Volunteers needed for a study about online health forums and decision making

[LizS]

Dear members,

Pat has been kind enough to grant me permission to post this message on your forum asking for volunteers to take part in my study.

My name is Liz Sillence and I am a researcher at Northumbria University UK. I am currently running a study examining how people use online health forums to assist their decision making in any way. This may include but is not limited to treatment decisions.
I am looking for people to share their experiences of using the Hip Talk forum with me. Ideally this would involve emailing me a little bit of background about your use of the forum and then arranging an interview to follow up on some of your experiences further. Depending on your location this might be a telephone interview or maybe a skype call or maybe even an email interview whichever we think would work best for you.

I do hope some of you can help me out with this study as I can see that this is a very active and lively community. I believe your experiences would be valuable addition to this project and aid my understanding of how online forums can assist people with any health decisions they may have to make.

If you would like to be involved or would like to know more then please send me a personal message via this forum and I will be able to give you my email address and send you more information about the study including the University’s participant information sheet.
 
Many thanks

Liz Sillence

[livendive]

Hi Liz,

I tried to send you a reply by private message, but it ended up not working due to some "SMF failure" and wiped out the text I'd written.  I've not yet had a hip resurfacing, but have my first one scheduled for January 5th and expect to do my other hip in late February or early March.  I haven't posted much here because I don't feel I have much to contribute since I haven't been through the experience yet.  However, I do read the forums daily and they, the articles, and seperate research on Google and through the University of Washington medical library were instrumental in helping me pick the procedure and doctor.  I'm also using this site to prepare myself, my wife, and my house for a typical rehabilitation.  Feel free to contact me through private message or by email at livendive@gmail.com if I can be of any help with your study.

Regards,
Dave

[Pat Walter]

Hi Dave

I am sorry you are having problems.  I use GoDaddy for hosting the website.  The SMF - Simple Machines Forum not only uses the regular server but also a mysql server.  Basically it is hosted by two different servers as most php software is.  I have seen a lot of smf errors and other mysql errors.  I hope GoDaddy will soon change the server. Usually they get things worked out, if not I will complain.

If anyone is having problems posting or see the SMF error, please try again or give it a few minutes and try again.  Computers and internet!!!  UGH UGH

Good Luck on your journey to a new hip!

Pat