DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/AQZ6-2T79

Defense Date

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Dentistry

Department

Dentistry

First Advisor

Bhavna Shroff DDS MDSc MPA

Second Advisor

Steven J Lindauer DDS MDSc

Third Advisor

Brendan E Mahon

Fourth Advisor

Caroline Carrico

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the orthodontic patient experience with braces compared to Invisalign® by means of a large-scale Twitter sentiment analysis. A custom data collection program was created to collect tweets containing the words “braces” or “Invisalign.” A hierarchal Naïve Bayes sentiment classifier was developed to sort the tweets into one of five categories: positive, negative, neutral, advertisement, or not applicable. Among the 419,363 tweets applicable to orthodontics collected, users posted significantly more positive tweets (61%) than negative tweets (39%) (p-value = ® tweets (p-value=0.4189). In conclusion, Twitter users express more positive than negative sentiment about orthodontic treatment with no significant difference in sentiment between braces and Invisalign® tweets.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

5-10-2016

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