Twitter Based Social Support for Hispanic and Black Dementia Caregivers

NCT03865498 | Completed Results

• 2 other identifiers: AAAS3305R01AG060929-01
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 966
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

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.

Conditions

Loneliness; Emotional Stress

Keywords

Family Caregivers; Dementia

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Number of Participants Who do Not Engage in Twitter Activities

  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

  12 months

• Emotional Valence Score

  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.

  12 months

Secondary Outcomes (2)

• Number of Auto-detected Small Groups

  12 months

• Percentage of Balanced Triads

  12 months

Study Arms (2)

Hispanic dementia caregivers

EXPERIMENTAL

De-identified followers of our Hispanic dementia caregiver Twitter network will receive messages from the network (Twitter for Hispanic caregivers' intervention).

Behavioral: Twitter for Hispanic caregivers

African American dementia caregivers

EXPERIMENTAL

De-identified followers of our African American dementia caregiver Twitter network will receive messages from the network (Twitter for African American caregivers' intervention).

Behavioral: Twitter for African American caregivers

Interventions

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

Hispanic dementia caregivers

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.

African American dementia caregivers

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• 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)

You may not qualify if:

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

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Columbia University: lead
• Department of Health and Human Services: collaborator
• National Institute on Aging (NIA): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

New York, New York, 10032, United States

Location

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Stress, Psychological; Dementia

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavioral Symptoms; Behavior; Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Neurocognitive Disorders; Mental Disorders

Results Point of Contact

• Title: Sunmoo Yoon
• Organization: Columbia University

sy2102@cumc.columbia.edu

+1 212 300 7081

Study Officials

• Sunmoo Yoon, PhD

  Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Medicine

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Publication Agreements

• PI is Sponsor Employee: Yes
• Restrictive Agreement: No

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NON RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: SUPPORTIVE CARE
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Associate Research Scientist

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 4, 2019
• First Posted: March 7, 2019
• Study Start: January 12, 2022
• Primary Completion: October 31, 2023
• Study Completion: November 20, 2023
• Last Updated: January 15, 2025
• Results First Posted: January 15, 2025

Record last verified: 2024-12

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

US (1)