Abstract P214: Social Network Analysis of a Community Aphasia Group Pre- And Post-Covid: Implications for Future Planning

Stroke ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Sather ◽  
Anna Livera

Introduction: Among the many negative consequences of aphasia is an altered social network. Social network analysis supports an objective, quantitative evaluation of social networks among individuals with aphasia along with potential impacts of social programming and interventions on an individual’s social network. Social network analysis may also support better understanding of the impact of Covid on individuals with aphasia. Aims: This pilot evaluation utilized social network analysis via R to evaluate the social network characteristics of a community-based aphasia network across a 12-month pre-Covid period. Social network aphasia group data for a standard duration of time pre- and post-Covid were also compared to identify potential social implications of Covid in a population already at higher risk for reduced social interactions. This presentation will also provide fundamental concepts relevant to social network analysis for those interested in pursuing such analysis in further depth. Methods: Twelve months of pre-Covid aphasia group program attendance data were examined using the visNetwork R package. An additional six months of Covid-era time frame data were also analyzed.The primary relationship function of “ a attended b” (where a = individual participant and b = event/setting) was used in the analysis. Multiple social network characteristics were analyzed and displayed including node, edgeness, directionality, weight, and centrality indices across individuals with aphasia, care partners and community members and settings. Results and Conclusions: Network analysis reveals a directed network graph with primarily unidirectional relationships. There is an emergence of several aphasia group participant behavior types, both pre- and post-Covid, relevant for future planning including: communities of individuals who have similar behaviors in terms of type of event attendance; key individuals who are "heavy users" of various services in terms of frequency and breadth of event attendance; and peripheral users who use only one service. Post-Covid social network implications are discussed including supports to mitigate negative impacts of Covid on social network composition.

2011 ◽  
pp. 24-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiz Dalkir

This chapter focuses on a method, social network analysis (SNA) that can be used to assess the quantity and quality of connection, communication and collaboration mediated by social tools in an organization. An organization, in the Canadian public sector, is used as a real-life case study to illustrate how SNA can be used in a pre-test/post-test evaluation design to conduct a comparative assessment of methods that can be used before, during and after the implementation of organizational change in work processes. The same evaluation method can be used to assess the impact of introducing new social media such as wikis, expertise locator systems, blogs, Twitter and so on. In other words, while traditional pre-test/post-test designs can be easily applied to social media, the social media tools themselves can be added to the assessment toolkit. Social network analysis in particular is a good candidate to analyze the connections between people and content as well as people with other people.


The traditional research approaches common in different disciplines of social sciences centered around one half of the social realm: the actors. The other half are the relations established by these actors and forming the basis of “social.” The social structure shaped by these relations, the position of the actor within this structure, and the impact of this position on the actor are mostly excluded by the traditional research methods. In this chapter, the authors introduce social network analysis and how it complements the other methods.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Prochnow ◽  
Haley Delgado ◽  
Megan S. Patterson ◽  
M. Renée Umstattd Meyer

Background: Regular physical activity (PA) has many benefits for children and adolescents, yet many do not meet PA recommendations. Social context is important for promoting or discouraging PA among children and adolescents. This review aimed to identify social network variables related to PA among children and adolescents. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted in September 2018 using PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Web of Science. Included articles needed to (1) be focused on children (aged 5–11 y) or adolescents (aged 12–17 y), (2) include a measure of PA, (3) include a measure of egocentric or sociocentric social connection in which alters were nominated, and (4) perform an analysis between network data and PA. Results: A search of 11,824 articles was refined to a final sample of 29 articles. Social network themes and concepts such as homophily, centrality, and network composition were related to child and adolescent PA behavior across the literature. Conclusions: The impact of an individual’s social network is evident on their PA behaviors. More research is needed to examine why these networks form in relation to PA and how interventions can utilize social network analysis to more effectively promote PA, especially in underserved and minority populations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Liang ◽  
King-wa Fu

It remains controversial whether community structures in social networks are beneficial or not for information diffusion. This study examined the relationships among four core concepts in social network analysis—network redundancy, information redundancy, ego-alter similarity, and tie strength—and their impacts on information diffusion. By using more than 6,500 representative ego networks containing nearly 1 million following relationships from Twitter, the current study found that (1) network redundancy is positively associated with the probability of being retweeted even when competing variables are controlled for; (2) network redundancy is positively associated with information redundancy, which in turn decreases the probability of being retweeted; and (3) the inclusion of both ego-alter similarity and tie strength can attenuate the impact of network redundancy on the probability of being retweeted.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhakrishnan Nagarajan ◽  
Charlotte A. Peterson ◽  
Jane S. Lowe ◽  
Stephen W. Wyatt ◽  
Timothy S. Tracy ◽  
...  

10.2196/24690 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. e24690
Author(s):  
Ran Xu ◽  
David Cavallo

Background Obesity is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease risk factors, including hypertension and type II diabetes. Although numerous weight loss interventions have demonstrated efficacy, there is considerably less evidence about the theoretical mechanisms through which they work. Delivering lifestyle behavior change interventions via social media provides unique opportunities for understanding mechanisms of intervention effects. Server data collected directly from web-based platforms can provide detailed, real-time behavioral information over the course of intervention programs that can be used to understand how interventions work. Objective The objective of this study was to demonstrate how social network analysis can facilitate our understanding of the mechanisms underlying a social media–based weight loss intervention. Methods We performed secondary analysis by using data from a pilot study that delivered a dietary and physical activity intervention to a group of participants via Facebook. We mapped out participants’ interaction networks over the 12-week intervention period and linked participants’ network characteristics (eg, in-degree, out-degree, network constraint) to participants’ changes in theoretical mediators (ie, dietary knowledge, perceived social support, self-efficacy) and weight loss by using regression analysis. We also performed mediation analyses to explore how the effects of social network measures on weight loss could be mediated by the aforementioned theoretical mediators. Results In this analysis, 47 participants from 2 waves completed the study and were included. We found that increases in the number of posts, comments, and reactions significantly predicted weight loss (β=–.94, P=.04); receiving comments positively predicted changes in self-efficacy (β=7.81, P=.009), and the degree to which one’s network neighbors are tightly connected with each other weakly predicted changes in perceived social support (β=7.70, P=.08). In addition, change in self-efficacy mediated the relationship between receiving comments and weight loss (β=–.89, P=.02). Conclusions Our analyses using data from this pilot study linked participants’ network characteristics with changes in several important study outcomes of interest such as self-efficacy, social support, and weight. Our results point to the potential of using social network analysis to understand the social processes and mechanisms through which web-based behavioral interventions affect participants’ psychological and behavioral outcomes. Future studies are warranted to validate our results and to further explore the relationship between network dynamics and study outcomes in similar and larger trials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Binish Raza ◽  
◽  
Rodina Ahmad ◽  
Mohd H.N.M Nasir ◽  
Shukor S.M Fauzi ◽  
...  

Software development is a critical task that depends on coordination among team members and organizational activities that bring team members together. The literature indicates various techniques that have been applied to control the coordination level among team members. Notable among these techniques is social-technical congruence (STC), which helps to measure the alignment between the social and technical capabilities of an organization and teams at various stages of software development. The dynamic nature and changes of coordination requirements make STC a potential research area in this regard. The main objective of this study is to perform a systematic literature review (SLR) that recognizes and structures existing studies that represent new evolutionary trends in the field of STC. A SLR is performed of 46 publications from 4 data sources, including journals, conferences and workshop proceedings, most of which were published between 2008 and 2019. To this end, a thorough analysis is carried out to elicit the studies based on 7 research questions in this SLR. The outcome of this SLR is a set of ample research studies representing various aspects, performance impacts, factors, and evolutionary trends in the field of STC. Furthermore, STC measurement techniques are classified in two distinct groups, matrix based and social network analysis-based measures. After a systematic exploration of these aspects, this study results in new insightful features and state of art of STC. This SLR concludes that some areas still require further investigation. For instance, (1) STC-related literature exists, but only one research work mainly focuses on the risk of overwhelming STC (i.e., excessive STC measurement may overburden the software development process); (2) STC measurement techniques facilitate the identification of congruence gaps, but no attention has been given towards the unweighted social network analysis based STC measurement models; (3) STC measurement techniques are generally applied in the development phase of the project lifecycle, but these measurements are rarely used in other software development phases, such as the requirement and testing phases or all phases; and (4) The development factors that effects on STC measurement are rarely focused by researchers in the context of various domains.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Xu ◽  
David Cavallo

BACKGROUND Obesity is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors including hypertension and type II diabetes. Although numerous weight-loss interventions have demonstrated efficacy, there is considerably less evidence about the theoretical mechanisms through which they work. Delivering lifestyle behavior change interventions via social media provides unique opportunities for understanding mechanisms of intervention effects. Server data collected directly from online platforms can provide detailed, real-time behavioral information over the course of intervention programs that can be used to understand how interventions work. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to demonstrate how social network analysis can facilitate our understanding of the mechanisms underlying a social-media based weight loss intervention. METHODS This study performed secondary analysis using data from a pilot study that delivered a dietary and physical activity intervention to a group of low-SES participants via Facebook. We mapped out participants’ interaction networks over the 12-week intervention period, and linked participants’ network characteristics (e.g. in-degree, out-degree and network constraint) to participants’ changes in theoretical mediators (i.e. dietary knowledge, perceived social support, self-efficacy) and weight loss using regression analysis. This study also performed mediation analyses to explore how the effects of social network measures on weight loss could be mediated by the aforementioned theoretical mediators. RESULTS 47 participants from two waves completed the study and were included in the analysis. We found that participants creating posts, comments and reactions predicted weight-loss (β=-.94, P=.042); receiving comments positively predicted changes in self-efficacy (β=7.81, P=.009); the degree to which one’s network neighbors are tightly connected with each other weakly predicted changes in perceived social support (β=7.70, P=.08). In addition, change in self-efficacy mediated the relationship between receiving comments and weight-loss (Indirect effect=-.89, P=.017). CONCLUSIONS Our analyses using data from this pilot study have linked participants’ network characteristics with changes in several important study outcomes of interest, such as self-efficacy, social support and weight. Our results point to the potential of using social network analysis to understand the social processes and mechanisms through which online behavioral interventions affects participants’ psychological and behavioral outcomes. Future studies are warranted to validate our results and further explore the relationship between network dynamics and study outcomes in similar and larger trials.


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