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Posted 21 July 2009 - 07:16 PM
Recently, the Administration Team changed its position on allowing research surveys. You may all recall that the standing position of the Admins had been that these kinds of surveys would make our members feel threatened and less safe here.
We polled members of this forum, and the general consensus was that with the proper restrictions, mainly that the researcher could not be a member of this forum, we would allow them with only a link for members to connect to the survey.
Participation was completely voluntary, and most likely only such members as felt reassured of the safety of their anonymity did indeed take part.
The survey that we chose to allow was conducted by Dr. Galit Nimrod in Israel, at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev. After some in-depth background checking of Dr. Nimrod, which we assured everyone was measured and unhurried in its approach, we decided to allow the link for her survey.
Dr. Nimrod, we found, was quite willing to accept our restrictions and never once did she hurry us in seeking an answer. We commend her for that. Her willingness was quite refreshing, and the members of the Admin Team were very pleased with her calm, studied approach. It was the perfect example of what one expects from a Fulbright Scholar and true, pure researcher.
All this foregoing is by way of saying that the survey results have now been forwarded to us. With the caveat that the results are preliminary, we are happy to report that UKDepressionForum was one of only 25 global online forums, aimed at helping depression, that was chosen.
In the results, five other forums are mentioned specifically as having extremely good participation due to the fact that they have many, many hundreds, even thousands, of members.
This forum, on the other hand, has only 603 members as of this writing. We are completely self-supporting, do not allow sponsors and are very strict in some areas on what we do allow. We feel this approach has benefitted our members, and our way of conducting business has been dignified and supportive.
While the bulk of our membership hails from the United Kingdom and the United States, we also have members from other countries. This, too, is mentioned in the report.
For a forum which is as small as ours, that has struggled sometimes to stay afloat and at the same time is completely self-supporting, to be asked to participated in such a survey was most gratifying. At one time, a number of years ago, we came up first on almost every search engine as the first place to access online help for depression. This has evidently helped, and even though we do not show first today, we are still high on the list.
For all of this, the members of this forum -- YOU -- past and present can be very proud. YOU have accomplished this feat.
Our work -- all the online depression forums -- has now been recognized as filling a niche that professionals sometimes cannot or will not. We have influenced the treatment of ourselves by imparting knowledge to our psychiatrists, psychologists, family doctors and emergency room personnel.
We make a difference in this world of ours, and of this, you should all be very proud.
The Administration Team of this forum wishes to tell you:
WELL DONE! You are worthy, and you can now rest easy in the knowledge that you make a difference, and are continuing to make a difference!
The Administration Team
Proudly serving you
The results of the survey are listed below as attachments, which are downloadable. Both are PDF files, and if you do not have a full version of Acrobat, a free version of Acrobat Reader is always available at the Adobe website.
Attached File(s)
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Online_depression_communities___content___summary.pdf (125.62K)
Number of downloads: 128 -
SurveySummary_07172009.pdf (53.87K)
Number of downloads: 129
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