8: Hot flashes, cold tears

New Note 6

For our assignment, we decided to read a few threads on support on menopause (at alt.support.menopause). Our results were similar to the Braithwaite study in that we had mostly information, esteem and emotional support. We did not have any results with tangible assistance or network support.

Information: 18/20
Tangible Assistance: 0/20
Esteem Support: 4/20
Network Support: 0/20
Emotional Support: 5/20
Humor: 6/20
inter-rater reliability: 95%

Some possible reasons for so much informational support was because our assignment focused on medical conditions, and most of the people that made their posts were asking for information, ie. whether to get a second opinion on a medical situation or advice on whether to get a surgery or not.

There was also a lot of emotional and esteem support because these can be difficult situations to deal with. For example, a lot of people needed help on making a decision and others would respond telling them to trust their own judgment (esteem support). Sometimes there would also be people who would mention stories from their friends and others would respond empathizing with their situation. We had no examples of network support or tangible assistance.

There was no tangible assistance because there was little help that people could provide through tangible assistance and also, there were so few people on the group that it would probably be too difficult to travel a far distance to meet each other. Also, there was no network support because there were so few people on the group that they might have known each other already.

Finally, we had a strong amount of humor in accord with the Brathwaite study. This is likely because dealing with menopause is somewhat of a bonding experience for women of older age. In fact, one great post that we found was nothing more than this link: http://www.comics.com/creators/rubes/archive/rubes-20071010.html

We noticed that the people contributing on this group were extremely open because it was an extremely tight network. Even though there were hundreds of people on the group, we saw a lot of the same name several times. This explains the reciprocity that's common on the groups. Also, there's a great deal of anonymity since the only thing that's displayed to identify the author of the post is a vague name (usually only a first name or even vaguer things like "Chakolate" and "HotFlashesColdTears"). This not only enhances anonymity but interaction management as well, seeing as they can choose whatever name they like to, plus they can always use the whole "It's-my-friend-not-me" ruse to hide their real truth from others. Also, in spite of their anonymity, they develop their own personality that's always available (providing access 24/7).

Authors: Mitch Chubinsky (blue), Zak Bell (blue), Ashish Banerjee (red)

Threads that we used:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.menopause/browse_thread/thread/273950388612d4d1/46959ad61f246a15?hl=en#46959ad61f246a15
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.menopause/browse_thread/thread/726e546d763fec18/de4374eca086398e?hl=en#de4374eca086398e
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.menopause/browse_thread/thread/36d51bcb7349cdde/42c1ca08be6ffec8?hl=en#42c1ca08be6ffec8
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.menopause/browse_thread/thread/dfa3ffac75ccc73c/68ad85f01a017eb0?hl=en#68ad85f01a017eb0