'Hope you find your 'eureka' moment soon': a qualitative study of parents/carers' online discussions around allergy, allergy tests and eczema.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To explore understandings and concerns surrounding allergy, food intolerances and their potential impact on eczema among parents and carers of children with eczema who had posted messages in online forums.

Methods

We conducted a scoping review for active UK-based discussion forums that did not require password/registration to view posts and identified two parenting discussion forums with high activity and frequent use. We used their internal search functions to identify and export discussion threads relating to allergy and allergy testing for eczema from 2011 to 2016. We carried out an inductive thematic analysis of the 120 exported discussion threads.

Results

246 pages of text were analysed. Analysis led to three main themes: (1) confusion over the languag

SUBMITTER: Halls A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6252637 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature