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In this survey, we took a thread that a father is worried because his daughter doesn't eat food. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.depression/browse_thread/thread/467e40122ae80a49/3b883a7a712e8ca5#3b883a7a712e8ca5 And we coded 20 messages. The result is information support-13, tangible assistance-0, esteem support-5, network support-0, emotional support-6, humor-2. And that means information support is the prevalent as 65%, emotional support is far second 30%, followed by esteem support 25%. This is different from Braithwaite's result. And we think there are several reasons contributing to this difference.The first one, Braithwaite's experimental object is an inability community. Most people leave messages or reply to show their care and the willingness to help. Except for this emotional care, most people actually can give little virtual help. For example, we common people mostly are impossible to cure a handicapped person, but we really can give a lot of emotional support and encouragement through messages. So at first, we want to find a thread that focus on "homesick". Because we think although we can't get the homesick people back to their home, we can give our support through words. We assume that would come out a similar result to the inability community in Braithwaite's experiment. But unlucky, we didn't find one. In that thread, the father is worried about the daughter's eating problem. In this case, most people can give some advice on how to settle this problem, like go to a doctor, don't force her to eat, or play with her when eating. So this seems a problem we common people really can help to solve, so people give more informative support. And as we also think the father is really a great one, and we give esteem support and emotional support. And we also find that, the first few messages are all informative messages focus on how to make her eat, only after the father reply "She is eating an apple now. I am relieved", more people began to change their focus on "You are a good dad". Thus we conclude that people give more informative support when they can solve the problems; and tend to give more emotional support when they can't give actual help.The second one, the number of the sample is very different between mine and Braithwaite. In the survey, there are only 20 messages. As we mentioned above, people first tend to give solutions, and them tend to encourage the father and appreciate him as a good father. So, we think it’s safe to assume that, at first, people give informative support messages. But after a few message, maybe 30, maybe 50, they find that most people can find only the same 5 or 6 ways to let the little girl eat. So then they instead tend to encourage the father, tell him not to be upset, tell him to be optimistic, and tell him he is a good father, that is, emotional support. Because at this situation, they can't find any more solutions and what they can give is emotional support. But, in fact, as there are not too many messages here, we can't check whether it goes on as we assumed. Maybe when there are 400 messages replying the father, the result is totally different.The third one, we can't tell how many and what supports one message gives very accurately. And as the sample number is really small. A little mistake may result in a great difference when turned into percentage. And we didn't find any tangible and network support in the messages, we can't tell how much these factors really weigh.So, as a whole, the category of the object community, the hardness for us to give actually physical or material support; the volume of the sample, number; the validity of telling every support contained in a message really affect the result a lot. And in the survey, informative support is the prevalent support.
Posted also by Yu Tian(Purple)