ArticleFrontiers in digital health2021
Bonding With Bot: User Feedback on a Chatbot for Social Isolation.
Article in Frontiers in digital health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Conversational Agent Interventions for Mental Health Problems: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Potential Mobile Health Applications for Improving the Mental Health of the Elderly: A Systematic Review.Clinical interventions in aging · 2023Pooled it
- How Far Can Conversational Agents Contribute to IBD Patient Health Care-A Review of the Literature.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Mental Health Chatbot for Young Adults With Depressive Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Single-Blind, Three-Arm Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Trial
- Engagement, Satisfaction, and Therapeutic Alliance With an AI Conversational Agent for Parents: Quantitative Descriptive Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Loneliness and AI chatbot dependence in young adults: the mediating role of perceived social support.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Real-World Data From a Group Parent Management Training Program Enhanced Using Artificial Intelligence: Qualitative Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Mobile App-Supported Self-Management for Chronic Low Back Pain: Realist Evaluation.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2026Article
- Anthropomorphic technology in everyday life: focus on chatbots and impacts on mental health.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Review
- Chatbots' Empathetic Conversations and Responses: A Qualitative Study of Help‑Seeking Queries on Depressive Moods Across 8 Commercial Conversational Agents.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Charting the evolution of artificial intelligence mental health chatbots from rule-based systems to large language models: a systematic review.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2025Article
- Predicting Engagement With Conversational Agents in Mental Health Therapy by Examining the Role of Epistemic Trust, Personality, and Fear of Intimacy: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey Study.JMIR human factors · 2025Article
- How do users of a mental health app conceptualise digital therapeutic alliance? A qualitative study using the framework approach.BMC public health · 2025Article
- The ethical dimensions of utilizing Artificial Intelligence in palliative care.Nursing ethics · 2025Article
- Virtual reality-based Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE-VR) as an adjunct to medications for opioid use disorder: a Phase 1 trial.Annals of medicine · 2024Article
- Designing, Developing, and Testing a Chatbot for Parents and Caregivers of Children and Young People With Rheumatological Conditions (the IMPACT Study): Protocol for a Co-Designed Proof-of-Concept Study.JMIR research protocols · 2024Article
- Evaluation framework for conversational agents with artificial intelligence in health interventions: a systematic scoping review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024Article
- Qualitative Analysis of Conversational Chatbots to Alleviate Loneliness in Older Adults as a Strategy for Emotional Health.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Correlations between Dementia and Loneliness.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Mobile apps to self-manage chronic low back pain: A realist synthesis exploring what works, for whom and in what circumstances.PEC innovation · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social isolation has affected people globally during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a major impact on older adult's well-being. Chatbot interventions may be a way to provide support to address loneliness and social isolation in older adults. The aims of the current study were to (1) understand the distribution of a chatbot's net promoter scores, (2) conduct a thematic analysis on qualitative elaborations to the net promoter scores, (3) understand the distribution of net promoter scores per theme, and (4) conduct a single word analysis to understand the frequency of words present in the qualitative feedback. A total of 7,099 adults and older adults consented to participate in a chatbot intervention on reducing social isolation and loneliness. The average net promoter score (NPS) was 8.67 out of 10. Qualitative feedback was provided by 766 (10.79%) participants which amounted to 898 total responses. Most themes were rated as positive (517), followed by neutral (311) and a minor portion as negative (70). The following five themes were found across the qualitative responses: positive outcome (277, 30.8%), user did not address question (262, 29.2%), bonding with the chatbot (240, 26.7%), negative technical aspects (70, 7.8%), and ambiguous outcome (49, 5.5%). Themes with a positive valence were found to be associated with a higher NPS. The word "help" and it's variations were found to be the most frequently used words, which is consistent with the thematic analysis. These results show that a chatbot for social isolation and loneliness was perceived positively by most participants. More specifically, users were likely to personify the chatbot (e.g., "Cause I feel like I have a new friend!") and perceive positive personality features such as being non-judgmental, caring, and open to listen. A minor portion of the users reported dissatisfaction with chatting with a machine. Implications will be discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.