Poster can be found in location 14.

Background: Caregiving can affect people of all ages and can have significant negative health impacts on family caregivers. Research has shown that social support acts as a buffer against many negative health impacts. A common source of social support is online support groups (OSG). Over the last decade the number of OSGs increased exponentially, however there is not consensus on what factors or characteristics of OSG contribute to the development of social support within these groups or what types of OSG are available to family caregivers. Objective: The purpose of this present study was to conduct a scoping review to contribute to the understanding of the types and characteristics of online support groups (OSGs) for family caregivers. Methods: Following the Prisma-ScR guidelines, the CINAHL, PsychInfo, Psych Articles, Social Sciences, Communication Source, Medline, and Web of Science databases were searched using inclusion and exclusion criteria.  19 studies were included in the review. The analysis process explored (1) what type of the social support groups are online for adult family caregivers (2) what are the communication medium and characteristics of these OSGs and (3) what psychosocial or other factors that made OSG successful or unsuccessful for participants? Results:  We found that the majority of OSG took place on public text-based forums, were illness-specific and the most common communication medium found was text-based communication. Results for Q3 developed two overarching categories of safe communication and engagement. These described successful groups as having similar others with common life experiences sharing in non-judgmental space, overseen by trained peer or professional facilitators. Conclusions: There are several key considerations for OSG to be successful for family caregivers. A general recommendation for practitioners is the importance of building active moderation and multi-faceted structures of support to meet different levels of caregiver needs and ability to engage.