Scope
We focused on academic resources which are freely available online. The scope of our material focuses solely on breast cancer online support groups. There was a large body of literature regarding breast cancer and online support groups in general, but these are not included. The purpose of such specific, open-access research is to support the creation of proposals for grants to create or support these online communities. It should be noted that the scope of many of the articles chosen is small. They are largely ethnographic studies, based on small communities. The findings presented, however, may be applied to larger groups.
Selection Principles/Criteria
As noted above, two main principles were used to select the materials included in this bibliography. First, the resource must be academic in nature. Secondly, it must be available online for free. When selecting resources, we also focused on the purpose for creating the bibliography – to help proposal writing for research grants. Therefore, each article had to pertain to possible benefits or negative effects of online breast cancer support groups, as well as how women use information to discover these sources. To find these articles, Scholar’s Portal, Google Scholar, Medline, Psychinfo, and Sociological abstract were consulted. Those looking to do more in-depth research should not overlook these databases, as the bibliography presents only a basic representative sample. It was not possible to include many excellent resources found within these databases.
Organization
The bibliography has been divided into three sections. These sections directly relate to the selection principles and criteria listed above. The first section is exchange of information, which focuses on aspects such as search queries to depict how women exchange or use online information to find and take part in breast cancer online support groups. The second section is social support. This category focuses on how these online support groups allow women to support each other during a difficult time in their life. The third section, self-empowerment, relates to how women may help themselves feel better about their situation through participation in online support groups. Each section is divided into two parts. The first section of each category lists a few articles accessible online for free. The second section lists an article that is not free, yet would be useful for those interested in further research.
Bibliographic Units
Each source listed is an online journal article, with full bibliographic information displayed in APA citation style. Links are provided to those articles which are freely available online. The last date of access is provided with the links. It should be noted that some links may break over time. This bibliography has been an individual project, and will not be updated in the future. If access is required to articles featuring broken links, use the bibliographic information provided to research for the article. This information will remain true.
