Understanding how adolescents and young adults with cancer talk about needs in online and face-to-face support groups

Abstract

We compared adolescent and young adult cancer patient and survivor language between mediated and face-to-face support communities in order to understand how the use of certain words frame conversations about family, friends, health, work, achievement, and leisure. We analyzed transcripts from an online discussion board (N = 360) and face-to-face support group (N = 569) for adolescent and young adults using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a word-based computerized text analysis software that counts the frequency of words and word stems. There were significant differences between the online and face-to-face support groups in terms of content (e.g. friends, health) and style words (e.g. verb tense, negative emotion, and cognitive process).