Archive for the ‘Measurement’ Category
Can social networks be used for epidemiology data collection
Collecting data on a human population has become more expensive per head in the past 10 years. Studies have suffered from low response rates and a higher drop-out rates in longer term studies. The reason is that there are many more media of communication thus raising the distraction noise and lowering attention spans.
A study from Sweden in 2008 by Christin Bexelius showed a much improved response from web based research when compatred to Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Sweden has today among the highest Internet and cell phone penetration in the world, making the population suitable for introducing new technologies in data collection (11). The Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB) at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has since 2001 designed and evaluated several studies using e-epidemiology. In 2003, the first large scale web-based study including 47,859 women in the age group 41-60 was conducted (12). Today, the department has used the Internet for several large scale population-based studies, including an Internet based-hearing test and a surveillance system utilizing IVR and a web-based application. .
Social Media can now be adapted specifically to the needs of the researcher and web-based questionnaires can either be delivered to PC’s or to mobile phones. So could social networks play a role in data collection on a population?
Measuring social networks
Now that the social media genie is out of the bottle there’s no going back.
Patients are increasingly turning to social networks and discussion forums to discuss medical issues with others who are faced with similar choices such as ” Should I have surgery not?”. People still trust their doctors but they like to have reassurance from others like them. This is not new. People have been getting together to help each in networks such as Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time.
We are well past the tipping point for social media adoption now that Facebook has a quarter of Internet users signed up. The first follow-on industry out of the traps is the supply of metrics for usage and monitoring of social media. Much of the same technology used for measuring and monitoring social media for marketing can be applied in a medical situation – it just needs to be adapted.
So is social media now mature enough to be used by the health services for grouping people with the same medical condition together?
