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Peer support has been identified as an important protective factor for mental health and overall well-being. The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of implementing an online peer support group and its impact on measures of well-being.

A mixed-methods randomized controlled trial design was used to examine the feasibility and impact of online peer support. Comparisons in well-being were made between the online peer support group and an in-person peer support group and control group. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group or either a six-week in-person or online peer support group. All participants completed an online survey measuring constructs of well-being pre- and post-condition. Additionally, qualitative data regarding the benefits of peer support and in particular the efficacy of the online format were collected from participants. Analysis of variance and post hoc tests determined significant differences within and between the groups.

Both the online and face-to-face peer support groups scored significantly higher on post-test measures of well-being than pre-test scores and control group scores. Qualitative narratives and significant quantitative findings supported the feasibility of peer support offered online. Post-condition outcomes showed that online peer support is as effective as in-person peer support for improving well-being.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to compare online and in-person peer support programs for students in higher education. The results have direct implications for higher education students and practitioners, especially at times when face-to-face support is not feasible.

The importance of critical thinking disposition (CTD) in second language (L2) university students' writing is a topic rarely discussed. The purpose of this research paper is to examine L2 university students' CTD during the writing process. Research questions discussed in this paper encompass the CT dispositions and characteristics of L2 university students in online writing environments. Measuring CTD and CTD training via online collaborative peer review were the two grounding themes of this study.

A five‐point Likert scale online questionnaire which included two open‐ended questions was developed to assess CTD. A factor analysis and a cluster analysis were preformed on the data. A discriminate analysis determined the number of viable clusters and a one‐way ANOVA was performed to compare differences, with qualitative interview data to supplement. The data set for CTD measurement was a matrix consisting of 27 participants and P variables.

The findings reveal that the CTD characteristics of L2s include open‐mindedness, systematicity and inquisitiveness, and low interaction/motivation.

Limitations include a small sample size that mimics the researcher's anticipations, but the findings would be strengthened by a larger sample. A lack of sensitivity and generalisability could be corrected in the future by using broader subject matter within an online educational web site.

Knowledge of the CTD characteristics of L2s would allow interface designers to take into account different CTDs in developing L2 online collaborative educational web sites. This study outlines the first step in developing online collaborative educational games that allow L2 university students to improve their writing abilities by considering various CTDs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether children’s online play and participation in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviours. This exploratory study also examines the influence of age-related differences in children’s social and consumer development vs adults and gender on this.

The study was conducted using two focus groups and ten in-depth interviews with 20 French children between the ages of eight and 12 years.

Results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPG communities is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour through the purchase of virtual tools and accessories by all children using virtual in-game money. But these motivations are very gender specific due to the overarching importance of gender-specific motivations for achievement. Boys engage in virtual retail shopping because they need in-game progress and power gains, while girls engage in virtual retail shopping because they need social status enhancement.

Research should be conducted on children in different age groups. All aspects of the process and consequences of children’s participation in online gaming communities should be examined more comprehensively. Quantitative research is required. Results may also vary with country and cultural context.

First, children between eight and 12 years of age are active consumers (influencers and buyers) for all companies. MMORPGs provide the perfect setting for better understanding of children’s motivations and behaviour regarding virtual retail shopping because they provide virtual in-game money for different achievements that children use to engage in such behaviour. Second, MMORPG companies can benefit by taking into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when designing the games.

First, the risks of playing computer games for children in terms of playing violent games and leading a virtual life must be considered and studied carefully by public policy officials. Second, public policy officials that look into online gaming should take into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when monitoring online games. These are issues that are not only developing children’s abilities as social actors but may well be promoting excessive materialism aided by the formation of online peer groups.

This is the first study on children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs in the consumer context and will help us to understand children’s mind-set and motivations for retail activities in this unique retail setting. The study results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour that are very gender specific unlike adults.

This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of online peer-group activism to promote thalassemia prevention among high school students of East Java Indonesia.

Twenty students were recruited as cadres and trained for thalassemia every weekend for four weeks, followed by creating health promotions via online media. The media was further disseminated among the students’ peer groups for a week. The respondent’s knowledge was measured before and after health promotion utilizing an online media mixed-methods approach that combined quantitative data using an online questionnaire and in-depth interviews for qualitative measurement. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed using Graph Prism 5.00. Interview transcripts were analyzed to elaborate on the respondent’s understanding of thalassemia.

The respondents had good basic knowledge about thalassemia; however, it was not in-line with their understanding, which increased after the online health promotion activity. Therefore, this approach is useful for disseminating health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and can be implemented for broadening respondents.

This study showed the experience of online peer-group activism for thalassemia prevention in high school students. By empowering the peer group, health promotion is effective in increasing the knowledge and understanding of thalassemia. A similar approach can be proposed for other health issues.

Purpose: The issue of whether participation in online peer-support communities has positive or negative impacts on the psychological adjustment of cancer patients warrants further explorations from new perspectives. This research investigates the role of personality traits in moderating the impact of online participation on the psychological adjustment of cancer patients in terms of their general psychological well-being and cancer-specific well-being.

Methodology: Study participants consisted of adults diagnosed with leukemia. Questionnaires were collected from 111 participants in two leukemia-related forums in China, Baidu Leukemia Community and Bloodbbs. Information regarding the personality traits, online participation, and psychological adjustment were collected using an online questionnaire. A linear regression model was used to test the moderation effect of personality traits on the relationship between online participation and psychological adjustment.

Findings: The main effect of participation in online support communities on psychological adjustment was not statistically significant. Importantly, two personality traits (i.e., emotional stability and openness to experience) moderated the relationship between online participation and psychological adjustment to cancer. Leukemia patients with high emotional stability and high openness to experience reported better psychological adjustment as they participated more in the online community. However, this was not the case for patients with low stability and low openness, who reported worse psychological adjustment as their participation in the online support community increased.

Value: This study introduces two personality moderators into the discussion of how participation in online support communities influences the lives of cancer patients. The moderation effects help to explain why there have been contradictions in the findings of previous studies. In addition, this study adds to the current literature on online support communities as little research on this topic has been conducted outside of the US and Europe. Practically, this study not only highlights the need to evaluate the personality traits of patients who are recommended to participate in online communities, but also underlines the necessity of intervention in these communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes of an online resilience support group during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. Specifically, it described the extent to which the program improved adaptive coping, non-reactivity, resilience and well-being and decreased stress, depression and anxiety symptoms of participants.

This study used a pretest–posttest design with 53 participants. A majority of participants were female (74%) who participated in the program for 6–8 weeks. Scales measuring adaptive coping, non-reactivity, resilience, well-being, stress, depression and anxiety were administered before and after the completion of the modules.

Results revealed significant improvements in adaptive coping particularly seeking emotional and instrumental support, active coping, and religious coping. The results also showed significant improvements in nonreactivity, psychological well-being and resilience and decrease in depression symptoms. Effect size estimates indicate medium effect sizes for well-being and nonreactivity with the other outcomes having small effect sizes.

A limitation of this study is the lack of a randomized control trial design and the lack of control for extraneous variables. Future studies using rigorous and longitudinal designs are recommended. Future studies may also examine program implementation factors such as using homogenous groups.

In most low-income countries, the provision of mental health and psychosocial support during the COVID-19 pandemic has been hampered by the lack of mental health professionals, issues of internet connectivity and a lack of resources and access. Online resilience support groups may provide a means to address these challenges by making mental health support more accessible and available.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused isolation and a means to bridge this is through peer support groups. This may be especially important in collectivist cultures where social relationships serve as recovery capital.

Although there has been a rise in the use of technology, most are in the form of individual or self-help interventions. This paper examines the feasibility of an online structured peer support group that focuses on building resilience skills. It fills a gap in the literature on online peer support groups that may be most relevant for low-income countries with a dearth of mental health specialists.

Although e-learning has already been accepted globally as an effective medium of delivery of quality education and ensure optimum student participation, Bangladeshi higher educational institutions are still at a very early stage of adopting such technologies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the suitability of implementing effective e-learning through learning management system (LMS) at the tertiary educational institutions in Bangladesh, and how both students and teachers experience and respond to this new learning platform. Following mixed-methods techniques, data for this study were collected from students and respective course teachers of a private university in Bangladesh by administering questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The findings of this paper reveal that e-learning has been well accepted by most of the students as they are found routinely spending time on the LMS on a regular basis for watching lecture videos, viewing course information, reading postings of the fellow students in the forum. However, there are constraints as well, since the learning materials are poorly designed that do not allow much interaction between students and lecturers. There are also some technical problems such as poor internet connection which restrict access to e-learning platforms. To harness the optimum benefit of e-learning, this paper recommends a concerted effort by all stakeholders, such as students, lecturers, administrators and policy makers so that each of their priorities and expectations are reflected in the designing and implementing e-learning platforms.

This paper is based on the qualitative evaluation of Education 3.0 platform. Primary data were collected from the students using a well-structured survey questionnaire, and the findings of the survey have subsequently been cross-referred and supplemented by non-participatory observations with semi-structured interviews which allowed a better in-depth understanding of the issue at hand.

The findings of the study suggest that a majority of the students are found to be highly enthusiastic about the online courses. They are eager to participate and interact in the online platforms, which are somehow limited in the traditional classroom settings. However, there are several institutional, administrative and technical limitations of implementing e-learning in Bangladesh. It is recommended that better orientation of the users, quality content distribution though user-friendly systems and enhanced asynchronous interaction between the lecturers and students are the key pre-requisites to harness the optimum benefit from e-learning technologies in Bangladesh.

The data have been analyzed and discussed using qualitative framework which allows an in-depth understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the use of e-learning technologies at the higher educational institutions in Bangladesh.

Research on prosocial behaviour shows that help‐giving differs between the sexes. Gender role theory posits that males specialise in material aid, while females specialize in emotional support. Today, people increasingly help and support each other via online environments. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the genders of avatars used in online interactions influence help‐giving behaviour in similar ways as physical sex does in face‐to‐face situations.

An empirical study was conducted using a unique observational data set from a Japanese massively‐multiplayer online game. Instances of help‐giving were identified from conversation logs, coded, and analysed statistically to discover differences between male and female avatars and different help types.

Avatar gender is found to influence help‐giving in ways that deviate from expected gender roles: female avatars are more likely than males to provide assistance in the form of material support and labour, and no more likely than males to provide emotional support. Female avatars are more likely to give help to male avatars than other females. The results are explained using behavioural confirmation and self‐perception theory.

Physical sex was not controlled for, but most players were male. The study should be repeated in other environments.

The results suggest that designers can prime users towards prosocial behaviours by tuning the available line‐up of avatars.

The research question and use of observational data are novel. The study is valuable to online educators, companies seeking to reduce customer support costs through peer help, and policymakers dealing with ICTs and societal change.

Despite having inadequate resources, highly impoverished patients tend to seek and share health information over social media groups to improve each other’s well-being. This study aims to focus on access to health-care information for such patients and aims to provide an understanding of how online health-care communities (OHCs), as transformative service mediators, can be platforms for patients with chronic and nonchronic health conditions to share their experiences in a base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) context.

A large-scale survey among 658 respondents was conducted in a very low-income country. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

A model of patients’ experience sharing (PES), motivations and consequences for health-care services are introduced and tested. The result supports the PES model for patients with chronic health conditions, showing that utilitarian, hedonic and social value dimensions directly influence PES and indirectly influence patients’ continuance intention with OHCs and patient efforts. However, a mediating effect of PES was found only between the value dimensions and patients’ efforts. A negative moderation effect of medical mistrust was found in the relationship between utilitarian value and PES for both chronic and nonchronic patient groups.

This study is a pioneering attempt to develop and test a PES model in a BOP market.

This study applies Tauber’s personal and social motives, as representative of Sheth’s non‐functional motives for shopping, to Internet shoppers. Two studies are conducted; in the first a sample of current online shoppers is surveyed on how well Tauber’s motives describe their motivation for Internet shopping. Projective technique is used in the second study, in which a group of consumers are asked to discuss how the motives may impact on online shoppers, as a means of explaining how the motives apply in the Internet setting. Results suggest that Tauber’s non‐functional motives can be adapted to the twenty‐first century mode of shopping. This leads to some strong implications for researchers and practitioners who so far have concentrated on the functional aspects of Internet shopping with respect to gaining shopping market share.