For this assignment, I (I worked alone since I had trouble finding a partner) decided to look at two threads on pretty much the same topic, relationship trouble. One thread was written by a male who was wondering how he could make his female friend more than just a friend and the other was about a wife who was having trouble communicating with her husband on the issue of masturbation. While most of the messages related to the original post, some of the messages were responses to responses to the original message. While I ciphered through the messages to code, I made sure to choose ones that related to the original post in some way.
| % inter-rater reliability | 0.9916667 | | ||
| | | | frequency | % of msgs |
| Information | | 13 | 0.65 | |
| Tangible assistance | 0 | 0 | ||
| Esteem support | | 4 | 0.2 | |
| Network support | | 4 | 0.2 | |
| Emotional support | 2 | 0.1 | ||
| Humor | | | 10 | 0.5 |
When compared to the results obtained by Braithwaite, they are very different on the surface. Braithwaite found that out of the messages coded, the largest percentage could be classified as lending informational, esteem support and emotional support. My findings were that the largest percentage of the coded messages was lending informational support. The next largest percentages were those related to esteem support and network support. I find these differences in our findings to be very understandable. One of the factors that could have lead to the difference in our percentages as they related to emotional support was my inability to quantify emotional support. As I read through the responses, I found it difficult to classify any of them as lending emotional support as I defined it. I associate emotional support with feelings of sympathy and empathy for the most part. In many of the posts, there was a sense of humor displayed and I found it hard to see these jokes as forms of sympathy or empathy. Another reason for the difference in the percentages is the nature of the posts and the subject matter of the threads. Braithwaite got his results from a disability social support group, while I got mine from support groups on how to deal with the relationship of the opposite gender. I imagine that the majority of the posts that Braithwaite coded were about dealing with and coping with their current situation. It makes sense that the posts would lend much emotional and esteem support. The posts that I coded had to do with someone trying to find out how to change a current situation, though. Most of the posts contained advice on how to make the situation better or simple different and not how to cope with what was happening. It makes sense the majority of theses most lent informational support. Esteem or emotional support seems as though they would facilitate the continuation of the bad habits that made these situations happen in the first place..
I found that the posts I coded supported Walther’s dimensions of attraction to online social support. The subject matter of the threads that I read included intimate details of relationships, especially the one about a wife talking about her husband’s masturbation. I cannot imagine that this person would talk about something so taboo in the presence of her friends and family who would probably know her husband as well. It makes sense that she would spare herself and her husband the embarrassment of divulging their marital problems. Walter’s anonymity and social distance would spare them this embarrassment.
4 comments:
I forgot to include links to the threads I used.
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.health.infertility/browse_thread/thread/1148a11a10b4bb28/b3ae586e41bc7c78?lnk=st&q=man+advice#b3ae586e41bc7c78
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/f3313768e065c551/8e7ca50971a75855?lnk=st&q=girl+trouble#8e7ca50971a75855
Mike, first off, I'm kind of surprised you didn't get inter-rate reliability of 1 if you coded it yourself. Did you disagree with yourself? =D Anyway, more seriously, we found similar results. The majority of our messages showed signs of information support and less of anything else. I'm actually surprised you found some network support. We found most of our posters to be anonymous and not very helpful as far as network connections are concerned. As you pointed out, I think it has to do with the topic of the thread. With relationships, network support certainly makes sense.
Ahoy Mike
I took note of your statement that it was difficult to define emotional support, hence you couldn't find any. I think this is one of the science flaws in our assignment. We never took a great amount of time to standardize what we all thought was emotional support, what was network support, and so on. While some were probably straightforward, like Tangible Assistance, others that were very vague, as in emotional and esteem support, were probably very liable to a lot amount of agreement. I think one of the other things that we should have focused on was the level of agreement for each category and used that to determine the error in our findings.
I found that even our group had a struggle defining esteem and emotional support. Sometimes we were able to tell that one of them was there, but we weren't sure if it was one, the other, or both. So I think the fact that we weren't able to find a comfortable definition for these two categories is probably what would lead to a high variance in our final reports for these two fields.
I also thought you did a good job of isolating how anonymity played an important role in these threads. Clearly, it would be very embarrassing for the second woman to talk about her issues in front of other people. This would probably make it more difficult for her to communicate her issues with others, and is probably the single reason that mediated support is more productive than face-to-face support for her issues. Obviously we can all understand what she wants to tell us - and since it's easiest for her to express herself through this medium, we can best understand how she feels about it and how she can resolve it.
Well done.
Ashish
Hey Mike,
Well let me say that the women held nothing back in one of the blogs you read. In that situation, I do not find it hard to imagine that people would provide more informational feedback and support as opposed to emotional. I also agree that it was hard to define emotional support and your insight about the humor is very interesting and I too agree that it played a major part in differentiating the two threads. Finally, I think that the part regarding the anonymity of the people posting the threads and responding is essential. I know that in college, as a girl, we hold nothing back and enjoy reminiscing in that awkward hook up because whether people will admit it or not, we are still getting the hang of it all. However, as a married woman, I can see this type of conversation seeming immature and embarassing and think that the anonymity of the internet allows her to search for answers. Great post!
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