Design and evaluation of an online social support application for family caregivers

Matthieu Tixier

Myriam Lewkowicz

pp. 267-276

in: A. Ant Ozok, Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds), Online communities and social computing, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

A lot of people who live with a loss of autonomy related to ageing or disease benefit from the daily support of some of their relatives in order to perform their day-to-day duties (waking up in the morning, shopping, cooking). Family caregivers are strongly committed to the support relationship with their ailing relative. The assistance they provide takes up a large part of their time and energy. Offering them places for social support appears as a relevant solution. Besides, more and more people are turning towards the Internet to find support when they experience difficult situations. Our research deals with the complex issue of providing online social support to family caregivers through an interdisciplinary research project which aims at getting a better understanding of peer-to-peer social support practices. The healthcare network RéGéMA is our first partner in the requirements analysis, test and deployment of our application, Aloa-aidants.fr.