Social and emotional loneliness in a large sample of Dutch adults aged 19-65: Associations with risk factors.

Loneliness is common in adults of all ages. Prior research among older adults has shown that social loneliness (feelings of missing a wider social network) and emotional loneliness (missing an intimate relationship) differ in risk factors. Therefore, this study examined risk factors of social and emotional loneliness among adults aged 19-65 years.

Opportunities for Tailored Support to Implement Smoke-Free Homes: A Qualitative Study among Lower Socioeconomic Status Parents.

With the aim of preventing children from being exposed to secondhand smoke, we examined to which level lower socio-economic status (SES) households had implemented home smoking rules and the factors that hampered parents in their process of change toward a complete smoke-free home (SFH). We conducted a qualitative study including semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 parents of young children living in a lower SES neighborhood of a provincial town in the Netherlands. Interview transcripts were subjected to a qualitative content analysis.

Spontaneously published illness stories on a website for young women with breast cancer: do writers and themes reflect the wider population?

This study examined writer characteristics and themes written about in a set of 167 spontaneously published stories on a Dutch website for young women with breast cancer. The stories were coded for 6 disease characteristics and 16 themes. Coding results were compared with the characteristics of young women with breast cancer in a hospital cancer register and to the frequency of problems among young breast cancer patients participating in quantitative studies.

How breast cancer patients want to search for and retrieve information from stories of other patients on the internet: an online randomized controlled experiment.

Background: Other patients' stories on the Internet can give patients information, support, reassurance, and practical advice.

Objectives: We examined which search facility for online stories resulted in patients' satisfaction and search success.

Methods: This study was a randomized controlled experiment with a 2x2 factorial design conducted online.

Computing latent taxonomies from patients' spontaneous self-disclosure to form compatible support groups.

A growing number of Internet sites provide patients with an opportunity to share experiences about their illness. Unfortunately, it depends on the luck of the draw whether patients find compatible others for mutual support. To improve this situation, this paper demonstrates how tools from Information Retrieval can be deployed to discover patients with compatible stories more systematically.

Illness stories on the Internet: features of websites disclosing breast cancer patients' illness stories in the Dutch language.

Objective: To examine the way in which breast cancer patients' illness stories in the Dutch language are disclosed on the Internet.

Methods: Websites containing Dutch illness stories written by breast cancer patients were selected using a search engine on the Internet. A checklist was developed based on a theoretical framework for analysing communication processes in order to examine the selected websites.