associated with GPA use and adherence to GPA regimen in this sample of adults with arthritis using NSAIDs. These data may be useful for clinicians treating patients with arthritis. Disclosure: Karin S. Coyne, Mary Kay Margolis, and Ray Hsieh are employees of United BioSource Corporation who were paid scientific consultants to Pfizer in connection with this research. Joseph C. Cappelleri, Margaret Noyes Essex, Peter W. Park and Ashish V. Joshi are employees and stockholders of Pfizer Inc. This study was funded by Pfizer Inc. This research was supported by an industry grant from Pfizer Inc.

Multimedia Semantics: Interactions Between Content and Community

This paper reviews the state of the art and some emerging issues in research areas related to pattern analysis and monitoring of web-based social communities. This research area is important for several reasons. First, the presence of near-ubiquitous low-cost computing and communication technologies has enabled people to access and share information at an unprecedented scale. The scale of the data necessitates new research for making sense of such content. Furthermore, popular websites with sophisticated media sharing and notification features allow users to stay in touch with friends and loved ones; these sites also help to form explicit and implicit social groups. These social groups are an important source of information to organize and to manage multimedia data. In this article, we study how media-rich social networks provide additional insight into familiar multimedia research problems, including tagging and video ranking. In particular, we advance the idea that the contextual and social aspects of media are as important for successful multimedia applications as is the media content. We examine the inter-relationship between content and social context through the prism of three key questions. First, how do we extract the context in which social interactions occur? Second, does social interaction provide value to the media object? Finally, how do social media facilitate the repurposing of shared content and engender cultural memes? We present three case studies to examine these questions in detail. In the first case study, we show how to discover structure latent in the social media data, and use the discovered structure to organize Flickr photo streams. In the second case study, we discuss how to determine the interestingness of conversations—and of participants—around videos uploaded to YouTube. Finally, we show how the analysis of visual content, in particular tracing of content remixes, can help us understand the relationship among YouTube participants. For each case, we present an overview of recent work and review the state of the art. We also discuss two emerging issues related to the analysis of social networks—robust data sampling and scalable data analysis.

Detecting causality from online psychiatric texts using inter-sentential language patterns

BackgroundOnline psychiatric texts are natural language texts expressing depressive problems, published by Internet users via community-based web services such as web forums, message boards and blogs. Understanding the cause-effect relations embedded in these psychiatric texts can provide insight into the authors’ problems, thus increasing the effectiveness of online psychiatric services.MethodsPrevious studies have proposed the use of word pairs extracted from a set of sentence pairs to identify cause-effect relations between sentences. A word pair is made up of two words, with one coming from the cause text span and the other from the effect text span. Analysis of the relationship between these words can be used to capture individual word associations between cause and effect sentences. For instance, (broke up, life) and (boyfriend, meaningless) are two word pairs extracted from the sentence pair: “I broke up with my boyfriend. Life is now meaningless to me”. The major limitation of word pairs is that individual words in sentences usually cannot reflect the exact meaning of the cause and effect events, and thus may produce semantically incomplete word pairs, as the previous examples show. Therefore, this study proposes the use of inter-sentential language patterns such as ≪broke up, boyfriend>, <life, meaningless≫ to detect causality between sentences. The inter-sentential language patterns can capture associations among multiple words within and between sentences, thus can provide more precise information than word pairs. To acquire inter-sentential language patterns, we develop a text mining framework by extending the classical association rule mining algorithm such that it can discover frequently co-occurring patterns across the sentence boundary.ResultsPerformance was evaluated on a corpus of texts collected from PsychPark (http://www.psychpark.org), a virtual psychiatric clinic maintained by a group of volunteer professionals from the Taiwan Association of Mental Health Informatics. Experimental results show that the use of inter-sentential language patterns outperformed the use of word pairs proposed in previous studies.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates the acquisition of inter-sentential language patterns for causality detection from online psychiatric texts. Such semantically more complete and precise features can improve causality detection performance.

A Collaborative Quality Improvement Model and Electronic Community of Practice to Support Sepsis Management in Emergency Departments: Investigating Care Harmonization for Provincial Knowledge Translation

Emergency medicine departments within several organizations are now advocating the adoption of early intervention guidelines for patients with the signs and symptoms of sepsis. This proposed research will lead to a comprehensive understanding of how diverse emergency department (ED) sites across British Columbia (BC), Canada, engage in a quality improvement collaborative to lead to improvements in time-based process measures and clinical outcomes for septic patients in EDs. To address the challenge of sepsis management, in 2007, the BC Ministry of Health began working with emergency health professionals, including health administrators, to establish a provincial ED collaborative: Evidence to Excellence (E2E). The E2E initiative employs the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) model and is supported by a Web-based community of practice (CoP) in emergency medicine. It aims to (1) support clinicians in accessing and applying evidence to clinical practice in emergency medicine, (2) support system change and clinical process improvement, and (3) develop resources and strategies to facilitate knowledge translation and process improvement. Improving sepsis management is one of the central foci of the E2E initiative. The primary purpose of our research is to investigate whether the application of sepsis management protocols leads to improved time-based process measures and clinical outcomes for patients presenting to EDs with sepsis. Also, we seek to investigate the implementation of sepsis protocols among different EDs. For example: (1) How can sepsis protocols be harmonized among different EDs? (2) What are health professionals’ perspectives on interprofessional collaboration with various EDs? and (3) What are the factors affecting the level of success among EDs? Lastly, working in collaboration with the BC Ministry of Health as our policy-maker partner, the research will investigate how the demonstrated efficacy of this research can be applied on a provincial and national level to establish a template for policy makers from other jurisdictions to translate knowledge into action for EDs. This research study will employ the IHI model for improvement, incorporate the principles of participatory action research, and use the E2E online CoP to engage ED practitioners (eg, physicians, nurses, and administrators, exchanging ideas, engaging in discussions, sharing resources, and amalgamating knowledge) from across BC to (1) share the evidence of early intervention in sepsis, (2) adapt the evidence to their patterns of practice, (3) develop a common set of orders for implementing the sepsis pathway, and (4) agree on common indicators to measure clinical outcomes. Our hypothesis is that combining the social networking ability of an electronic CoP and its inherent knowledge translation capacity with the structured project management of the IHI model will result in widespread and sustained improvement in the emergency and overall care of patients with severe sepsis presenting to EDs throughout BC.

Using Health Information Technology to Prevent and Treat Diabetes

Using Health Information Technology to Prevent and Treat Diabetes

유투브와 소녀시대 팬덤

2000년대 후반에 접어들며 한류의 전파는 초기와는 다른 양상으로 진행되기 시작했다. 한국 드라마와 영화에 더해 한국 대중음악(K-pop)이 한류 팬덤의 핵심이 되었으며, 이와 함께 한류의 주요 소비자층은 10대를 아우르는 세대적 포괄성을 갖추게 되었다. 인터넷의 발달은 한국 대중문화에 대한 접근성을 높였으며, 이에 따라 한류는 아시아라는 지역적 제한을 넘어선 전 지구적 현상으로 전개되게 되었다. 본 연구는 이러한 한류의 새로운 양상의 원인을 찾아내고, 이러한 변화가 갖고 있는 미디어연구에 있어서의 함의를 논의하고자 한다. 즉, 인터넷 등 신(新) 정보 테크놀로지와 대중문화 생산 및 수용 간의 함수관계를 밝히고자 한다. 본 연구는 이러한 한국 대중음악의 초국적 전파 과정을 통시적으로 재구성하는 한편, 유투브에서 유통되는 '소녀시대'의 히트곡 <지Gee> 뮤직 비디오에 달린 유투브 사용자들의 댓글을 분석함으로써 온라인상에서의 팬덤 활동을 분석 평가하고, 온라인 커뮤니티의 매체적 의미를 논하고자 한다. 이를 위해 온라인 민속지학(online ethnography 혹은 nethnography)을 주요 방법론으로 사용할 계획이며, 피스크(Fiske), 버지스(Burgess) 등에 의해 주도된 팬덤과 온라인 커뮤니티 연구에 관한 문헌들을 분석하고, 이를 본 연구의 이론적 틀로 구성할 계획이다. In this paper we draw from recent theoretical discussions of fan culture and the new media technologies to explore how online communities contribute to new forms of K-pop fandom. We suggest that these online sites play an important role in setting the new stage of dissemination and dialogue of K-pop knowledge, through which particular forms and spaces of online fan culture are being created and sustained. Moreover, these web-based communities challenge the existing concepts that have embraced interrelations between culture, consumption and technology. Based on an empirical study of YouTube, carried out using netnographic methods, this study tackles the following questions: how fans construct themselves as Korean pop fans through the online activities; how they exchange information and opinions of Korean stars; and, what meaning they extract from online file-sharing activities.

User generated content in destination marketing organisations' websites

Tourism is one of the sectors which has been more affected by the widespread use of information technologies, due to its link to entertainment and its highly dependence on information. Destination marketing organisations, or DMOs, dedicated to promoting tourism destinations, have used the advantages of information technologies in their websites during the last few years. Recently, a new paradigm, characterised by the use of applications and collaborative tools, which is called Web 2.0, is driving dramatic changes in the promotion of tourist destinations, with a clear shift towards the use of content generated by internet users, and hence, the creation of web-based communities regarding touristic activities around each destination. In this article, we will study and discuss how the major DMOs, according to their |popularity on the internet|, are improving their websites with specific tools in order to exploit the enormous potential of user generated content in web-based communities, characteristic of this new Web 2.0 scenario.

E-heritage and e-museums: technological resources for tourism planning

Internet use for travel planning has increased steadily in recent years, becoming the usual source of travel planning. However, the limited research that has been conducted on the use of websites for museums and heritage presentation sites shows a considerable gap between growing demands and the supply of resources. Websites seem to be a very important tool in the management of audiences, by increasing the capacity to disseminate information, increasing the ability to reach new potential audiences, improving public programmes for entertainment and learning, and improving communication campaigns. In addition, the use of websites for visit planning would allow heritage centres to manage the |visitor|s agenda|. This work seeks to examine the effects of the interaction between heritage sites and new technologies, and the implications of this interaction for cultural diffusion, from a shared approach that integrates heritage, tourism, and web-based communities.

Confronting Myths about Teacher Leadership

Leadership in Freshman Physics is an NSF-funded professional development program designed to support 9 th grade teacher leaders in the successful implementation of a ‘Physics First’ or curriculum sequence that places physics prior to biology and chemistry. Leadership is viewed as an essential component in the initial success and long-term sustainability of such reforms. However, our own experiences working with teachers and the growing body of literature cautions that teachers may not view themselves as leaders and may hold ideas counterproductive to their development as leaders. In this article, we consider teachers’ myths about leadership, and describe how we helped teachers confront these in a professional development program. In this program, each teacher designed a plan of action, based on his or her professional experiences and school environment. A web-based online learning community was established to serve as a platform of interaction and support among teachers and project staff throughout the year. We emphasize that by developing their capacity for leadership, teachers can make a difference beyond their own classrooms through empowering others.

The International League Against Epilepsy at the threshold of its second century: Year 2

In July 2009, the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE) developed its four-year strategic plan. This is the second year progress report, prepared by the management committee and the chair of the Strategic Task Force, with input from several key leaders, to highlight progress toward achieving the plan’s goals. Additional information regarding our activities can be found at our renovated website (www.ilae-epilepsy.org).

Applying Social Network Analysis to Analyze a Web-Based Community

this paper deals with a very renowned website (that is Book-Crossing) from two angles: The first angle focuses on the direct relations between users and books. Many things can be inferred from this part of analysis such as who is more interested in book reading than others and why? Which books are most popular and which users are most active and why? The task requires the use of certain social network analysis measures (e.g. degree centrality). What does it mean when two users like the same book? Is it the same when other two users have one thousand books in common? Who is more likely to be a friend of whom and why? Are there specific people in the community who are more qualified to establish large circles of social relations? These questions (and of course others) were answered through the other part of the analysis, which will take us to probe the potential social relations between users in this community. Although these relationships do not exist explicitly, they can be inferred with the help of affiliation network analysis and techniques such as m-slice. Book-Crossing dataset, which covered four weeks of users' activities during 2004, has always been the focus of investigation for researchers interested in discovering patterns of users' preferences in order to offer the most possible accurate recommendations. However; the implicit social relationships among users that emerge (when putting users in groups based on similarity in book preferences) did not gain the same amount of attention. This could be due to the importance recommender systems attain these days (as compared to other research fields) as a result to the rapid spread of e-commerce websites that seek to market their products online. Certain social network analysis software, namely Pajek, was used to explore different structural aspects of this community such as brokerage roles, triadic constraints and levels of cohesion. Some overall statistics were also obtained such as network density, average geodesic distance and average degree.

A Multi-Level Framework for Validation of Ontology-Driven and Community-Based Web Services Composition

This paper proposes an Ontology-driven and Community-based Web Services (OCWS) framework which aims at automating discovery, composition and execution of web services. The purpose is to validate and to execute a user’s request built from the composition of a set of OCWS descriptions and a set of user constraints. The defined framework separates clearly the OCWS external descriptions from internal realistic implementations of e-services. It identifies three levels: the knowledge level, the community level and e-services level and uses different participant agents deployed in a distributed architecture. First, the reasoner agent uses a description logic extended for actions in order to reason about: (i) consistency of the pre-conditions and post-conditions of OCWS descriptions and the user constraints with ontologies semantics, (ii) consistency of the workflow matching assertions and the execution dependency graph. Then the execution plan model is generated automatically to be run by the composer agents using the dynamic execution plan algorithm (DEPA), according to the workflow matching and the established execution order. The community composer agents invoke the appropriate e-services and ensure that the non functional constraints are satisfied. DEPA algorithm works dynamically without a priori information about e-services states and has interesting properties such as taking into account the non-determinism of e-services and reducing the search space.