Evaluating website resources shared online amongst women with intimate partner violence experiences: analysis of an online health community

Introduction Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects around one in four women globally, posing substantial health risks. IPV survivors often consult online health communities for anonymous assistance rather than formal services. Though online health community members frequently share websites to answer questions, no studies have investigated the characteristics and relevance of websites shared in IPV online health communities. This study aims to identify the categories of websites shared in IPV online health communities and evaluate associations between post characteristics and website relevance to survivors’ help-seeking needs. Methods Data were extracted from posts and comments on the r/domesticviolence, a subreddit (topic-specific community) dedicated to domestic violence support on Reddit (a social media platform), from November 2020 to November 2021. We included English-language posts seeking advice, written by adult women with IPV experiences, with at least one website shared in the comments. Website links were annotated by topics and categorized as relevant or irrelevant to help requested by original posters. Posts were annotated for characteristics including post length, mentions of “red flags” for lethality, and specific versus general help requests. Chi-square and t -test were used to determine association between post characteristics and websites’ relevance. Results A total of 170 website links were categorized into eight themes, with General IPV Resources and Support (32.4%) and Understanding IPV (28.2%) being the most common. Approximately 75.3% of the websites were relevant to the types of help sought by original posters. Post characteristics showed no significant association with the relevance of the websites. Conclusion This study sheds light on the types of websites shared within IPV online health communities and informs IPV agencies and clinicians about the addressed and unaddressed needs of women IPV survivors seeking help online. These findings could help optimize the design of online health community platforms, including digital tools that automatically suggest relevant websites to IPV survivors.