Making big communities small: using network science to understand the ecological and behavioral requirements for community social capital

Intrinsic dynamics of randomly clustered networks generate place fields and preplay of novel environments

During both sleep and awake immobility, hippocampal place cells reactivate time-compressed versions of sequences representing recently experienced trajectories in a phenomenon known as replay. Intriguingly, spontaneous sequences can also correspond to forthcoming trajectories in novel environments experienced later, in a phenomenon known as preplay. Here, we present a model showing that sequences of spikes correlated with the place fields underlying spatial trajectories in both previously experienced and future novel environments can arise spontaneously in neural circuits with random, clustered connectivity rather than pre-configured spatial maps. Moreover, the realistic place fields themselves arise in the circuit from minimal, landmark-based inputs. We find that preplay quality depends on the network's balance of cluster isolation and overlap, with optimal preplay occurring in small-world regimes of high clustering yet short path lengths. We validate the results of our model by applying the same place field and preplay analyses to previously published rat hippocampal place cell data. Our results show that clustered recurrent connectivity can generate spontaneous preplay and immediate replay of novel environments. These findings support a framework whereby novel sensory experiences become associated with preexisting "pluripotent" internal neural activity patterns.

Does the longitudinal association between neighbourhood cohesion and mental health differ by ethnicity? Results from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey

PURPOSE

While the association between neighbourhood cohesion and mental health has been widely studied in the general population, the effects of neighbourhood cohesion across ethnic groups are not well understood. Ethnicity is often left out of study design, many studies do not consider effect modification by ethnicity, or they rely on overly simplistic ethnic categories.

METHODS

Data from the UK household longitudinal study were used to investigate whether changes in neighbourhood cohesion are independently associated with changes in mental health (measured using the GHQ) over 9 years (2009-2018), and whether the association differed across 17 ethnic groups. The study used a fixed-effect modeling approach that includes within-person estimators that allow each participant to act as their own control.

RESULTS

Compared to British White, the following ethnic groups all saw a similar improvement in GHQ (- 0.76, 95% CI - 0.83 to - 0.70) for each point increase in neighbourhood cohesion: Irish, any other White, White and Asian mixed, Chinese, Caribbean, African, any other Black, Arab, and others. Some ethnic groups saw stronger improvements in mental for each point increase in neighbourhood cohesion, including White and Black Caribbean mixed, any other mixed, Indian, Pakistani, any other Asian, with the strongest effect seen in Bangladeshi participants (- 2.52. 95% CI - 3.48 to - 1.56).

CONCLUSION

Our study highlights the importance of ethnocultural data in research examining neighbourhood effects on mental health. Future research should evaluate policies to improve neighbourhood cohesion for ethnic minorities to address ethnic mental health disparities.

Role perception of infection control link nurses; a multi-centre qualitative study

Background

Infection control link nurses (ICLN) disseminate knowledge on infection prevention topics to their peers. Little is known about how they succeed and thereby contribute to infection prevention in daily practise.

Aim

To explore the experiences of infection control link nurses regarding their role in acute care hospitals and identify perceived facilitators and best practices.

Methods

We conducted a qualitative study with semi-structured individual and focus group interviews with ICLN. The effect of COVID-19 on the ICLN role was added as a topic in focus group interviews during the pandemic.

Results

Twenty-six ICLN working in acute care hospitals were interviewed. ICLN perceived their role as to identify, monitor, facilitate and inform their colleagues on infection prevention topics related to their ward. Their experiences vary from feeling challenged and wonder how to get started, to feeling confident and taking initiatives that lead to ward-based improvements. When inspired by each other and supported by infection control practitioners or managers, ICLN feel empowered to initiate more activities to improve practice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ICLN felt their responsibilities were magnified. When transferred to another ward, the focus on the ICLN role seemed dispersed.

Discussion

Empowered ICLN adjust and operationalize infection prevention policies to fit the conditions of their specific wards and provide practical instructions and feedback to their peers which enable better compliance to infection prevention policies. Support and inspiration from other ICLN, infection control practitioners and management contribute to this empowerment and consequently to taking impactful initiatives to improve practice.

Neuronal Graphs: A Graph Theory Primer for Microscopic, Functional Networks of Neurons Recorded by Calcium Imaging

Connected networks are a fundamental structure of neurobiology. Understanding these networks will help us elucidate the neural mechanisms of computation. Mathematically speaking these networks are "graphs"-structures containing objects that are connected. In neuroscience, the objects could be regions of the brain, e.g., fMRI data, or be individual neurons, e.g., calcium imaging with fluorescence microscopy. The formal study of graphs, graph theory, can provide neuroscientists with a large bank of algorithms for exploring networks. Graph theory has already been applied in a variety of ways to fMRI data but, more recently, has begun to be applied at the scales of neurons, e.g., from functional calcium imaging. In this primer we explain the basics of graph theory and relate them to features of microscopic functional networks of neurons from calcium imaging-neuronal graphs. We explore recent examples of graph theory applied to calcium imaging and we highlight some areas where researchers new to the field could go awry.

The impact of noise and topology on opinion dynamics in social networks

We investigate the impact of noise and topology on opinion diversity in social networks. We do so by extending well-established models of opinion dynamics to a stochastic setting where agents are subject both to assimilative forces by their local social interactions, as well as to idiosyncratic factors preventing their population from reaching consensus. We model the latter to account for both scenarios where noise is entirely exogenous to peer influence and cases where it is instead endogenous, arising from the agents' desire to maintain some uniqueness in their opinions. We derive a general analytical expression for opinion diversity, which holds for any network and depends on the network's topology through its spectral properties alone. Using this expression, we find that opinion diversity decreases as communities and clusters are broken down. We test our predictions against data describing empirical influence networks between major news outlets and find that incorporating our measure in linear models for the sentiment expressed by such sources on a variety of topics yields a notable improvement in terms of explanatory power.

The effect of neighbourhood cohesion on mental health across sexual orientations: A longitudinal study

Given the persistent mental health disparities between sexual minorities and the general population, social epidemiological research should address this disparity by investigating the differential impact of neighbourhood social environments across sexual orientations. There is growing evidence that neighbourhood cohesion, conceptualized as a sense of belonging and social connection, is an important social determinant of mental health in the general population, but little is known about its impact across sexual orientations. Using data from the UK household longitudinal study (2009-2018) including waves 1, 3, 6, and 9 ( n = 52,903), this paper examined the longitudinal relationship between neighbourhood cohesion and mental health (using GHQ-12) across sexual orientations. A fixed-effect regression approach was taken to model the within-person change over time in GHQ predicted by neighbourhood cohesion with disaggregated analyses by gender and sexual orientation. Across all sexual orientations and genders, individuals who experienced an increase in neighbourhood cohesion also saw an improvement in their mental health over time. Moreover, the effect of neighbourhood cohesion on mental health over time differed by sexual orientation. Each 1-point increase in neighbourhood cohesion (on a 5-point scale) lead to mental health improvements of -0.8 GHQ score (95%CI -0.89 to -0.71) for heterosexual males at the lowest end, and up to -1.71 GHQ score (95%CI -2.31 to - 1.11) for homosexual men at the highest end. Given that the study demonstrates notable differences in the effects of neighbourhood social environment across gender and sexual orientations, this points to the need to consider sexual orientation (along with gender) as a key modifier in research involving neighbourhood effects. Future studies should evaluate the effectiveness of specific policies aimed at improving neighbourhood social environment for sexual minorities to help close mental health disparities.

Social cohesion, mental wellbeing and health-related quality of life among a cohort of social housing residents in Cornwall: a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND

Research and policy have identified social cohesion as a potentially modifiable determinant of health and wellbeing that could contribute to more sustainable development. However, the function of social cohesion appears to vary between communities. The aim of this study was to analyse the levels of, and associations, between social cohesion, mental wellbeing, and physical and mental health-related quality of life among a cohort of social housing residents from low socioeconomic status communities in Cornwall, UK. Social housing is below market-rate rental accommodation made available to those in certain health or economic circumstances. These circumstances may impact on the form and function of social cohesion.

METHODS

During recruitment, participants in the Smartline project completed the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, SF-12v2 and an eight item social cohesion scale. Cross sectional regression analyses of these data adjusted for gender, age, national identity, area socioeconomic status, rurality, education, employment, and household size were undertaken to address the study aim.

RESULTS

Complete data were available from 305 (92.7%) participants in the Smartline project. Univariable analyses identified a significant association between social cohesion, mental wellbeing and mental health-related quality of life. Within fully adjusted multivariable models, social cohesion only remained significantly associated with mental wellbeing. Sensitivity analyses additionally adjusting for ethnicity and duration of residence, where there was greater missing data, did not alter the findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Among a relatively homogeneous cohort, the reported level of social cohesion was only found to be significantly associated with higher mental wellbeing, not physical or mental health-related quality of life. The efforts made by social housing providers to offer social opportunities to all their residents regardless of individual physical or mental health state may support the development of a certain degree of social cohesion. Sense of control or safety in communities may be more critical to health than social cohesion. Additional observational research is needed before attempts are made to alter social cohesion to improve health.

Sense of belonging to the community in continuing care retirement communities and adult day care centers: The role of the social network

AIM

This study examined the contribution of the social network to one's sense of belonging to the community (SCB) in two different long-term care settings: Continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) and adult day care centers (ADCCs).

METHODS

Overall, 245 respondents participated in both waves of the study that were spaced about 1 year apart.

RESULTS

Results show that constraint in the social network (e.g., being socially invested in a single group of interconnected ties) is particularly detrimental for CCRC residents, but not for ADCC participants. Betweenness, defined as the number of shortest paths that pass through the focal person, was not significantly related to SCB. In addition, the size of the egocentric network, obtained through a name generator of a list of all potentially meaningful individuals identified by respondents, was directly correlated with SCB at follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings are discussed in light of differences between the two long-term care settings and the different social network indicators examined in this study.

Applications of Network Analysis in Biomedicine

The abundance of high-throughput data and technical refinements in graph theories have allowed network analysis to become an effective approach for various medical fields. This chapter introduces co-expression, Bayesian, and regression-based network construction methods, which are the basis of network analysis. Various methods in network topology analysis are explained, along with their unique features and applications in biomedicine. Furthermore, we explain the role of network embedding in reducing the dimensionality of networks and outline several popular algorithms used by researchers today. Current literature has implemented different combinations of topology analysis and network embedding techniques, and we outline several studies in the fields of genetic-based disease prediction, drug-target identification, and multi-level omics integration.

Implementation capital: merging frameworks of implementation outcomes and social capital to support the use of evidence-based practices

BACKGROUND

Although there is growing recognition that the implementation of evidence-based practices is a social process, the conceptualization of social capital in implementation frameworks often conflates bonding and bridging social capital. This conflation makes it difficult to concretely operationalize social capital and limits the concept's utility for explaining implementation outcomes.

DISCUSSION

We propose a new framework of implementation capital that merges an existing conceptual framework of implementation outcomes with an existing operational framework of social capital. First, we review a conceptual framework of implementation outcomes, which includes the acceptability, appropriateness, adoption, feasibility, fidelity, cost, penetration, and sustainability of evidence-based practices. Second, we describe an operational framework of social capital that grounds bonding and bridging social capital in the structure of implementers' social networks. Third, we bring these two frameworks together to create a merged framework of implementation capital that shows how specific aspects of social capital can support specific implementation outcomes. Implementation outcomes of acceptability, appropriateness, and adoption are linked to bonding social capital through mechanisms of trust and norm enforcement, while outcomes of feasibility and fidelity are linked to bridging social capital through mechanisms of increased access to information and resources. Additionally, setting-level implementation outcomes of cost, penetration, and sustainability are associated with small worldliness at the setting level, which simultaneously optimizes both bonding and bridging social capital in a setting.

CONCLUSION

The implementation capital framework is helpful because it separates two distinct forms of social capital-bonding and bridging-that are often conflated in the implementation literature, and offers concrete ways to operationalize them by examining the structure of implementers' social networks and the networks of their settings. This framework offers specific guidance about how individual and setting networks might be shifted to support implementation outcomes.

Care Like Kin: Community Based Youth Serving Organizations and the Social Reproduction of Disconnected Youth in Rural America

Increasing economic insecurity faced by older youth in rural America presents a crisis of social reproduction for disconnected youth in these areas. Increasingly community based youth serving organizations (CBYSOs) are recognizing and responding to the social reproduction needs of this particularly vulnerable youth population. Such responses are often hidden from funders, government agencies, and community residents. Yet these institutions play an important substitution function for disconnected youth and provide critical social support and social leverage for this population. Based on case studies of three CBYSOs in the San Joaquin Valley of California, this article explores how and why CBYSOs play a substitution function for disconnected youth in rural communities. It is the argument of this article that the social reproduction work of CBYSOs is undertaken with a ethic of care that may have the capacity to transform the political, social, and economic contexts that face this marginalized youth population.

Ecological Networks and Community Attachment and Support Among Recently Resettled Refugees

Interventions aimed at enhancing mental health are increasingly centered around promoting community attachment and support. However, few have examined and tested the specific ecological factors that give rise to these key community processes. Drawing from insights from the ecological network perspective, we tested whether spatial and social overlap in routine activity settings (e.g., work, school, childcare) with fellow ethnic community members is associated with individuals' attachment to their ethnic communities and access to social resources embedded in their communities. Data on routine activity locations drawn from the Refugee Well-Being Project (based in a city in the Southwestern United States) were used to reconstruct the ecological networks of recently resettled refugee communities, which were two-mode networks that comprise individuals and their routine activity locations. Results indicated that respondents' community attachment and support increased with their ecological network extensity-which taps the extent to which respondents share routine activity locations with other community members. Our study highlights a key ecological process that potentially enhances individuals' ethnic community attachment that extends beyond residential neighborhoods.

We didn't say that: Challenges in the Public Dissemination of a Research Finding with Controversial Implications

In the March 2014 issue of American Journal of Community Psychology, we published an article that examined the tension between two core values in the field of community psychology: promoting contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity and promoting contextual conditions that foster sense of community. We concluded that processes of social network formation could help explain why diversity and sense of community are seemingly incompatible goals. The study's findings initially disseminated through the usual academic channels, and later through mainstream media outlets. However, they also eventually appeared on blogs and discussion forums devoted to white nationalism. The findings were viewed there as having demonstrated the evils of diversity, and thus having vindicated the white nationalist agenda. As a result, we were forced to consider whether and how to set the record straight. In this first-person narrative, we describe our study's journey from AJCP to white nationalist blogs, discussing how we ultimately responded to the situation, and concluding with some lessons learned.

Neighborhood Isolation in Chicago: Violent Crime Effects on Structural Isolation and Homophily in Inter-Neighborhood Commuting Networks, 2002-2013

Urban sociologists and criminologists have long been interested in the link between neighborhood isolation and crime. Yet studies have focused predominantly on the internal dimension of social isolation (i.e., increased social disorganization and insufficient jobs and opportunities). This study highlights the need to assess the external dimension of neighborhood isolation, the disconnectedness from other neighborhoods in the city. Analyses of Chicago's neighborhood commuting network over twelve years (2002-2013) showed that violence predicted network isolation. Moreover, pairwise similarity in neighborhood violence predicted commuting ties, supporting homophily expectations. Violence homophily affected tie formation most, while neighborhood violence was important in dissolving ties.

Network Analysis in Community Psychology: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Network analysis holds promise for community psychology given the field's aim to understand the interplay between individuals and their social contexts. Indeed, because network analysis focuses explicitly on patterns of relationships between actors, its theories and methods are inherently extra-individual in nature and particularly well suited to characterizing social contexts. But, to what extent has community psychology taken advantage of this network analysis as a tool for capturing context? To answer these questions, this study provides a review of the use network analysis in articles published in American Journal of Community Psychology. Looking back, we describe and summarize the ways that network analysis has been employed in community psychology research to understand the range of ways community psychologists have found the technique helpful. Looking forward and paying particular attention to analytic issues identified in past applications, we provide some recommendations drawn from the network analysis literature to facilitate future applications of network analysis in community psychology.

Diversity and Community: The Role of Agent-Based Modeling

Community psychology involves several dialectics between potentially opposing ideals, such as theory and practice, rights and needs, and respect for human diversity and sense of community. Some recent papers in the American Journal of Community Psychology have examined the diversity-community dialectic, some with the aid of agent-based modeling and concepts from network science. This paper further elucidates these concepts and suggests that research in community psychology can benefit from a useful dialectic between agent-based modeling and the real-world concerns of community psychology.

Taking Stock of the Diversity and Sense of Community Debate

Over the past couple of years, a debate has played out in the pages of the American Journal of Community Psychology concerning the relationship between two of Community Psychology's core values: promoting diversity and promoting a sense of community. This special section is to continue a discussion about diversity and community, both among the debate's initial contributors (Alex Stivala, Greg Townley, and Zachary Neal), as well as among others whose own work has touched on these issues (Anne Brodsky, Richard Florida, Jean Hill, and Roderick Watts). In this essay, I address some broad questions that have emerged through this discussion. First, because much has been written on the relationship between diversity and community, both in community psychology and in other disciplines, what do we know, or at least think we know? Second, since the constructs of diversity and sense of community are complex and multi-faceted, how can definitions get in the way and how can we avoid talking past one another in this discussion? Finally, looking across the original papers that initiated this discussion, as well as the contributions in this special section, what path(s) forward do we have?

The Diversity-Segregation Conundrum

There is a long literature extolling the virtues of diversity for both the civility and economic performance of nations and cities. On the most basic level, diversity helps nations and cities attract the wide range of creative talent that drives innovation and economic growth. Yet similarly, there is a large amount of literature on the sorting and segregation of different types of people into distinct communities. This in turn undermines the very mixing of people and groups required for economic prosperity to flourish. This essay looks at the conundrum between diversity and segregation. It argues that both are increasingly salient, interdependent, and interconnected features of large, advanced cities or metropolitan areas. This diversity-segregation conundrum is increasingly a core feature of our social and economic landscape. It reviews several recent studies that highlight this problem, as well as some of my own very recent empirical findings on the issue.

How small is it? Comparing indices of small worldliness

Many studies have attempted to determine whether an observed network exhibits a so-called “small-world structure.” Such determinations have often relied on a conceptual definition of small worldliness proposed by Watts and Strogatz in their seminal 1998 paper, but recently several quantitative indices of network small worldliness have emerged. This paper reviews and compares three such indices—the small-world quotient (Q), a small-world metric (ω), and the small-world index(SWI)—in the canonical Watts–Strogatz re-wiring model and in four real-world networks. These analyses suggest that researchers should avoid Q, and identify considerations that should guide the choice between ω and SWI.

Social Capital and Fear of Crime in Adolescence: A Multilevel Study

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the relationships between social capital (at the individual, the neighborhood, and the regional levels) and adolescents' fear of crime, while controlling for the main individual (sociodemographics, television viewing, and bullying victimization), neighborhood (neighborhood size and aggregated victimization), and regional (crime rate and level of urbanization) variables. Data were analyzed using a three-level model based on 22,639 15.7-year-old (SD = 0.67) students nested within 1081 neighborhoods and 19 Italian regions. The findings revealed that individual and contextual measures of social capital, modeled at the individual, neighborhood, and regional levels simultaneously, showed negative associations with adolescents' fear of crime. Males and participants with higher family affluence were less likely to feel fear of crime, whereas victimization, both at the individual and neighborhood levels, had a positive association with fear of crime. Strengths, limitations, and potential applications of the study are discussed.

Networked Community Change: Understanding Community Systems Change through the Lens of Social Network Analysis

Addressing complex problems in communities has become a key area of focus in recent years (Kania & Kramer, 2013, Stanford Social Innovation Review). Building on existing approaches to understanding and addressing problems, such as action research, several new approaches have emerged that shift the way communities solve problems (e.g., Burns, 2007, Systemic Action Research; Foth, 2006, Action Research, 4, 205; Kania & Kramer, 2011, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1, 36). Seeking to bring clarity to the emerging literature on community change strategies, this article identifies the common features of the most widespread community change strategies and explores the conditions under which such strategies have the potential to be effective. We identify and describe five common features among the approaches to change. Then, using an agent-based model, we simulate network-building behavior among stakeholders participating in community change efforts using these approaches. We find that the emergent stakeholder networks are efficient when the processes are implemented under ideal conditions.

Diversity and Community Can Coexist

We examine the (in)compatibility of diversity and sense of community by means of agent-based models based on the well-known Schelling model of residential segregation and Axelrod model of cultural dissemination. We find that diversity and highly clustered social networks, on the assumptions of social tie formation based on spatial proximity and homophily, are incompatible when agent features are immutable, and this holds even for multiple independent features. We include both mutable and immutable features into a model that integrates Schelling and Axelrod models, and we find that even for multiple independent features, diversity and highly clustered social networks can be incompatible on the assumptions of social tie formation based on spatial proximity and homophily. However, this incompatibility breaks down when cultural diversity can be sufficiently large, at which point diversity and clustering need not be negatively correlated. This implies that segregation based on immutable characteristics such as race can possibly be overcome by sufficient similarity on mutable characteristics based on culture, which are subject to a process of social influence, provided a sufficiently large "scope of cultural possibilities" exists.