Jaj28

Thank you all for getting back to me so quickly and for being interested in this project. Baddad (and the other mods) - sorry for jumping the gun a little, I'm to keen for my own good, but thanks for your thoughts and support. Mumble - Of course I understand your wishes and thanks for letting me know. If you want to chat about uni ethics I'll be happy to as it's not been an easy ride for me either, but I think it will be worth it. As this is a relatively small poject (compaired to research Phd's) I particularly wanted to look at what appears to be a very successful forum that is well run and supportive, in a hope of demonstrating their efficacy. I to have stumbled across some that don't appear to be as helpful and feel that this is an area that also needs exploration (but maybe later on). I'll let you know how its going a send you the paper when its done. Thanks again, Jen x

Thanks for letting me know that. I've spoken to the moderators and they are happy for me to do the research if the members of the forum support it, and I'm really hoping you guys do.

Hello everyone, My names Jennifer Jackson and I am a postgraduate student at the University of Leicester (UK). I am undertaking a doctorate in clinical psychology and as part of the course I have to submit a final year research project. Through my work and other research projects I have come into contact with online-forums and have learnt so much from peoples experiences and how individuals and families lives are touched by ASD. It has given me greater insight as a clinician, which I believe makes me a better practitioner and allows me to suggest this type of support to other families I work with. How people are choosing to use on-line forums is of particular interest and I believe understanding this could lead to greater understanding of the emotional and practical support that individuals and families need. Also being able to ?talk? to other people who are experiencing what you are is a unique opportunity to be validated and get hints and tips that health care professionals may not be able to give. I also feel that on-line forums are a 24 hour 7 day a week resource for individuals that services are unable to match and that health care professionals could sign post families to if we were able to support their efficacy through research. With these things in mind I was wondering if I could have your permission to analysis archived message threads to firstly, see how the forum is being utilised and secondly look for ?helping mechanisms? identified in the mutual aid and social support literature. What I propose to do is download message threads from the general discussion room from mid November to mid December 2006 (a time I think may be busy as Christmas is approaching) and use a technique called Template Analysis to look for overarching themes running through the data (such as ?information sharing? or ?giving support?). This technique allows me to talk about the data in fairly general terms but I would need to put a few quotes in to support my findings. Anonymity would however be absolutely assured. I would not use the name of the forum anywhere in write up; I would change usernames and the date of the posting. I would also run any quotes I wanted to use through search engines such as ?google? or ?yahoo? to make sure it doesn?t lead back to the forum and change the quote if necessary. I guarantee peoples messages, thoughts and feelings would be treated with dignity and respect. I would be very grateful if you could all let me know firstly, if I could use the archived material and secondly, if you would mind me using messages that you have written as quotes. If you do mind please let me know and I promise none of your posts will be used either in the general analysis or for quotes to support the findings. I would be happy to answer any questions about the research that you have, either through the site or via email (jj55@le.ac.uk) and I would also be happy to send the forum a copy of my paper once I have submitted it to the university so you can see what I found. Thank you for reading this and I look forward to hearing from you, Best Wishes Jennifer