Using word clouds to reveal patients' perceptions about their arthritis

Area of Science:

• Rheumatology
• Health Psychology
• Data Visualization

Background:

• Patient perceptions significantly impact health outcomes.
• Current illness perception measures can be time-consuming.
• Word clouds present a novel, potentially less burdensome approach to capturing patient experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate word clouds for illustrating patient perceptions of inflammatory arthritis.
• To identify commonalities and differences in patient experiences across rheumatic diseases.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional study with 323 patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, or gout.
• Participants provided two descriptive words for their experience and completed the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire.
• Word clouds were generated, and ANOVA models analyzed perception differences between disease groups.

Main Results:

• Symptom/sensation and affect/emotional experience were the most prominent themes across all conditions.
• Theme prevalence varied by condition; social impact was higher in gout, burden/intrusion in ankylosing spondylitis.
• Word clouds uniquely identified themes of burden/intrusion, functioning, opportunity, and social impact, with moderate overlap with established perception domains.

Conclusions:

• Word clouds are a low-burden method for assessing inflammatory arthritis patient experiences.
• This visualization technique can reveal unique aspects of illness perception.
• The utility of word clouds may extend to other patient populations.