Table 2.

LDA topics associated with posts by users who self-declared to have or had cancer (ie, the “has cancer” group) compared with posts by users in the “family or friend” group.

LDAa topic themes	Highly correlated words in topics	Cohen d
Hospital visit	pain, hospital, back, days, blood, started, doctor, home, worse, ER	0.671
Questions/seeking advice	advice, good, wondering, experience, type, information, questions, survival, early, similar	0.537
Symptoms, risk, and cure of disease	cells, risk, cure, disease, symptoms, cancers, cervical, pancreatic, body, patients	0.474
Research/questions around cancer	research, patient, part, study, breast, questions, diagnosis, prostrate, find, survivor	0.432
Cancer surgery	surgery, colon, removed, tumor, thyroid, remove, lymph, kidney, nodes, stomach	0.349
Cost/payment for treatment	treatment, insurance, medical, money, health, clinical, working, options, pay, trials	0.345
Change in diet	eat, weight, food, stomach, throat, diet, healthy, tongue, taste, loss	0.293
Tests around cancer	scan, biopsy, back, doctor, results, CT, lymph, found, oncologist, tumor	0.290
Support from people/community	support, people, post, free, share, story, group, love, hope, great	0.245
Side effects of treatment	chemo, treatment, radiation, side, effects, week, hair, round, pretty, started	0.214

^aLDA: latent Dirichlet allocation.