Dr Sean Young chats with #SPSM about what happens when you start a study on social media signals for sleep health, and veer into the topic of suicide…only to find out that the IRB isn’t experienced with this issue. Join us 6/2/18, 9pCT.

Check out the abstract (or read the whole thing here:

“Due to the popularity of social media, researchers are increasingly conducting studies that monitor and analyze people’s health-related social media conversations. Because social media users can post about any topic at any time, no known best ethical practices exist as to whether and how to monitor participants’ posts for safety-related issues that might be unrelated to the study, such as expressions of suicidal intentions. This is a case study during a social media-based study on sleep and activity among freshman undergraduate students, where we by chance noticed that a student was using social media to express suicidal intentions. Although we connected the student to student psychological services in order to receive treatment, we encountered a number of barriers that initially prevented this from occurring, such as institutional review board and regulatory practices related to lack of experience with these newer types of studies. We discuss the implications of this experience for future research.”

Watch us LIVE here:

Sean Young, PhD is Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and the Executive Director of the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology (UCIPT) and UCLA Center for Digital Behavior. Trained as a behavioral and social psychologist, Dr. Young’s research focuses on using technologies and artificial intelligence/big data to change and predict people’s health behaviors. He was the PI of the Harnessing Online Peer Education (HOPE) intervention studies, showing that online communities and technologies that integrate HOPE lead to sustainable health behavior change in areas such as HIV, opioid use, and mental/behavioral health. He co-created a technology platform (healthcheckins.com) being tested among UCLA Health System patients to improve their behavioral and mental health. Dr. Young is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Best-Selling book, Stick with It (2017), on the science behind lasting change, published by HarperCollins.