Monitoring Health Behavior through Social Networks

• In Event: 201 - Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session. Applications and Practice of Medical Sociology

Abstract

We propose a network-based method to monitor health behaviors and point out its two major benefits and the general conditions for it to work effectively. When traditional health surveys are augmented with a network surveillance question that asks for peer reports of health behaviors, it can help to identify potential good informants for monitoring future health behaviors and to address bias in self-reports of sensitive health behaviors. We demonstrate the method by studying the smoking behaviors of over 4,000 middle school students in China. Using students’ observations of their schoolmates smoking in the past 30 days, we construct smoking detection networks and examine the patterns of smoking detection. We find that smokers, optimistic students, and popular students make better informants than their counterparts. Using three to four positive peer reports seem to uncover a good number of under-reported smokers while not producing excessive false positives.

Authors

• Weihua An, Indiana University

• Long Doan, Indiana University