1. Content Analysis of Family Building Blogs: Preliminary Findings
Valerie Douglas, Kristi Lavigne, Sarah Stickley, & Sara Sohr-Preston
Department of Psychology
Southeastern Louisiana University
Poster presented at the 2014 annual convention of the Louisiana Psychological Association, Metairie, Louisiana, June, 2014.
Content Analysis of Family Building Blogs: Preliminary Findings
Introduction
The recent popularity of personal blogging has provided a unique environment within which social scientists can observe human behavior. Weblogs (commonly referred to as blogs) can provide a means of personal expression and social support that can benefit both mental and physical health (Ko & Kuo, 2009). Despite its potential, the new medium may prove to be methodologically limiting. Generalization of findings due to blog discontinuance and security of blogs is a concern especially for longitudinal studies (Rains & Keating, 2011). Past blog studies have limited themselves to looking at a single snapshot of time or alternatively looking at the number of blogger posts in a given period of time. Unfortunately, the given time period in these studies is arbitrary and frequently includes many inactive blogs or blogs with a single post, indicating blogs that may have become inactive shortly after the first observation (Li et al., 2013; Johnson, 2008). Though the few prior studies that have incorporated blogosphere content into their research did not require longitudinal data, inactive blogs are particularly problematic for developmental psychologists and other researchers who must frequently use longitudinal methods (McDaniel & Coyne, 2011; Baker & Moore, 2008). Still, it is pertinent to study blogs for different medical subcultures, and the current study investigates the content of family building (i.e., infertility, pregnancy loss, adoption, trying to conceive) blogs.
Method
The blogs were assessed by a team of trained coders based on their posting content for 22 different criteria within a one-week period. Example criteria are items such as: “were specific medical diagnoses mentioned?”, Was emotional despair, heartbreak, or frustration related to trying to adopt
mentioned?”, and “Was getting fulfillment or emotional gratification derived from writing or posting mentioned?”. Frequencies were calculated for the 19 items that were yes or no answers and means and standard deviations were calculated for the three items that were number based.
Results
Overall, about 80% of data was missing due to dead, password-protected, or seemingly hacked sites in a sample of 1,044 blogs. For active and accessible blogs, there was an average of 2.08 (SD = 2.62) posts and (SD = 19.51) comments. Some content appeared infrequently, but health info was frequently shared in posts (70.40%) and comments (70.70%), there was despair over life events (37.10%) and trying to conceive (22.40%), and children were often mentioned (46.30%). See Table 1 for all the results.
Discussion
This study helps increase awareness and understanding of a lesser-known source of knowledge and support for those facing obstacles in the process of family building and maintenance. One of the most striking findings was the large number of inaccessible or inactive blogs (Rains & Keating, 2011). The missing data could be due in part to the personal qualities of blogs; blogs are subject to the events in the lives and changing interests of the bloggers (Johnson, 2008). In the case of family building blogs, successfully becoming a parent or expanding a family may make upkeep of a blog difficult. And in some other cases, bloggers may become disheartened after repeated attempts to build their families, leading to a loss of interest in the blogging community. The number of times a blogger posts will always vary greatly due to a wide variety of personal reasons. A limitation of this study is that it suffers from the same problem of inactive or abandoned blogs that other research in this area does (McDaniel & Coyne, 2011; Baker & Moore, 2008). Future research should investigate ways to get around this problem such as recruiting participants to write blog posts throughout their journey to become parents.
References
Baker, J., & Moore, S. (2008). Blogging as a Social Tool: A psychosocial examination of the effects of blogging. Cyberpsychology Behavior, & Social Networking, 11,
Johnson, K. (2008). Are blogs here to stay?: An examination of the longevity and currency of a static list of library and information science weblogs. Serials Review, 34,
Ko, H., Kuo, F. (2009). Can blogging enhance subjective well-being through self-disclosure? Cyberpsycholology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 12, 75-9.
Li, L., Li, A., Hao, B., Guan, Z., & Zhu, T. (2014). Predicting active users’ personality based on micro-blogging behaviors. PLoS ONE 9, e8499. Doi: /journal.pone
McDaniel, B., & Coyne, S. (2012). New mothers and media use: associations between blogging, social networking, and maternal well-being. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 16,
Rains, S., Keating, D. (2011). The social dimension of blogging about health: health blogging, social support, and well-being. Communication Monographs, 78,
Valerie Douglas: