ArticleDigital health
Supportive communication patterns among informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit: A content analysis.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Understanding user perceptions of DeepSeek: insights from sentiment, topic and network analysis using a Reddit-based study.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Informal caregivers of older adults often turn to online communities, such as Reddit, to seek social support but not all support-seeking behaviors yield the desired outcomes. This study investigates how support-seeking strategies employed by informal caregivers of older adults in a selection of posts on Reddit, including directness and emotional expressions, elicit others' textual and non-textual social support. Methods: We collected 761 posts and 3504 comments from three subreddits for informal caregivers of older adults using the Reddit application programming interface. Through quantitative content analysis, we examined support-seeking strategies in posts and types of social support in comments. The Kruskal-Wallis test and binary logistic regressions were used to assess how these strategies predicted textual (i.e., informational, emotional, and esteem support in comments) and non-textual support (i.e., votes). Results: Informal caregivers of older adults predominantly used direct support-seeking strategies and frequently expressed negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and sadness, in their Reddit posts. Direct support-seeking was more likely to elicit informational support but less likely to elicit non-textual and emotional and esteem support in comments compared to indirect support requests. Emotional expressions attracted more non-textual support compared to neutral posts, but different types of emotional expressions did not vary in their effectiveness in eliciting non-textual support. Expressing fear was effective in eliciting both informational and emotional support, while expressing hope and bittersweet were more likely to elicit emotional and esteem support in comments. Conclusions: Informal caregivers' emotional expressions serve as effective support-seeking strategies in Reddit caregiver communities, eliciting both textual and non-textual forms of support. Future studies should explore the mechanisms through which specific emotions influence the reception of social support. Additionally, more research is needed on informal caregivers' supportive communication across different platforms and caregiving contexts to gain a deeper understanding of their support needs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.