Assignment 8: Less than helpful support groups

Post also completed by Colleen O’Shea (red)

At first, we had trouble finding a discussion board that consisted of people giving support to the group without simply mouthing off and responding in an irritable or joking manner. For this reason, we coded messages from four different threads, but all within the general topic of parents. We coded based on whether the message contained information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, emotional support and humor, and then determined our inter-relater reliability based on whether or not we agreed.

% inter-rater reliability 0.9666667
Frequency % of msgs
Information 11 .55
Tangible assistance 1 .05
Esteem support 6 .3
Network support 6 .3
Emotional support 4 .2
Humor 11 .55

The inter-relater reliability is the correlation between coders. We got a high percentage of 96.67%, meaning that we agreed on almost all of Braithwaite’s types of support behaviors, information, esteem…etc. This data can be considered reliable because and inter-rater reliability of greater than .7, or 70%, is considered reliable while anything under is not considered reliable data.

Our inter-rater reliability finding is much higher than those in Braithwaite’s study, 80% (p. 132) for multiple reasons. First, we were not subcategorizing any of the behaviors; for example, as opposed to breaking down information into advice, referral, situation approval, and teaching, we grouped the four into one broad category of information. Because of this, if we believed that there was any type of information, we could say yes and not have to categorize the type of information. Another reason that ours may have been higher could be from the fact that prior to looking at the messages on the discussion board, we went over together the groups and discussed what they meant and their definitions, assuring that we had the same or similar ideas and criteria for judging the messages. Therefore, being that we were assessing base don the same definitions, we had a much high instance of agreeing. Finally, the fact that the messages that we found were “less than helpful monkeys,” (if you have ever seen the SIMS2 commercial, you know what we’re talking about), it made categorizing much easier. For example, many of the posts were extremely short and many were very humorous, not providing much other than criticism and mocking.

For example, in the following message board, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.attn-deficit/browse_thread/thread/9f59140bce520a8/fba76beedef61b2c?lnk=st&q=parents+of+add+children#fba76beedef61b2c, one of the posts consisted only of the words “oh pishaw,” which is obviously very straight forward as far as the social behavior categorizing went. This is why there are so many posts consisting of humorous social behavior, 55%. We feel that this is probably due to Walther and Boyd’s anonymity dimension of attraction to online social support. The posters have an increased ability to say whatever they want and avoid embarrassment or seeming disagreeable or negative toward the one needing support. Another dimension of attraction that allows the posters to say what they feel, such as insulting ones needing support, is the idea of social distance. Because the online supporters are not insulting them to their face, they feel that they have fewer restrictions and are more likely to be open and honest.

The other message boards that we coded were the following:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.single-parents/browse_thread/thread/a4cbb21c70fdfb5f/ebe32f16e763b2ae?lnk=st&q=single+parent+support#ebe32f16e763b2ae
messages 1-2

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc/browse_thread/thread/1d0e7d430caf7ea0/69d61d8a072a7e1a?lnk=st&q=children+with+disabilities#69d61d8a072a7e1a
messages 3-9

http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.down-syn/browse_thread/thread/a493fca6c65bd043/c7332d612af3f366?lnk=st&q=parents+of+children+with+disabilities+#c7332d612af3f366
message 10