HSCI 694 Paper
This paper will demonstrate your understanding of social networks, common measures of network structure, and implications of network structure for health promotion practice. You will do a short literature review of social network theory and research in public health, describe your data collection project, summarize results, and discuss implications of your network results for health promotion practice, namely designing interventions to promote health. To calculate network measures and visualize your networks, we will use UCINET v6. We will analyze your networks in class. The paper should be 8-10 pages, double-spaced, and 1-inch margins. The page limit includes one table and at least one figure showing a visualization of the network, but excludes the reference page. Citations and references must be in APA 7th style.
The paper should consist of a scaled-down version of a journal article. In other words, the paper should have the following sections: brief introduction of the paper; literature review on social networks and health; methodology and data; results; discussion; and references, tables, figures and appendices. Below is a brief summary of what you should include in each section and the sections should be in this same order. I’ve suggested a page length for each section; however, this is not strict.
1. Introduction (.5 page)- Introduce the topic of your paper. Start with your aim—to study the social networks among a certain group of people. What were you interested in learning about this group? Can you say something about why this group is of interest to you? If you wanted to explore the influence of participant attributes on network ties, mention this as another aim.
2. Literature Review (2 pages)- In the lit review discuss the relevance of social networks to public health. Cite the articles I assigned to you and the book chapter by Valente. Find 1-2 additional articles that describe social network research with a population similar to what you studied; for example, students, church members, coalition or task force members, immigrant communities, support groups, or any interest group. It’s ok if you don’t find a study on a population similar to yours. What are some key concepts from social network theory?
3. Methods (1 page)- Describe the group (who, what, where, how many people), questionnaire, data collection method, and analysis. Identify the networks you will focus on in this paper (advice, support, friendship, etc). Many of you asked about one of more relations between participants, but you can focus in the paper on just one or all networks. Note: since we only analyzed one network in class, I can help you analyze the other networks if interested. For the analysis, mention the network measures we ran to analyze whole networks (density, average degree, # components (subgroups), cliques). Make sure to define each of the measures for the reader.
Mention that we used UCINET v6.734 and cite authors (see below and note this reference may not be in proper APA 7th format).
Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Freeman, L.C. 2002. Ucinet 6 for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis. Harvard, MA: Analytic Technologies.
4. Results (2 pages)- Describe the number of respondents you got for your survey and give a % response rate (% of group who responded). Describe the demographics and other attributes of the participants. Describe 1-2 networks in terms of their structure. What can you say about the overall structure? Is the network connected as one network or are there separate networks that are disconnected? What is the density and average degree? Is the network centralized or decentralized? Some networks may have a “core-periphery” structure where there are core actors with many ties and a bunch of other actors along the periphery who are connected to the core actors but do not have many ties of their own.
What can you say about the people in the network? Who are the core actors? Do they have unique attributes or roles?
In this section, refer to a “Table 1” which will contain the participant characteristics and network measures. Refer to your Figure 1 which will contain the network graph we made in class. Include Table 1 and Figure 1 at the end, after the references. This is standard organization for research papers.
5. Discussion (2 pages)- Summarize the results and describe the strengths and limitations of your study. For example, a strength could be that you studied a population or a topic that is understudied (just base this off what you think, I won’t scrutinize). A limitation may be the wording of the questions and the sample size.
Next, discuss the implications of the network for health promotion. What is the potential for diffusion or behavior change to occur within the network? How could you incorporate network members into a health promotion intervention? How might you need to address network structure as part of your intervention? Would you go through central actors to diffuse the behavior change or would you need to segment the network? Build linkages between groups? What aspects of the network may facilitate a health promotion intervention or serve as a barrier? These are some questions to spark your thinking. Make sure to read the book chapter and journal article by Valente to educate yourself about network-based interventions.
6. References- Cite the Valente chapter in Glantz textbook and at least 3 peer-reviewed journal articles on social networks (2 are from course readings and at least one new one that you find).
7. Tables and Figures- 1 table and at least 1 figure. Make sure to include titles that describe what the reader is looking at. Don’t assume the reader knows what you did or what the tables or figures include. Follow APA 7th format for tables and figures.
Paper Rubric*
Points
Introduction and Lit Review
· Introduces the aim of the study
· Creates interest in the topic
· Summarizes key points of social network theory and describes 2 studies (research questions, methods, results, implications for health promotion practice)
· Cites peer-reviewed literature and the Valente chapter in Glantz textbook
/15
Methods
· Describes in detail the study population (who, what, where, how)
· Describes the data collection instrument and lists network questions
· Describes data collection process (online or paper/pencil?), roster of names or open-ended?
· Identifies the network measures we ran and defines each one for reader
/7.5
Results
· Describes sample characteristics
· Describes network structure: # of components, density, avg. degree, cliques
· Highlights actors who are central in the network based on their number of ties/degree and describes any unique characteristics of these actors such as seniority, role, age or other attribute
/10
Discussion
· Provides brief summary of results
· Discusses at least 1 strength and 1 limitation
· Discusses the implication of the network for health promotion practice and includes at least 2 examples of what one could do to spread adoption of a health behavior
· Includes a few ideas for future research
/20
Table and Figure
· Includes 1 table and 1 figure
· APA 7th style is used
/7.5
Writing Quality
· Paper uses section headings
· Writing is very good quality: separate paragraphs for each topic, sentences are clear and concise (no run-ons), the writing is formal without any casual or colloquial sayings, there are no (or few) typos or grammatical errors
· Correct APA 7th format of in-text citations and references
/15
Total points
/75
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