Effect of a Website That Presents Patients’ Experiences on Self-Efficacy and Patient Competence of Colorectal Cancer Patients: Web-Based Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Patients often seek other patients’ experiences with the disease. The Internet provides a wide range of opportunities to share and learn about other people’s health and illness experiences via blogs or patient-initiated online discussion groups. There also exists a range of medical information devices that include experiential patient information. However, there are serious concerns about the use of such experiential information because narratives of others may be powerful and pervasive tools that may hinder informed decision making. The international research network DIPEx (Database of Individual Patients’ Experiences) aims to provide scientifically based online information on people’s experiences with health and illness to fulfill patients’ needs for experiential information, while ensuring that the presented information includes a wide variety of possible experiences. Objective The aim is to evaluate the colorectal cancer module of the German DIPEx website krankheitserfahrungen.de with regard to self-efficacy for coping with cancer and patient competence. Methods In 2015, a Web-based randomized controlled trial was conducted using a two-group between-subjects design and repeated measures. The study sample consisted of individuals who had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer within the past 3 years or who had metastasis or recurrent disease. Outcome measures included self-efficacy for coping with cancer and patient competence. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention group that had immediate access to the colorectal cancer module for 2 weeks or to a waiting list control group. Outcome criteria were measured at baseline before randomization and at 2 weeks and 6 weeks Results The study randomized 212 persons. On average, participants were 54 (SD 11.1) years old, 58.8% (124/211) were female, and 73.6% (156/212) had read or heard stories of other patients online before entering the study, thus excluding any influence of the colorectal cancer module on krankheitserfahrungen.de. No intervention effects were found at 2 and 6 weeks after baseline. Conclusions The results of this study do not support the hypothesis that the website studied may increase self-efficacy for coping with cancer or patient competencies such as self-regulation or managing emotional distress. Possible explanations may involve characteristics of the website itself, its use by participants, or methodological reasons. Future studies aimed at evaluating potential effects of websites providing patient experiences on the basis of methodological principles such as those of DIPEx might profit from extending the range of outcome measures, from including additional measures of website usage behavior and users’ motivation, and from expanding concepts, such as patient competency to include items that more directly reflect patients’ perceived effects of using such a website. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02157454; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02157454 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6syrvwXxi)

yes: "a two-group between-subjects design and repeated measures. The study sample consisted of individuals who had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer within the past 3 years or who had metastasis or recurrent disease. Outcome measures included self-efficacy for coping with cancer and patient competence. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention group that had immediate access to the colorectal cancer module for 2 weeks or to a waiting list control group." we detail in the abstract that groups were randomized to either the intervention or to no intervention. the recruitment procedures are detailed in the body of the text. In the abstract it is clearly stated that this is a purely web-based study We state the information re enrolled in the results section of the abstract. we detail sociodemographics of intervention and no-intervention group in the results section of the paper. "The study randomized 212 persons. On average, participants were 54 (SD 11) years old, 58.8% (124/211) were female, and 73.6% (156/212) had read or heard stories of other patients online before entering the study," is stated in the abstract "The results of this study do not support the hypothesis that the website studied may increase self-efficacy for coping with cancer or patient competencies such as self-regulation or managing emotional distress. Possible explanations may involve characteristics of the website itself, its use by participants, or methodological reasons." "Against this background, this study asks whether a website that provides experiential information on living with colorectal cancer based on scientifically rigorous data collection and analysis positively influences self-efficacy for coping with cancer [11][12][13][14][15] and patient competence [10]. It aims to evaluate potential effects of a specifically designed website, while at the same time providing insight into factors contributing to changes in coping self-efficacy and patient competence that are "Although medical information on diseases, treatments, and outcomes that is based on available quality criteria [16][17][18][19] represents an important input into patients' informed (treatment) decision making, patients facing health care decisions also seek and use experiential information describing how other patients live with a disease [20][21][22]. This field of experiential knowledge and its presentation has recently received increasing attention in research on health information resources. Here again, the ONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
"More specifically, we hypothesized that, compared to a waiting list control group, having access to and using a website presenting a broad range of individual experiences with colorectal cancer would increase patients' perceived self-efficacy for coping with cancer and patient competencies such as the ability to manage emotional distress arising in the context of cancer and its treatment or self-regulation as an ability to maintain a satisfactory equilibrium in interactions and affect" "The study used a randomized two-group between-subjects design with repeated measures" there was no change after the trial commencement thus such changes were also not mentioned in the manuscript.
"Potential participants were considered eligible (...) and who consented to participate online on the study website." "A wide range of recruitment strategies was used. Many major websites related to colorectal cancer, such as felix-burda-stiftung.de and lebensblicke.de, were informed about the study and provided a link to the study website. Information on the study was posted regularly on a colorectal cancer Facebook group and on online colorectal cancer discussion groups. The study was presented in-person to support groups, in rehabilitation clinics, and to hospital staff for them to aid in "Study participants had to enroll themselves through the study website, which also provided detailed information about the study.If participants then chose to enroll, this was considered as giving consent because they had previously been informed." ONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
"Online data collection at the three measurement points required patients to complete validated questionnaire measures of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, patient competence, depression, social support, health-related quality of life, and medical information received (Table 1). In addition, information on selected sociodemographic, illness, and treatment characteristics was obtained at baseline." see statement above under 4b CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc... the dipex website did not have the affiliation up front on the website. However, the name of the website included "charite" which is a wellknown hospital in Germany.
"The intervention of the study consisted of a website providing information of experiences by men and women diagnosed with colorectal cancer. The website is a section (module) of a German website krankheitserfahrungen.de, which aims to provide scientifically collected and analyzed experiences of health and illness to patients, health care providers, and the wider public. The project team DIPEx Germany that runs the website is a member of the international research network DIPEx (Database The intervention is publicly available under krankheitserfahrungen.de as are all the outcome measurements we used published so they could be used by others. All this is mentioned in the methods section of the manuscript.
the intervntion is online.
14 von 37 06.10.2017, 04:42 "participants were randomly assigned either to an intervention group that had immediate access to the colorectal cancer module for 2 weeks or to a waiting list control group that was given access to the module after completion of the study 6 weeks after randomization." The intervention and mode of delivery is carefully explained in 5-i CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
We discuss this at extensio in the paper, the use of the website was at the leisure of the participants -we only recorded their time on the website.
"The pages that each participant visited on the intervention website were logged along with a time stamp, thus allowing a determination of the amount of time they spent on the website (in minutes), the We have stated this in the methods section of the paper -please see above our quotations.
participants were received up to three reminders to fill out questoinnaires at 2 and 6 weeks of their enrollment.
there was no co-intervention "Online data collection at the three measurement points required patients to complete validated questionnaire measures of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, patient competence, depression, social support, health-related quality of life, and medical information received (Table 1)." CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
"Like the CBI-B, the original version of this instrument [11,13], the CBI-B-D consists of 14 items that describe coping behaviors in the context of cancer. Patients are asked to rate how confident they are in performing each of these behaviors on a nine-point scale ranging from "not at all confident" to "totally confident." A summary score is obtained across all 14 items, which can range from 14 to 126, with high values indicating high confidence in one's "The pages that each participant visited on the intervention website were logged along with a time stamp, thus allowing a determination of the amount of time they spent on the website (in minutes), the number of sessions using the site, and the number of clicks produced (as an indicator of the number of subpages accessed)." This was done in a prior study which we cite in the method's section where we describe the interventoin.

no "
In determining the necessary sample size for the trial, it was assumed that given a standard deviation of 18 [40,41], a difference of five scale points in self-efficacy for coping with cancer between the intervention group and the waiting list control group could be reasonably expected and should be detected with a power of .80 and a type one error probability of alpha=.05. For Cohen d (between-group mean difference divided by SD) [42], this lies in the range of a small effect size not applicable CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
Participants who self-enrolled through the website were randomly assigned by the computer after they completed an online questionnaire. The process was automated.
no restrictions applied.
since everything was automated and study participants had no contact to researchers concealment was automatic.
CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Participants enrolled themselves through the study website. the random allocation sequence was generated by the computer after participants had filled out a baseline questionnaire online.
this was a web-based randomized study but since there was only a waiting list, blinding was not possible.
CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication only intervention and no intervention group in the study.
"Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS versions 23 and 24. Baseline differences between the intervention and the waiting list group were analyzed by means of chi-square statistics for categorical variables or one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) in the case of continuous variables based on all participants with nonmissing data for a given variable. Effect sizes were estimated by computing phi coefficient or eta squared. Following Cohen [42], these may categorized as small, CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
Yes, we have detailed this in the method's section of the paper. "These analyses were based on all randomized participants, using multiple imputation of missing values at baseline and at 2 and 6 weeks." See below for more on how we imputated.
all analyses are described in the data analysis section of the method's part of the paper not applicable since the intervention is now publicly available for everyone Yes, we have stated the time of recruitment and the time of follow up as 2 and 6 weeks. "These analyses were based on all randomized participants, using multiple imputation of missing values at baseline and at 2 and 6 weeks. We ran 10 multiple imputations with the full information maximum likelihood method when data were missing in single items or scales. Multiple imputation CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication We present this information in table 4 Yes, we provide this information for the intervention group. "On average, participants in the intervention group visited the intervention website for mean 42.21 (SD 45.64, median 26) minutes in total. The mean number of sessions at the site was 3.43 (SD 2.94, median 3). A mean 40.15 (SD 42.14, median 26) clicks across all sessions suggests that the intervention participants accessed a moderately large number of subpages." " Table 5 shows the results of the regression analyses of the scores of the intervention and control group at 2 weeks. As shown by the unstandardized regression weight for the group factor (b group), there were no significant differences at 2 weeks between the intervention and control groups for self-efficacy for coping with cancer as the primary outcome. Furthermore, no significant group differences were determined for the secondary outcome measures of patient competencies, such as self-regulation, not relevant to this manuscript we reported the main outcome of the study.
We did not do this.
"Regarding the slight, but significant, decrease of self-efficacy for coping with cancer and three patient competence scales across time observed in this study, a possible explanation may lie in assuming the operation of a response shift [52]. In the course of the study, participants may have undergone a change in their frames of reference for rating coping self-efficacy and patient competencies. One may speculate, for example, that the observed decrease might reflect some sort of disillusionment CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...
"This randomized controlled trial investigated the effects of a website presenting systematically collected and organized patients' experiences of living with colorectal cancer on self-efficacy for coping with the disease and on patient competencies such as coping with emotional distress or dealing with the life threatening nature of cancer [10]. Participants randomized to the intervention were given access to the website for two consecutive weeks. Contrary to expectations, no "Finally, including patients' family or friends in such a study might add another facet to future research in this field because these people often support patients in seeking health information on the Internet [55]." "As a consequence, it may be of importance to analyze patients' usage behavior in more detail in future research. Furthermore, future research should extend CONSORT-EHEALTH (V 1.6.1) -Submission/Publication Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZBSUp1bwOc_Oimqc...