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Online Peer Support Groups for Behavior Change: Moderation Requirements

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Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 385))

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Abstract

Technology-assisted behaviour awareness and change is on the rise. Examples include apps and sites for fitness, healthy eating, mental health and smoking cessation. These information systems recreated principles of influence and persuasion in a digital form allowing real-time observation, interactivity and intervention. Peer support groups are one of the behavioural influence techniques which showed various benefits, including hope installation and relapse prevention. However, unmoderated groups may become a vehicle for comparisons and unmanaged interactions leading to digression, normalising the negative behaviour and lowering self-esteem. A typical requirement of such groups is to be of a social and supportive nature whereas moderation, through humans or artificial agents, may face a risk of being seen as centralised and overly managed governance approach. In this paper, we explore the requirements and different preferences about moderators as seen by members. We follow a mixed-method approach consisting of a qualitative phase that included two focus groups and 16 interviews, followed by a quantitative phase, including a survey with 215 participants who declared having well-being issues. We report on the qualitative phase findings achieved through thematic analysis. We also report and discuss the survey results studying the role of gender, self-control, personality traits, culture, the perception of usefulness and willingness to join the group as predictors of the members’ expectations from moderators, resulted from the qualitative phase.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

    Manal Aldhayan, Mohammad Naiseh & John McAlaney

  2. College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

    Raian Ali

Authors
  1. Manal Aldhayan
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  2. Mohammad Naiseh
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  3. John McAlaney
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  4. Raian Ali
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manal Aldhayan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Fabiano Dalpiaz

  2. Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden

    Jelena Zdravkovic

  3. The Institute of Digital Innovation and Research, Dublin, Ireland

    Pericles Loucopoulos

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Aldhayan, M., Naiseh, M., McAlaney, J., Ali, R. (2020). Online Peer Support Groups for Behavior Change: Moderation Requirements. In: Dalpiaz, F., Zdravkovic, J., Loucopoulos, P. (eds) Research Challenges in Information Science. RCIS 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 385. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50316-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50316-1_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-50315-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-50316-1

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