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OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT03865498

Twitter Based Social Support for Hispanic and Black Dementia Caregivers

The prevalence of dementia is higher in Hispanics and African Americans than non-Hispanic Whites. Moreover, dementia caregivers often experience loneliness as well decreased health status. The expansion of social media use among Hispanics and African Americans, particularly Twitter - a short message service - offers great promise for improving social support. This study aims to evaluate changes of discussion topics, sentiment and networking styles (i.e., number of followers) among anonymous followers of our two Twitter networks; the African American/Black dementia caregiver group and the Hispanic dementia caregiver group.

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Key information

Conditions

Loneliness Behavior Behavioral Symptoms Brain Diseases Central Nervous System Diseases Dementia Emotional Stress Mental Disorders Nervous System Diseases Neurocognitive Disorders Stress, Psychological

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

New York, 10032, United States

About this study

The study will utilize Twitter networks to post a daily message for dementia caregivers for a year, and set up a monthly group chat.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • 18 years of age or older
  • Black or Hispanic, living in the U.S. including the U.S. territories
  • a dementia caregiver with any duration, able to speak English or Spanish/bilingual
  • must agree to terms of conditions of use and privacy policy and rules of one of the two dementia caregiver network (Hispanic @dcnh, Black @dcnaab), the Twitter user agreement of the terms of service, Twitter privacy policy and Twitter rules including intellectual property, violence, misconduct, abuse behavior, private information and spam and security
  • use a smartphone or a feature phone (i.e., a cell phone with text messaging)

Exclusion criteria

  • do not have de-identified Twitter account, children, not a dementia family caregiver

Treatment and study plan

Twitter for Hispanic caregivers

Behavioral

This group will be asked to follow and use (i.e., retweet, reply, like) our Hispanic Twitter network for social support

Twitter for African American caregivers

Behavioral

This group will be asked to follow and use (i.e., retweet, reply, like) our African American Twitter network for social support.

Primary outcomes

  1. Number of Participants Who do Not Engage in Twitter Activities

    Time frame: 12 months

    Macro level: The number of participants who do not engage in Twitter activities (i.e., retweet, reply, like, post) within the Twitter network for dementia caregivers

  2. Emotional Valence Score

    Time frame: 12 months

    Emotional valence (macro level) detected from text data (e.g., "This is so helpful": emotion score +4; "I am sad": emotion score -6). Emotional valence score ranges from -10 to +10; -10 indicates negative valence and +10 indicates positive valence.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Number of Auto-detected Small Groups

    Time frame: 12 months

    Meso level: number of small group automatically detected based on Twitter activities (i.e., retweet); for example 0 means no small-group activity detected, 7 small groups mean seven distinct cliques/grouping activities detected where the users are communicating, supporting and responding within our Twitter network.

  2. Percentage of Balanced Triads

    Time frame: 12 months

    Micro level: % balanced communication triad, 2 or 3 people responding and communicating with equal or similar frequency; 0 reflects non-optimal communication indicating domination, avoidance or ignorance. 8 means there are 8% triads who maintain healthy communication.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Columbia University

Other

Collaborators

  • Department of Health and Human Services
  • National Institute on Aging (NIA)

Registry information

Official study title

Using Twitter to Enhance the Social Support of Hispanic and Black Dementia Caregivers

Acronym: Tweet-S2

Important dates

Study start
2022
Primary completion
2023
Study completion
2023
First posted
Mar 7, 2019
Registry last updated
Jan 15, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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