Jacqueline Sin*, King's College London, London, United Kingdom Claire Henderson, King's College London, London, United Kingdom Ian Norman, King's College London, London, United Kingdom Track: Research Presentation Topic: Building virtual communities and social networking applications for patients and consumers Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Over 80% of the general population in the U.K. has at least one sibling, and siblings of individuals with psychosis are often both natural agents to promote service users’ recovery and vulnerable to mental ill health due to the negative impact of psychosis within the family. Traditional and conventional family and carer support resources are under-used by siblings despite their demand for information and dedicated peer-support. Therefore, we developed a web-based intervention that provides education on psychosis and coping strategies coupled with interactive peer support for siblings of individuals with psychosis.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to describe the systematic development process and findings from a usability test of a web-based intervention on knowledge, efficacy in coping and wellbeing in siblings.

Methods: An iterative approach was used to develop and enhance the user-interface of the various prototypes of the web-based intervention. Development of the intervention was grounded in theoretical and systematic reviews to identity common ingredients of successful educational and peer support interventions for family carers and end-users (i.e. siblings of individuals with psychosis) were actively and continuously involved in the development process. An intervention prototype was tested through a non-randomised usability evaluative study among 20 siblings of individuals with psychosis. The usability study adapted Poulson et al’s framework to collect data on ease of use, accessibility, logistic of navigation, and trial use of pre- and post outcome measures within the intervention. Both objective online observation data in-built within the intervention and subjective feedback from participants was analysed to determine the usability of the intervention.

Results: Following an iterative development process over 10 months, a prototype of the intervention was developed and was tested for usability. The web-based intervention has multiple components, including: education on psychosis and various coping strategies and ways to look after self; peer support; “Ask the Experts” and links to further resources. Descriptive statistical analysis of the usage data that was automatically collected by the inbuilt monitoring system within the online intervention reports on participants' usage pattern. These include: numbers of hits, time spent online by the participants, popularity of various features through number of visits to each component made by all participants. We also conducted content analysis on the subjective feedback from the evaluative questionnaire completed by the participants for their views and perceived acceptability of the online intervention.

Conclusion: This paper outlines the development and design process of an innovative intervention for siblings of people with psychosis. The results of the usability study have established its feasibility and suggested ways to improve its acceptability and usability. These results will be used to refine the intervention which will be further evaluated in a randomised controlled trial.


Acknowledgement
The usability study described here forms part of a research programme entitled “The E Sibling Project” which is funded by the National Institute for Health Research under its Doctoral Research Fellowship Programme (awarded to J.S.; Reference: NIHR-DRF-04-129; Trial registration reference: ISRCTN01416694).