Online Support Groups for Women with Metastatic Breast Cancer: A Feasibility Pilot Study

Abstract

This study evaluates the feasibility and acceptability of an online peer support group intervention for women with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Feasibility, participation rates, participant satisfaction, and preliminary outcomes are examined from a 1999 to 2000 study of online peer support groups for women with MBC. Thirty women with MBC were randomly assigned to either an immediate online support condition or a waitlisted control condition. For practical and ethical reasons, the waitlist period was limited to 2 months. Six monthly assessments were collected using standardized measurement instruments. Intervention retention rates (73%), assessment completion rates (range = 100%-86% in retained participants) and support group participation (M = 5.9 days per week) were high compared to other published studies on this population. Reported satisfaction with the intervention was also high. An online support intervention study is feasible using a waitlist control. Despite the feasibility and acceptability of the study procedures, the study design and small sample size precluded definitive conclusions about intervention effectiveness. As such, study procedures should be replicated with a larger more representative sample to examine the effectiveness of the intervention.

A systematic review of types and efficacy of online interventions for cancer patients

“…Some of the most promising projects used outcome measures that were associated only with the feasibility or usability of the intervention, an important first step in a complex intervention, but of little use in assessing clinical benefit [5,[23][24][25][26]29,30].…”

“…As they did not have an objective outcome measure they did not fit the inclusion criteria for full analysis. Overall these studies demonstrated that the use of online interventions for support or therapy in this population was feasible to implement and acceptable to the recipients in a general sense [5,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30].…”

Social Support Exchanges in Facebook Social Support Group

“…A range of computer-mediated social support groups are developed to deal with various conditions including self-injury (Haberstroh & Moyer, 2012), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord (Loanea & D'Alessandroa, 2013), suicidal individuals (Gilat, Tobin & Shahar, 2011), metastatic breast cancer (Vilhauer, McClintock & Matthews, 2010), issues related to membership of a stepfamily (Christian, 2005), and male infertility (Malik & Coulson, 2008). The benefits of computer-mediated social support groups are not only to accommodate the individuals suffering the illness/conditions but also the parents, family and carers.…”

Engagement with a Social Networking Intervention for Cancer-Related Distress

“…Early efforts to measure engagement with Internet-based interventions used general engagement measures, such as number of messages posted [7, 10, 20-24], number of logins [7, 9, 24-26], number of page views [5, 27], and time on the study website [9, 24, 28, 29]. Number of logins is one of the most commonly reported types of engagement across Internet-based interventions for health [30–32].…”

“…Number of logins is one of the most commonly reported types of engagement across Internet-based interventions for health [30–32]. Among Internet-based interventions specific to cancer, average logins per week has been remarkably stable, ranging from 2.5 logins per week [24] to 2.9 logins per week [9, 25, 26]. Another marker of engagement is whether participants actively contribute, by posting messages or responses, to a study website.…”