It might be interesting to look at the exact opposite hypothesis, if there is a way to do this. Given the pending release of the Ashley Madison data, some men might have actually anticipated relief: "At least she'll finally know, get this out in the open, and and we can move on with how bad things have been." That could cause the opposite of a stress-related cardiac event, i.e. health-promoting behaviors and emotional/physiological relief. Long shot to see that on a population level, but not impossible.
Ooh I like this idea, and it may explain why we didn't see an uptick in cardiac events following the release of the data in the quick-and-dirty analysis we presented here. But I agree there's definitely a chance that the event could have served as a catalyst to force difficult conversations in struggling relationships. I think the challenge would be that benefits of improving a relationship (or ending an unhealthy one) might take a long time to show up in insurance-claims-based measurable health effects, and following these men out for many years would make it challenging to be able to attribute any benefits of the leak versus something else that happened in that time period. To get around this, ideally we would have to find otherwise-similar men who were seeking affairs, some of whom used Ashley Madison by chance, and then we could follow them long into the future and compare the ones who got "caught" to the ones that didn't--but I don't think we'd be able to accomplish this with the available data!
Health/rehab/neuropsychologist here. I usually think from a "what helps/what's improved" perspective and data/outcomes. I can see how it would be difficult to glean "improved health measures" from insurance claims as those will lean to conditions treated, always a challenge. And as you point out, comparison/control group pretty difficult here.
Tempting if their contact data are still available to do subjective survey, "Did this make things worse, better in any way?" with all the limits of that kind of study but I imagine these men are going to be completely averse to online survey and can you imagine an IRB? Idea: how were long term survivors of 9-11 studied for mental/health outcomes (there's at least good data I believe on presence/duration of PTSD)?
It might be interesting to look at the exact opposite hypothesis, if there is a way to do this. Given the pending release of the Ashley Madison data, some men might have actually anticipated relief: "At least she'll finally know, get this out in the open, and and we can move on with how bad things have been." That could cause the opposite of a stress-related cardiac event, i.e. health-promoting behaviors and emotional/physiological relief. Long shot to see that on a population level, but not impossible.
Ooh I like this idea, and it may explain why we didn't see an uptick in cardiac events following the release of the data in the quick-and-dirty analysis we presented here. But I agree there's definitely a chance that the event could have served as a catalyst to force difficult conversations in struggling relationships. I think the challenge would be that benefits of improving a relationship (or ending an unhealthy one) might take a long time to show up in insurance-claims-based measurable health effects, and following these men out for many years would make it challenging to be able to attribute any benefits of the leak versus something else that happened in that time period. To get around this, ideally we would have to find otherwise-similar men who were seeking affairs, some of whom used Ashley Madison by chance, and then we could follow them long into the future and compare the ones who got "caught" to the ones that didn't--but I don't think we'd be able to accomplish this with the available data!
Health/rehab/neuropsychologist here. I usually think from a "what helps/what's improved" perspective and data/outcomes. I can see how it would be difficult to glean "improved health measures" from insurance claims as those will lean to conditions treated, always a challenge. And as you point out, comparison/control group pretty difficult here.
Tempting if their contact data are still available to do subjective survey, "Did this make things worse, better in any way?" with all the limits of that kind of study but I imagine these men are going to be completely averse to online survey and can you imagine an IRB? Idea: how were long term survivors of 9-11 studied for mental/health outcomes (there's at least good data I believe on presence/duration of PTSD)?
Thanks for the post. I like reading about the non-result, which adds texture to understanding the research process.
Thank you! You were the first to respond and have set the path, so we'll do more of them!