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Chapman A, Verdery AM, Moody J. Analytic Advances in Social Networks and Health in the Twenty-First Century. JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 2022; 63:191-209. [PMID: 35392693 PMCID: PMC9149133 DOI: 10.1177/00221465221086532] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
The study of social networks is increasingly central to health research for medical sociologists and scholars in other fields. Here, we review the innovations in theory, substance, data collection, and methodology that have propelled the study of social networks and health from a niche subfield to the center of larger sociological and scientific debates. In particular, we contextualize the broader history of network analysis and its connections to health research, concentrating on work beginning in the late 1990s, much of it in this journal. Using bibliometric and network visualization approaches, we examine the subfield's evolution over this period in terms of topics, trends, key debates, and core insights. We conclude by reflecting on persistent challenges and areas of innovation shaping the study of social networks and health and its intersection with medical sociology in the coming years.
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Thiabaud A, Triulzi I, Orel E, Tal K, Keiser O. Social, Behavioral, and Cultural factors of HIV in Malawi: Semi-Automated Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22:e18747. [PMID: 32795992 PMCID: PMC7455873 DOI: 10.2196/18747] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2020] [Revised: 05/20/2020] [Accepted: 06/04/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Demographic and sociobehavioral factors are strong drivers of HIV infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa. These factors are often studied in qualitative research but ignored in quantitative analyses. However, they provide in-depth insight into the local behavior and may help to improve HIV prevention. OBJECTIVE To obtain a comprehensive overview of the sociobehavioral factors influencing HIV prevalence and incidence in Malawi, we systematically reviewed the literature using a newly programmed tool for automatizing part of the systematic review process. METHODS Due to the choice of broad search terms ("HIV AND Malawi"), our preliminary search revealed many thousands of articles. We, therefore, developed a Python tool to automatically extract, process, and categorize open-access articles published from January 1, 1987 to October 1, 2019 in the PubMed, PubMed Central, JSTOR, Paperity, and arXiV databases. We then used a topic modelling algorithm to classify and identify publications of interest. RESULTS Our tool extracted 22,709 unique articles; 16,942 could be further processed. After topic modelling, 519 of these were clustered into relevant topics, of which 20 were kept after manual screening. We retrieved 7 more publications after examining the references so that 27 publications were finally included in the review. Reducing the 16,942 articles to 519 potentially relevant articles using the software took 5 days. Several factors contributing to the risk of HIV infection were identified, including religion, gender and relationship dynamics, beliefs, and sociobehavioral attitudes. CONCLUSIONS Our software does not replace traditional systematic reviews, but it returns useful results to broad queries of open-access literature in under a week, without a priori knowledge. This produces a "seed dataset" of relevance that could be further developed. It identified known factors and factors that may be specific to Malawi. In the future, we aim to expand the tool by adding more social science databases and applying it to other sub-Saharan African countries.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amaury Thiabaud
- Institut de Santé Globale, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland
| | - Isotta Triulzi
- Institut de Santé Globale, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland
- Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy
| | - Erol Orel
- Institut de Santé Globale, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland
| | - Kali Tal
- Institut de Santé Globale, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland
- Institute of Primary Health Care (BIHAM), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Olivia Keiser
- Institut de Santé Globale, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland
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Helleringer S, Adams J, Yeatman S, Mkandawire J. Evaluating Sampling Biases from Third-party Reporting as a Method for Improving Survey Measures of Sensitive Behaviors. SOCIAL NETWORKS 2019; 59:134-140. [PMID: 31406395 PMCID: PMC6690606 DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2019.07.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Survey participants often misreport their sensitive behaviors (e.g., smoking, drinking, having sex) during interviews. Several studies have suggested that asking respondents to report the sensitive behaviors of their friends or confidants, rather than their own, might help address this problem. This is so because the "third-party reporting" (TPR) approach creates a surrogate sample of alters that may be less subject to social desirability biases. However, estimates of the prevalence of sensitive behaviors based on TPR assume that the surrogate sample of friends is representative of the population of interest. We used sociometric data on social networks in Likoma, Malawi to examine this assumption. Specifically, we use friendship network data to investigate whether friends have similar socio-economic characteristics as index respondents, and to measure possible correlations between the likelihood of inclusion in the surrogate sample and sensitive behaviors. From these results, we suggest approaches to strengthen estimates of the prevalence of sensitive behaviors obtained from TPR.
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Desmond N, Nagelkerke N, Lora W, Chipeta E, Sambo M, Kumwenda M, Corbett EL, Taegtemeyer M, Seeley J, Lalloo DG, Theobald S. Measuring sexual behaviour in Malawi: a triangulation of three data collection instruments. BMC Public Health 2018; 18:807. [PMID: 29954360 PMCID: PMC6022416 DOI: 10.1186/s12889-018-5717-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2017] [Accepted: 06/17/2018] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND There is a need for valid approaches to measure sexual interactions to assess the impact of behavioural interventions and to predict the impact of behaviour changes. Different methods of asking about sexual behaviour often yield conflicting answers and men often report higher levels of heterosexual activity than women. To better understand self-reported sexual behaviour data and how best to collect it, we analyzed data collected as part of a larger project (ST IMPACTS) on the social and behavioural impact of introducing community-level HIV self-testing (HIVST) with counseling (semi-supervised with pre- and generic post-test counseling provided on delivery or collection of test kits) in an urban Malawian setting. METHODS Information on sexual behaviour was collected from HIV self-testers over a three-month period. Three different methods were used: retrospective face-to-face interviews (FTFI); audio computer assisted self-interviews (ACASI) and a prospective coital diary. Both retrospective instruments were used before and after the three-month study period. Frequency and cross-tabulation, as well as scatterplots, were used for exploratory analyses. Chi-square tests were used to test for differences in proportions. Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to explore associations between both continuous and ordinal variables and Wilcoxon's paired sample and Mann-Whitney test was used to test for differences in such variables or between variables. RESULTS There was reasonable agreement between the two retrospective methods although both yielded inconsistent answers e.g. with lower reported numbers of life-time sexual partners at the end than at the beginning of the study period. The diary method elicited higher reported levels of sex with multiple partners than both retrospective instruments which may be due to inadequate recall. Over the study period 37.4% of men and 19.7% of women reported multiple sexual partners using the diary. There was no clear relationship between reported sexual behaviour and HIV status (prevalence 9.6%). CONCLUSIONS Diaries may therefore have higher validity for sensitive behaviour reporting and thus be the preferred method in similar African contexts in measuring sexual behaviours.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicola Desmond
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK. .,Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi.
| | - Nico Nagelkerke
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK.,Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi
| | - Wezzie Lora
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK.,Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi
| | - Effie Chipeta
- Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi.,College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Blantyre, Malawi
| | - Mwiza Sambo
- Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi
| | - Moses Kumwenda
- Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi.,College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Blantyre, Malawi
| | - Elizabeth L Corbett
- Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi.,London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, UK
| | | | - Janet Seeley
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, UK
| | - David G Lalloo
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK
| | - Sally Theobald
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK
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Age differences between sexual partners, behavioural and demographic correlates, and HIV infection on Likoma Island, Malawi. Sci Rep 2016; 6:36121. [PMID: 27805053 PMCID: PMC5090960 DOI: 10.1038/srep36121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2016] [Accepted: 10/11/2016] [Indexed: 02/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Patterns of age differences between sexual partners – “age-mixing” – may partially explain the magnitude of HIV epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, evidence of age-disparity as a risk factor for HIV remains mixed. We used data from a socio-centric study of sexual behaviour in Malawi to quantify the age-mixing pattern and to find associations between relationship characteristics and age differences for 1,922 participants. Three age difference measures were explored as predictors of prevalent HIV infection. We found that for each year increase in male participant age, the average age difference with their partners increased by 0.26 years, while among women it remained approximately constant around 5 years. Women in the study had larger within-individual variation in partner ages compared to men. Spousal partnerships and never using a condom during sex were associated with larger age differences in relationships of both men and women. Men who were more than five years younger than their partners had 5.39 times higher odds (95% CI: 0.93–31.24) of being HIV-infected than men 0–4 years older. The relationship between HIV-infection and age-asymmetry may be more complex than previously described. The role that women play in HIV transmission should not be under-estimated, particularly in populations with large within-individual variation in partner ages.
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A new approach to measuring partnership concurrency and its association with HIV risk in couples. AIDS Behav 2014; 18:2291-301. [PMID: 24817498 DOI: 10.1007/s10461-014-0788-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
Empirical estimates of the association between concurrent partnerships (CP) and HIV risk are affected by non-sampling errors in survey data on CPs, e.g., because respondents misreport the extent of their CPs. We propose a new approach to measuring CPs in couples, which permits assessing how respondent errors affect estimates of the association between CPs and HIV risk. Each couple member is asked (1) to report whether s/he has engaged in CPs and (2) to assess whether his/her partner has engaged in CPs, since their couple started. Cross-tabulating these data yields multiple classifications (with varying combinations of sensitivity/specificity) of the CPs of each couple member. We then measure the association between CPs and HIV outcomes according to each classification. The resulting range of estimates is an indicator of the uncertainty associated with respondent errors. We tested this approach using data on 520 matched couples drawn from the Likoma Network Study. Results suggest that existing tests of the concurrency hypothesis are affected by significant uncertainty.
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Perkins JM, Subramanian SV, Christakis NA. Social networks and health: a systematic review of sociocentric network studies in low- and middle-income countries. Soc Sci Med 2014; 125:60-78. [PMID: 25442969 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 153] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/04/2013] [Revised: 08/07/2014] [Accepted: 08/17/2014] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), naturally occurring social networks may be particularly vital to health outcomes as extended webs of social ties often are the principal source of various resources. Understanding how social network structure, and influential individuals within the network, may amplify the effects of interventions in LMICs, by creating, for example, cascade effects to non-targeted participants, presents an opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public health interventions in such settings. We conducted a systematic review of PubMed, Econlit, Sociological Abstracts, and PsycINFO to identify a sample of 17 sociocentric network papers (arising from 10 studies) that specifically examined health issues in LMICs. We also separately selected to review 19 sociocentric network papers (arising from 10 other studies) on development topics related to wellbeing in LMICs. First, to provide a methodological resource, we discuss the sociocentric network study designs employed in the selected papers, and then provide a catalog of 105 name generator questions used to measure social ties across all the LMIC network papers (including both ego- and sociocentric network papers) cited in this review. Second, we show that network composition, individual network centrality, and network structure are associated with important health behaviors and health and development outcomes in different contexts across multiple levels of analysis and across distinct network types. Lastly, we highlight the opportunities for health researchers and practitioners in LMICs to 1) design effective studies and interventions in LMICs that account for the sociocentric network positions of certain individuals and overall network structure, 2) measure the spread of outcomes or intervention externalities, and 3) enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of aid based on knowledge of social structure. In summary, human health and wellbeing are connected through complex webs of dynamic social relationships. Harnessing such information may be especially important in contexts where resources are limited and people depend on their direct and indirect connections for support.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica M Perkins
- Department of Health Policy, Harvard University, 14 Story St., 4th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
| | - S V Subramanian
- Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave., Kresge Building 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
| | - Nicholas A Christakis
- Yale Institute for Network Science, 17 Hillhouse Ave., Room 223, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
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Burns DN, DeGruttola V, Pilcher CD, Kretzschmar M, Gordon CM, Flanagan EH, Duncombe C, Cohen MS. Toward an endgame: finding and engaging people unaware of their HIV-1 infection in treatment and prevention. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses 2014; 30:217-24. [PMID: 24410300 PMCID: PMC3938938 DOI: 10.1089/aid.2013.0274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Epidemic modeling suggests that a major scale-up in HIV treatment could have a dramatic impact on HIV incidence. This has led both researchers and policymakers to set a goal of an "AIDS-Free Generation." One of the greatest obstacles to achieving this objective is the number of people with undiagnosed HIV infection. Despite recent innovations, new research strategies are needed to identify, engage, and successfully treat people who are unaware of their infection.
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Affiliation(s)
- David N Burns
- 1 Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health , Bethesda, Maryland
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