SoCS: Collaborative Research: Conversational Dynamics in Online Support Groups

健康支持团体，包括互联网上的团体，可以使参与者大大受益，但对这些好处负责的社会过程尚不清楚。由卡内基-梅隆大学的罗伯特·克劳特领导的一个研究小组将探索在线癌症支持团体的对话动态如何影响团体功能和参与者的生活质量，并将开发可用于分析在线对话并提高其有效性的计算工具。该研究项目有四个具体目标。(1)了解在线支持小组中的对话片段如何促进社会支持。例如，一个人必须说什么才能让其他人做出共鸣？(2)了解这些群体中的支持是如何影响群体承诺和健康结果的。(3)开发计算工具，使健康对话的大数据集的分析变得容易处理。(4)利用这些工具改进对支持小组协调员的培训。在线健康支持小组很受欢迎，约58%的美国成年人使用在线健康支持小组。确定在线癌症支持小组中沟通的作用将为这些小组的用户和促进者提供有价值的信息，并将加强他们的培训。此外，用于分析大型对话数据语料库的工具将有助于对其他类型在线群体中的对话行为感兴趣的研究人员的工作

Health support groups, including those on the internet, can substantially benefit participants, but the social processes responsible for these benefits are unclear. A team of researchers led by Robert Kraut at Carnegie-Mellon University will explore how the conversational dynamics of online cancer support groups influence group functioning and participant quality of life and will develop computational tools that can be used to analyze online conversations and improve their effectiveness. The research project has four specific goals. (1) To understand how conversational episodes in online support groups facilitate social support. For example, what must a person say to get others to respond empathically? (2) To understand how support in these groups influences group commitment and affects health outcomes. (3) To develop computational tools to make the analysis of large datasets of health conversations tractable. (4) To use these tools to improve the training of support group facilitators.Online health support groups are popular, being used by about 58% of American adults. Identifying the role of communication in online cancer support groups will provide valuable information to users and facilitators of these groups and will enhance their training. Moreover, a tool for analyzing large corpora of conversational data will facilitate the work of researchers who are interested in conversational behavior in other kinds of online groups