Table 6.

Factors considered for calculating the social return on investment impact ratio.

Factor	Description
Deadweight	A measure to describe the amount of an outcome that would have happened anyway, even if the DPSa service had not been offered. For example, the participants experiencing reductions in momentary loneliness may have a deadweight value of 10% from simply joining the DPS chat, but without further intervention from the peer support moderator or other peers.
Displacement	An assessment of what activities or services are displaced by the presence of the digital peer group. There was no evidence of displacement as, before the digital support option was added, there were no after-hours DPS chat services for employee assistance program members to access.
Attribution	A measure to consider how much of an identified theme is a result of the group studied or is influenced by external factors, for example, if participants also attend another service, such as counseling, which reduces their sense of chronic sadness, a conservative estimate of 20% of the identified momentary sentiment change may be attributed to the group studied.
Dropoff	The percentage of the outcome that decreases after the intervention is complete. For example, a conservative percentage of 10% re-emergence of stress may be expected after the user ends their DPS chat due to a return to their stressful environment.

^aDPS: digital peer support.