Online Social Support for Pregnant Women’s Question Resolution and Anxiety Reduction

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the characteristics of communication that resolve questions and reduce anxiety in online self-help groups for pregnant women. To simulate actual online support, questions about labor pain were posed online along with four sample answers that involved medical knowledge, medical knowledge with added empathy, personal experience, and personal experience with added empathy. The experiment was conducted with four groups of 110 respondents who were randomly selected, totaling 440 respondents. Each respondent was assigned to a single condition in the study design. The results show that the degrees of both question resolution and anxiety reduction were higher when empathy was combined with medical knowledge. These results suggest that when medical knowledge incorporates empathy, pregnancy support is more effective in resolving questions and reducing anxiety in online social support.