Contribution of School-Based Health-Related Fitness Program toFriendship: Social Network Analysis

Abstract Background After the US Surgeon General declared youth electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use an epidemic in 2018, the number of youth e-cigarette users continued to surge, growing from 3.8 million in 2018 to over 5 million 2019. Youth who use e-cigarettes are at a substantially higher risk of transitioning to traditional cigarettes, becoming regular cigarette smokers, and increasing their risk of developing tobacco-related cancer. A majority of youth are misinformed about e-cigarettes, often believing they are not harmful or contain no nicotine. Middle school students using e-cigarettes have been affected by its normalization leading to influence by their peers. However, social and group dynamics can be leveraged for a school-based peer-led intervention to identify and recruit student leaders to be anti-e-cigarette champions to prevent e-cigarette initiation. This study outlines a project to use social network analysis to identify student opinion-leaders in schools and train them to conduct anti-e-cigarette programming to their peers. Methods In the 2019–2020 academic school year, 6th grade students from nine schools in the Pittsburgh area were recruited. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with three arms—expert, elected peer-leader, and random peer-leader—for e-cigarette programming. Sixth grade students in each school completed a network survey that assessed the friendship networks in each class. Students also completed pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys about their intention-to-use, knowledge, and attitudes towards e-cigarettes. Within each peer-led arm, social network analysis was conducted to identify peer-nominated opinion leaders. An e-cigarette prevention program was administered by (1) an adult content-expert, (2) a peer-nominated opinion leader to assigned students, or (3) a peer-nominated opinion leader to random students. Discussion This study is the first to evaluate the feasibility of leveraging social network analysis to identify 6th grade opinion leaders to lead a school-based e-cigarette intervention. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04083469. Registered on September 10, 2019.

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Associations within school-based same-sex friendship networks of children’s physical activity and sedentary behaviours: a cross-sectional social network analysis

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity ◽

10.1186/s12966-018-0653-9 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Ruth E. Salway ◽

Simon J. Sebire ◽

Emma Solomon-Moore ◽

Janice L. Thompson ◽

Russell Jago

Keyword(s):

Physical Activity ◽

Social Network ◽

Social Network Analysis ◽

Network Analysis ◽

Friendship Networks ◽

Same Sex ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Sedentary Behaviours ◽

School Based ◽

Children’S Physical Activity

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Social network analysis of the mental health sub-topic on the MedlinePlus subject directory

Information Research: an international electronic journal ◽

10.47989/irpaper876 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Yifan Zhu ◽

◽

Jin Zhang ◽

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Social Network ◽

Social Network Analysis ◽

Network Analysis ◽

Domain Experts ◽

Health Consumer ◽

System Method ◽

Health Related ◽

Subject Directory ◽

The Subject

Introduction. A subject directory plays an important role in a Web portal and it helps users effectively navigate the portal. This study examines a subject directory system related to Mental Health in the MedlinePlus portal and provides suggestions of optimisation to enhance the subject directory system. Method. A mixed research method combining social network analysis and inferential statistics was applied. Analysis. A structural and a semantic social network were built regarding the selected health topics related to mental health in the MedlinePlus portal. The two networks were compared and the outcomes were evaluated by domain experts. Results. Among the ninety-nine collected health topics related to mental health, three themes were identified through the visualisation analysis regarding grouped health topics. Patterns and characteristics of each theme group were discussed. As a result, fifty-five bidirectional and twenty-three unidirectional edges were identified and recommended to be added to the corresponding health topic pages. The recommended results indicate that the subject directory of specific mental health related topics is well constructed, while health consumer groups related topics might need more improvements. The optimised subject directory has significantly stronger semantic connection, and the results of the recommendations are consistent with the evaluation outcome of two domain experts. Conclusions. The findings of this study can provide ideas of optimising and enhancing the subject directory system to the public health portal creators and health professionals, and benefit health consumers for seeking health information online. The methodologies applied in this study may provide a novel way to investigate and enhance subject directories in general.

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