Assessing Disparities in Hybrid and Online-Only Local Support Communities

HCI aspires to achieve equitable outcomes in our sociotechnical interventions. Prior work suggests that improved evaluation and reporting of intervention disparities can help achieve more equitable outcomes. We analyzed socioeconomic disparities in hybrid and online-only local support communities by quantitatively operationalizing the access-adoption-adherence-effectiveness (AAAE) framework. The hybrid intervention demonstrated statistically significant socioeconomic status (SES)-based disparities in adoption of community's asynchronous online platform, while the online-only intervention demonstrated statistically significant disparities in access and adherence to synchronous online classes. Our findings suggest that disparities in earlier elements of the framework pipeline may mask later disparities due to survivorship bias, highlighting the importance of comprehensively examining the four elements of the framework.

This study examines whether online and hybrid community support programs serve people equally across income levels, finding that both formats show significant gaps in who can access and stick with them. The work reveals that looking only at later stages of participation can hide earlier inequities, offering a systematic way for designers to uncover and address hidden disparities in community technologies.