Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Aug 23, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 28, 2018 - Oct 23, 2018
Date Accepted: Feb 17, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Effects of Mock Facebook Workday Comments on Public Perception of Professional Credibility: A Field Study in Canada
Background:
There is considerable discussion of risks to health professionals’ reputations and employment from personal social media use, though its impacts on professional credibility and the health professional-client relationship are unknown.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to test the extent to which workday comments posted to health professionals’ personal Facebook profiles influence their credibility and affect the professional-client relationship.
Methods:
In a controlled field study, participants (members of the public) reviewed randomly assigned mock Facebook profiles of health professionals. The 2×2×2 factorial design of mock profiles included gender (female/male), health profession (physician/veterinarian), and workday comment type (evident frustration/ambiguous). Participants then rated the profile owner’s credibility on a visual analog scale. An analysis of variance test compared ratings. Mediation analyses tested the importance of credibility ratings on participants’ willingness to become a client of the mock health professional.
Results:
Participants (N=357) rated health professionals whose personal Facebook profile showed a comment with evident frustration rather than an ambiguous workday comment as less credible (P<.001; mean difference 11.18 [SE 1.28]; 95% CI 8.66 to 13.70). Furthermore, participants indicated they were less likely to become clients of the former when they considered credibility (standardized beta=.69; P<.001). Credibility explained 86% of the variation in the relationship between the type of workday comment and the participant’s willingness to become a client of the health professional.
Conclusions:
This study provides the first evidence of the impact of health professionals’ personal online disclosures on credibility and the health relationship. Public perceptions about professionalism and credibility are integral to developing the evidence base for e-professionalism guidelines and encouraging best practices in social media use.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.