Quality of Life and Multilevel Contact Network Structures Among Healthy Adults in Taiwan: Online Participatory Cohort Study

Background

People’s quality of life diverges on their demographics, socioeconomic status, and social connections.

Objective

By taking both demographic and socioeconomic features into account, we investigated how quality of life varied on social networks using data from both longitudinal surveys and contact diaries in a year-long (2015-2016) study.

Methods

Our 4-wave, repeated measures of quality of life followed the brief version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life scale (WHOQOL-BREF). In our regression analysis, we integrated these survey measures with key time-varying and multilevel network indices based on contact diaries.

Results

People’s quality of life may decrease if their daily contacts contain high proportions of weak ties. In addition, people tend to perceive a better quality of life when their daily contacts are face-to-face or initiated by others or when they contact someone who is in a good mood or someone with whom they can discuss important life issues.

Conclusions

Our findings imply that both functional and structural aspects of the social network play important but different roles in shaping people’s quality of life.

Detecting concurrent mood in daily contact networks: an online participatory cohort study with a diary approach

OBJECTIVES

This paper examines how people express personal mood concurrently with those connected with them by one or two degrees of separation.

DESIGN

Participatory cohort study.

SETTING

Online contact diary.

PARTICIPANTS

133 participants kept online diaries for 7 months in 2014, which included 127 455 contacts with 12 070 persons.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Diary keepers rated a contacted person's mood during each specific contact, as well as the strength of ties between any pairs of such contacted persons. Such rich information about ties and contacts enable us to construct a complete contact network for each diary keeper, along with the network members' mood and tie strength. We calculate one's overall mood by that person's average mood score during the study period and take the shortest path between any given pair of contacted persons as the degree of separation. We further assume that two connecting persons in a contact network have made contact with each other during the study period, which allows us to examine whether and how personal moods occur concurrently within these contact networks.

RESULTS

Using mixed-effects models while controlling for covariates at individual, tie and contact levels, we show that personal mood score positively and significantly correlates with the average mood among those directly tied to the person. The same effect remains positive and significant for those connected to the person by two degrees, although the effect size is reduced by about one-half. The mood of anyone separated by more than two degrees is statistically irrelevant.

CONCLUSIONS

Applying network perspectives and rich data at both tie and contact levels to inquiries about subjective well-being, the current study sheds new light on how an improved diary approach can help explain the sophisticated ways in which individuals express their personal moods concurrently during social interactions in everyday life, contact by contact.

Estimating the Risk of Influenza-Like Illness Transmission Through Social Contacts: Web-Based Participatory Cohort Study

Background

Epidemiological studies on influenza have focused mostly on enhancing vaccination coverage or promoting personal hygiene behavior. Few studies have investigated potential effects of personal health behaviors and social contacts on the risk of getting influenza-like illness (ILI).

Objective

Taking advantage of an online participatory cohort, this study aimed to estimate the increased risk of getting ILI after contact with infected persons and examine how personal health behaviors, weather, and air pollution affect the probability of getting ILI.

Methods

A Web-based platform was designed for participants to record daily health behaviors and social contacts during the influenza season of October 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016, in Taiwan. Data on sleep, diet, physical activity, self-reported ILI, and contact with infected persons were retrieved from the diaries. Measurements of weather and air pollutants were used for calculating environmental exposure levels for the participants. We fitted a mixed-effects logistic regression model to the daily measurements of the diary keepers to estimate the effects of these variables on the risk of getting ILI.

Results

During the influenza season, 160 participants provided 14,317 health diaries and recorded 124,222 face-to-face contacts. The model estimated odds ratio of getting ILI was 1.87 (95% CI 1.40-2.50) when a person had contact with others having ILI in the previous 3 days. Longer duration of physical exercise and eating more fruits, beans, and dairy products were associated with lower risk of getting ILI. However, staying up late was linked to an elevated risk of getting ILI. Higher variation of ambient temperature and worse air quality were associated with increased risk of developing ILI.

Conclusions

Developing a healthier lifestyle, avoiding contact with persons having ILI symptoms, and staying alert with respect to temperature changes and air quality can reduce the risk of getting ILI.

Social mixing patterns in rural and urban areas of southern China

A dense population, global connectivity and frequent human-animal interaction give southern China an important role in the spread and emergence of infectious disease. However, patterns of person-to-person contact relevant to the spread of directly transmitted infections such as influenza remain poorly quantified in the region. We conducted a household-based survey of travel and contact patterns among urban and rural populations of Guangdong, China. We measured the character and distance from home of social encounters made by 1821 individuals. Most individuals reported 5-10 h of contact with around 10 individuals each day; however, both distributions have long tails. The distribution of distance from home at which contacts were made is similar: most were within a kilometre of the participant's home, while some occurred further than 500 km away. Compared with younger individuals, older individuals made fewer contacts which tended to be closer to home. There was strong assortativity in age-based contact rates. We found no difference between the total number or duration of contacts between urban and rural participants, but urban participants tended to make contacts closer to home. These results can improve mathematical models of infectious disease emergence, spread and control in southern China and throughout the region.