Comments on: Statistics for Second Life Support Groups

By: Community Management Related Research

Community Management Related Research — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:56:56 +0000

[...] Statistics for Second Life Healthcare Support Groups. A snapshot of 150 groups in Second Life. Looking at types of issues, membership numbers, and analysis. Comparison to real life support group communities. [...]

By: Healthcare Support Groups in the Virtual World of IMVU

Healthcare Support Groups in the Virtual World of IMVU — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 05:20:04 +0000

[...] Statistics for Second Life Support Groups // Jan 10, 2009 at 10:15 [...]

By: John

John — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:45:48 +0000

Carol-

Carol- You are right, there does seem to be a bug in search that does not allow more than 100 pages to be displayed. I’ll need to update my doc and analysis.

I didn’t find it mentioned in Jira so have created SVC-3327.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:53:01 +0000

I need to think about using this information to guide class development, you know? For starters, maybe I need to send a survey to cancer group leaders asking about interest and supplying some open ended questions about contents. I’m so glad you’ve done this, and find the limits quite interesting. I wonder, too, if Linden is aware of this limit and the barriers it poses to our work there.

By: John

John — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:00:56 +0000

The Clearinghouse has so many groups that I was putting off all that addition … but you are right, it really would be interesting to know. I’ll get to work on it this evening.

…glad to hear you found it informative, thanks!

UPDATE-
I pulled some numbers from “The Self-Help Group Sourcebook”, 2002 edition, published by American Self-Help Clearinghouse. If you look at the percentages of groups in their categories (including those in real life, online (forums), and model (“case studies”)) you get the following:

* Abuse: 3%
* Addictions 7%
* Bereavement 4%
* Disabilities 7%
* Health 60%
* Mental Health 5%
* Miscellaneous 9%

The lower percentage categories are very similar to those in Second Life. I am a bit surprised that Mental Health and Disabilities are not as high as in Second Life. This may show that Second Life works better for those groups.

However, the Health category has the actual majority of all groups, and I think may show a bias (in a good way) for the Clearinghouse.

When looking at the Health category, I was struck by the number of groups dedicated to specific diseases. I imagine that some are fairly rare. Perhaps the Clearinghouse makes a point to publish these inorder to help the relatively fewer people find each other. However, it is more likely these folks are simply not in Second Life (or if they are they have not differentiated themselves). The Clearinghouse has been able to methodically collect them over the last 25+ years or so.

It will be interesting to see if something similar happens to Second Life or in other virtual worlds.

By: Verde Otaared

Verde Otaared — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:29:42 +0000

Great analysis, very informative. Are the ratios of group types similar between the American Self Help Group Clearinghouse and SL, with disabilities, health and mental health being the largest categories and most populated?