Using Online Social Networks for Increasing Health Literacy on Oral Health

Methodology

This was a descriptive study including a retrospective review of qualitative and quantitative data obtained from the posts on the discussion forum along with a survey involving the participants. All the posts and related discussions between 1^stJuly 2011 and30^thApril 2012 in “Oral Health” Facebook groupwall were collected manually and the interactions were studiedand analyzed by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Further an online anonymous survey was conducted (using SurveyMonkey) using a semi-structured questionnaire regarding oral healthamong the group members during March, 2012. The web link of Survey monkey questionnaire form was posted to Facebook oral health group wall and members were requested to respond. For Quantitative method, data were analyzed with SPSS version-15. The textual interactions in the group were subjected to content analysis. The flows of interactions were categorized as between general people to general people, general people to dental professionals, dental professionals to dental professionals, dental professionals to general people.Ethical approval was obtained from the Institute Review Board of Bangladesh Institute of Health Sciences (BIHS). The participants were administered informed consent for voluntary participation, maintaining confidentiality and allowing them to withdraw themselves at any stage of the study. After cleaning and checking for missing variables, data were coded, compiled and analyzed. Some data were further processed to extract the themes from the online interaction in the Facebook oral health group. The findings obtained are presented in Figure 1: Direction of flow of discussions, Topic of discussions, Media preferred for postings, Respondents’ opinion about oral health group.

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework