“It’s more than milk, it’s mental health”: a case of online human milk sharing

Background Milk sharing is not a new concept and occurs today via regulated human milk banks and unregulated online milk sharing groups. Exploring and understanding how, and why, mothers use these peers to peer milk sharing groups, is a vehicle to understanding how breastfeeding mothers can be tangibly supported online, adding to the literature on peer milk sharing, from a recipient’s perspective. This research presents a single case example of an online breastfeeding support group use, through one mother’s experiencing of seeking human donor milk. Method This is a qualitative, exploratory study observing the attitudes, thoughts, and feelings of one mother who is seeking human donor milk through online groups. A single key case was identified, and the participant was asked to document thoughts and feelings as she searched for milk online. A telephone interview was conducted after two months, and the online page activity from the Human Milk for Human Babies Facebook group was captured for the week following the interview. The results were presented in a chronological and linear analytical approach adopting pattern matching. Results ‘Abbi’ is a mother who has Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and subsequent low milk supply and sought donor breastmilk online. Online support groups introduced her to donor milk sharing, which not only supported her breastfeeding but supported her own mental health. Abbi talks of the need to build a trusting relationship with her donor, due to the lack of regulation, and the positive impact it had for her and ‘Lucas’, her baby. Conclusion Considering milk sharing groups simply as tangible online support ignores the complexities around Abbi’s decision to use human donor milk. Peer milk sharing online is an option for mothers, but it is surrounded by stigma amongst other mothers, professionals, and even within pro breastfeeding support groups.

Personality, Attitudes, and Behaviors Predicting Perceived Benefit in Online Support Groups (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Online Support Groups (OSGs) are distance-delivered, easily accessible health interventions offering emotional support, informational support, experience-based support, and companionship or network support for patients/caregivers managing chronic mental and physical health conditions. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine the relative contribution of extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, positive attitudes toward OSGs, and typical past OSG usage patterns in predicting perceived OSG benefit in an OSG for parent caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. METHODS A mix method longitudinal design was used to collect data from 81 parents across Canada. Attitudes toward OSGs and typical OSG usage patterns were assessed using author-developed surveys administered at baseline, before OSG membership. The personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism were assessed at baseline using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). Perceived OSG benefit was assessed using an author-developed survey, administered two months after initiation of OSG membership. RESULTS A hierarchical regression analysis found that extraversion was the only variable that significantly predicted perceived OSG benefit. CONCLUSIONS The key suggestions for improving future OSGs were facilitating more in-depth, customized, and interactive content in OSGs.

Online Social Support Groups/Communities

Numerous studies over the past two decades suggest that people with a variety of health concerns are increasingly turning to online networks for social support. This has led to the rise of online support groups/communities for people facing health concerns. Researchers have found that these groups/communities provide patients, disease survivors, and caregivers a number of advantages and disadvantages in terms of mobilizing social support for their health-related concerns. This chapter will examine these issues in greater detail as well as the theoretical and practical implications of this body of research for patients who use online support communities to help cope with and manage a variety of health issues. It will provide an overview of online social support and health outcomes, discuss key processes and theoretical explanations for the efficacy of online support communities for people facing health concerns, and the limitations of this body of research as well as an agenda for future communication research on health-related online support groups/communities.

STUDENTS’ VOICE ON FEEDBACK AND INSTRUCTIONS IN ACADEMIC WRITING

Although studies on the approaches and methods of teaching Academic Writing in university classroom are extensive, comparative studies on students’ evaluation of the classroom strategies and techniques applied are still scant. A current paper is based on our comparative research conducted both at Slovak and Hungarian universities at the faculty of Humanities. The objective of this particular study was to explore senior university students’ “voice” on feedback and instructions in EFL academic writing classroom. It suggests that the pinpoint is on the students’ viewpoint rather than their supervisors’. Therefore, our task was to scrutinize the students’ perspectives and based on them develop further research. Observably, the analysed data furnish more positive students’ responses (within both Group A-Slovak and Group B-Hungarian) on feedback, as well as on being graded and being recognised as a writer. However, grading might be an issue in EFL classroom: based on the research, it awakes heterogeneous opinions of the respondents. The final section of the questionnaire was aimed at finding out how instructions for writing during studies can be improved. It is notable that both groups (A and B) (from 66,67% to 100%) consider feedback, professional tutoring, online support and extra courses in writing as an effective tool for improving writing skills within academic curriculum. A logical follow-up of the study might be investigating most appropriate and “customer-friendly” ways of feedback and instruction. This might further instigate creating resources to support the unfolding of academic writing feedback across EFL program Europe-wide.

Alone but not lonely: The relationship between COVID-19 social factors, loneliness, depression, and suicidal ideation

Objective Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been concerns that social distancing may negatively impact mental health, particularly with regards to loneliness, depressive symptoms, and suicidality. The current study explored how aspects of social distancing, communication, and online support from October 2020 to December 2020 related to loneliness, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation. Method Participants (n = 216) who self-identified as having mental health diagnoses were recruited and completed questionnaires online. Results Findings showed that COVID-19 related social contact, particularly electronic social contact, is associated with decreased loneliness, suicidal ideation, and depression. Online emotional support was significantly associated with decreased loneliness and depressive symptoms. Social distancing practices were not associated with increased loneliness, suicidal ideation, and depression. Conclusions Our findings underscore the importance of leveraging electronic methods of social connection, especially among individuals who are at risk for suicide or depression.

Perception of Small-Scale Entrepreneurs Towards Government Support in Uttarakhand

Entrepreneurship is seen as a driving force for economic development and job creation. Hence, the government offers different forms of support to entrepreneurs. Many researchers have examined the effectiveness of government support. However, the question of how small-scale entrepreneurs perceive government assistance remains unanswered. The study seeks to assess the perception of small-scale entrepreneurs towards government support and also tries to explore some underlying factors pertaining to government support towards entrepreneurship development in Uttarakhand. The study is based on primary data collected from 240 small-scale entrepreneurs, using a self-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to interpret the results. It has been found that small-scale entrepreneurs have a positive perception towards single window clearance system, investment promotion facility centre and timelines for business approvals. The study further found that small-scale entrepreneurs have a negative perception towards the interest rate, transparency in loan sanctioning and the behaviour of the employees of financial institutions. The study also extracted three important factors from PCA and named them as an online support system, transparency and financial support.

Being the infidelity partner: Narratives of lived experiences in an online support group

Taking into account the secretive nature of infidelity experiences and their adverse impact on the involved partners, the aim of the present qualitative study was to examine how individuals—who have been engaged in extradyadic relationships, as “affair partners”—narrate their experiences in an online support group. The study analyzed 60 posts, published over a period of 6 months in an online support community. Three main themes emerged through the thematic analysis conducted. The first theme involved conflicting dimensions of affair partner experience, in which the following sub-themes were identified: 1) living in the shadow of loss, and 2) the prevalence of ambivalence: when opposite impulses coexist. The second theme refers to the centripetal aspects of the relationship and within this section the following sub-themes are defined: 1) the relationship as a supportive environment and 2) between plenitude and dearth: the desire for exclusivity. Finally, the third theme refers to the lessons learned by the affair partners and their generalizing conclusions such experiences. The present study underlines how group participants reconstruct their experiences of extradyadic relationships and how they create new ways of meaning making about them. The findings involve reflexive conclusions about intimate relationships capturing elements of broader cultural narratives, representations and dilemmas of self and relationships, as presented in written transactions in online support groups.

AdCOFE: Advanced Contextual Feature Extraction in conversations for emotion classification

Emotion recognition in conversations is an important step in various virtual chatbots which require opinion-based feedback, like in social media threads, online support, and many more applications. Current emotion recognition in conversations models face issues like: (a) loss of contextual information in between two dialogues of a conversation, (b) failure to give appropriate importance to significant tokens in each utterance, (c) inability to pass on the emotional information from previous utterances. The proposed model of Advanced Contextual Feature Extraction (AdCOFE) addresses these issues by performing unique feature extraction using knowledge graphs, sentiment lexicons and phrases of natural language at all levels (word and position embedding) of the utterances. Experiments on emotion recognition in conversations datasets show that AdCOFE is beneficial in capturing emotions in conversations.

SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS FORMS OF ACCOMPANIMENT OF REMOTE PROJECTS AND COURSES

Предлагается анализ феноменов дистанционного и электронного обучения. Представлены этапы становления технологии дистанционно организованного учебного процесса. Анализируется уровень сформированности ИКТ-компетенций учителей, студентов педагогических вузов, обучающихся общеобразовательных организаций. Рассмотрены вопросы оперативного (онлайн) и отложенного во времени (офлайн) сопровождения деятельности педагогов, связанной с проведением и участием в ИКТ-проектах в рамках собственной профессиональной деятельности. Работа основана на реальном опыте осуществления проектов на территории Алтайского края в 2012–2018 гг. Описывается опыт сопровождения проектов и курсов по формированию ИКТ-компетенций, в том числе моделей организации оперативного консультирования учителей средствами чат-ботов, специализированных групп в социальных сетях, сайтов с форумами и др. Рассмотрены вопросы онлайн-сопровождения офлайн-организованного учебного процесса студентов, что соответствует осуществлению и поддержке какого-либо предметного курса обучения. Материал базируется на опыте преподавания в период локдауна, связанного с пандемией новой коронавирусной инфекции. Введены понятия вертикально и горизонтально организованной распределенной поддержки, рассмотрены различные способы и методы ее осуществления. Описывается авторская технология организации дистанционных курсов повышения квалификации учителей по тематике внедрения ИКТ в образовательный процесс. Указывается, что при организации сопровождения дистанционных и очно-дистанционных проектов и курсов наиболее оптимальным является использование комбинации синхронного и асинхронного вида коммуникации. The article offers an analysis of the phenomena of distance and e-learning, presents the stages of the formation of the technology of the distance-organized educational process. The level of formation of ICT competencies of teachers, students of pedagogical universities, students of general educational organizations is analyzed. The issues of operational “online” and delayed “offline” support of teachers’ activities related to the implementation and participation in ICT projects within the framework of their own professional activities are considered. The work is based on real experience in implementing projects on the territory of the Altai Territory (2012–2018), including the experience of supporting projects and courses on the formation of ICT competencies, including models for organizing operational counseling for teachers using chat bots, specialized groups in social networks, sites with forums, etc. The issues of online support of the offline organized educational process of students are considered, which corresponds to the implementation and support of any subject course of study. This material is based on teaching experience during the quarantine period associated with the coronavirus epidemic. The article introduces the concepts of vertically and horizontally organized distributed support, discusses various ways and methods of implementing this support. The author’s technology of organizing distance courses for advanced training of teachers on the topic of ICT implementation in the educational process is described. It is indicated that when organizing support for remote and intramural-distance projects and courses, the most optimal is the use of a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication.