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Providing a comprehensive introduction to how social networks influence health behaviours, this book enables researchers to understand how network data are collected and processed; and how to calculate appropriate metrics and models used to understand network influences on health behaviour

The first two research articles in this issue of Network Science have a common theme—they use workplace contact patterns, in addition to other data, to model infectious disease spread.

Abstract
Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19)'s devastating effects on the physical and mental health of the public are unlike previous medical crises, in part because of people's collective access to communication technologies. Unfortunately, a clear understanding of the diffusion of health information on social media is lacking, which has a potentially negative impact on the effectiveness of emergency communication. This study applied social network analysis approaches to examine patterns of #COVID19 information flow on Twitter. A total of 1,404,496 publicly available tweets from 946,940 U.S. users were retrieved and analyzed. Particular attention was paid to the structures of retweet and mention networks and identification of influential users: information sources, disseminators, and brokers. Overall, COVID-19 information was not transmitted efficiently. Findings pointed to the importance of fostering connections between clusters to promote the diffusion in both networks. Lots of localized clusters limited the spread of timely information, causing difficulty in establishing any momentum in shaping urgent public actions. Rather than health and communication professionals, there was dominant involvement of non-professional users responsible for major COVID-19 information generation and dissemination, suggesting a lack of credibility and accuracy in the information. Inadequate influence of health officials and government agencies in brokering information contributed to concerns about the spread of dis/misinformation to the public. Significant differences in the type of influential users existed across roles and across networks. Conceptual and practical implications for emergency communication strategies are discussed.

AbstractResearchers collecting survey data on inter-organizational networks typically choose a single informant with the most senior job title in each organization from whom to obtain a report of the organization's inter-organizational ties. This approach to informant selection is based on the logic that greater seniority confers greater knowledge of inter-organizational relationships. The present study investigated the wisdom of this logic, using data in which multiple informants' reports of inter-organizational network ties were collected for each organization. We calculated the degree of agreement in network reports between the informant with the most senior job title and a second informant in the organization. To determine if alternative criteria to seniority serve as better approaches to informant selection, we assessed other potential predictors of agreement in informants' reports. Results indicated that (1) informants' perceptions of the network differed significantly according to job title, suggesting little agreement between senior informants and their more junior colleagues; and (2) greater informant tenure in the network and industry were associated with greater agreement among informants. These results call a common data collection practice into question and suggest that tenure may trump title as a criterion for informant selection in inter-organizational network research.

Theory on the diffusion of innovations has been used to study the spread of new ideas & practices in a wide variety of settings, though most studies have been retrospective & have neglected to collect information on interpersonal communication networks. In addition, few have attempted to use the lessons from diffusion research to accelerate the diffusion of innovations. Outlined here is a method to accelerate the diffusion of innovations using opinion leaders. An optimal matching procedure is described, & computer simulations demonstrate how much faster diffusion occurs when initiated by opinion leaders. Limitations & extensions of the model are also discussed. 2 Figures, 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

This study compared mass media and interpersonal influence during a reproductive health communication campaign in Bolivia using the following six behavior change steps: awareness, detailed knowledge, attitudes, intention, interpersonal communication, and family planning method use. The authors found that the main terms of mass media campaign and personal network exposure were associated with behavior change, whereas the multiplicative interaction term was not. Further analysis showed that the mass media campaign was associated with contraceptive adoption for individuals with personal networks composed of few contraceptive users (as perceived by the respondent) and not for individuals with personal networks containing a majority of users. These findings indicate that the mass media may substitute for personal network influences and speed social change by accelerating the behavior change process.

AbstractSelf-identification with peer crowds (jocks, popular kids, druggies, etc.) has an important influence on adolescent substance use behavior. However, little is known about the impact of the shared nature of crowd identification on different stages of adolescent drinking behavior, or the way crowd identification interacts with participation in school-sponsored sports activities. This study examines drinking influences from (1) peers with shared crowd identities, and (2) peers who jointly participate in organized sports at their school (activity members). This study introduces a new network analytic approach that can disentangle the effects of crowd identification and sports participation on individual behavior. Using survey data from adolescents in five high schools in a predominantly Hispanic/Latino district (N = 1,707), this paper examines the association between social influences and each stage of drinking behavior (intention to drink, lifetime, past-month, and binge drinking) by conducting an ordinal regression analysis. The results show that both shared identities and joint participation were associated with all stages of drinking, controlling for friends' influence. Additionally, shared identification overlapped with joint participation was associated with more frequent drinking. Related policy implications are discussed.