survey

[Guest guest]

I asked Dave about this on the list and he said he might be helpful for

people in the long rung.

Good Morning,

I am a student studying a Masters degree in Health Promotion and

Psychology at the Institute of Work, Health & Organisations, University of

Nottingham in England. I developed a particular interest in diabetes during

my previous professional experience working for a year in the health

education team of a diabetes care unit in a Montreal hospital. Over the past

few months I have been interested in the conversations found in an online

support group for people suffering from diabetes. To know more about them, I

became a member of a few diabetes online support groups a couple of months

ago, and have been impressed with the lively exchanges that take place on a

daily basis. This led to my idea of conducting my research project on the

topic of online groups.

The research I would like to lead investigates the reasons users participate

in online support groups, their perception of the advantages and

disadvantages related to them, the social support they get out of them and

how this compares to the social support they receive from people in their

face-to-face interactions. I would also be looking at scores obtained on a

self- efficacy (people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce effects

on their illness) and on a self- care (decisions and actions that an

individual can take to cope with a health problem or to improve his or her

health) questionnaire, to investigate the relationship between these two

variables and to find out whether the users of the online support group

studied present homogenous or heterogeneous levels of self- care and self-

efficacy.

I would be very grateful if you would consider possibly

helping me with this by facilitating access to members of the online support

groups who may be interested in completing the questionnaire. This would

involve making the link available to them and if they are interested they

can choose to complete it. The link to the questionnaire is provided below.

Please let me know if you experience any problems with it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Xdg_2bGymnIKZqUjvKbiMdQg_3d_3d

<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=5DRS1sePD6bm5TF9_2bnbiyw_3d_3d>

I would like my research to be mutually beneficial and am happy to discuss

any issues that you may like to explore and potentially include in the

questionnaire. If you do have any questions please feel free to contact me

and if you feel that this is something that you and the members of the group

may be interested in participating in I would be very grateful if you could

let me know via email or telephone.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this, I very much

appreciate it.

Sincerely,

e Baron

justinebaron@...

(0044)07983631396

--

Peg Shambo

Bettendorf, Iowa

peg.shambo@...