Abstract
BACKGROUND
Social media are seldom explored in animal health despite the potential for insights into pet owners’
perceptions and information seeking behaviours before and after accessing veterinary care [1]. A study in
Feline Pruritus was conducted using social listening to investigate owners’ perceptions of feline allergic
skin disease using a thematic analysis technique.
OBJECTIVES
• To apply thematic analysis to social listening (SL) data and thereby create a unique dataset concerning
pet owner perceptions of feline pruritus and online information-seeking behaviours.
METHODS
• Fifty dynamic (frequently updated) content sources applicable to cats and feline pruritus were
chosen, keywords were defined by a veterinary expert panel and organised into topics.
• Keywords were augmented by reference to academic literature, a baseline survey of 1000 cat
owners in the United States, the addition of synonyms and further iterations using Google
Trends analytics keywords and sources.
• Six bespoke topic filters were developed: body areas, behaviours, symptoms, disease diagnosis,
solutions and treatments.
• Content from the selected sources was collected using a social intelligence solution developed
by ATC, tagged using both keywords (with stemming) and topic filters.
• The data was aggregated, duplicates removed, and sentiment calculated by algorithm.
• Content matching topic(s) in the body areas, behaviours and symptoms filters were reviewed
manually, relevancy criteria developed, and posts marked relevant if: posted by a pet owner,
identifying an itchy cat and not duplicated e.g. previous versions of a post, similar posts or
cross posting to different sources.
• A sub-set of 493 posts (title and text only) marked relevant and published between 2009 and
2022 were used for reflexive thematic analysis in NVIVO (Burlington, MA) to extract the key
themes.
RESULTS
Qualitative thematic analysis was conducted on 493 relevant posts collected up to 30th May 2022
producing five top level themes: allergy, pruritus, additional behaviours, unusual or undesirable
behaviours, diagnosis and treatment. The analytical method used the most recent ‘reflexive thematic
analysis’ approach developed by Braun and Clarke [2] and adapted from [3]. The newly developed
reflexive thematic analysis approach is not bound to one specific theoretical framework but allows for
the flexibility to return to a previous phase, as the analysis develops, guiding the research based on the
researcher’s level of interpretation and design of the study.
The data was published between 2009 and 2022, met the body areas, behaviours and symptoms topic
filters, met the relevancy criteria, had been manually reviewed and marked relevant for feline pruritus.
Internet forums and Twitter were the most likely sources of relevant posts: Reddit (198/493), Catsite
(110/493), Twitter (97/493) and Quora (59/493). Relevant posts were most frequently from the United
States (188/493), United Kingdom (12/493), Canada (9/493), Greece (7/493), Australia (3/493) and Italy
(2/493). A single post came from each of 11 countries and 260/493 posts had no location.
The total number of responses coded was 493; the total number of themes was 5, total codes was
47 and the total number of references coded was 880.
CONCLUSIONS
• SL provides unique insights into verbatim owner perceptions on health and veterinary care.
• This study shows there is a need for an increased awareness by veterinarians to pet owner
frustrations with treatment options to tackle feline pruritus.
• The data analysis could be scaled up using machine learning for topic modelling.
• The data could enable data-driven decisions such as assessing demand for veterinary services
by location and impact on quality of life.
• These findings will be validated by comparison with thematic analysis of a direct pet owner
survey.