Analyzing the social networks of adolescent students to support behavior change interventions
Abstract
Background: Recently, there has been increasing attention directed towards understanding behavior change. The behavior patterns formed at younger ages determine later choices throughout one’s life, therefore this age group can be the main target of interventions aiming at behavior change. Better understanding of the social connections between classmates seems to be essential for successful interventions. The aim of this study is to analyze the social networks of school classes among Hungarian adolescents with network analysis methods to support more targeted behavior change interventions.
Methodology: The study links to the 2015 Healthstyle Survey, where the data collection on the social connections in classes was also carried out with 680 7th graders (13-14 years old) from 40 classes. First, we tried to create plausible clusters of the questions and analyze what conclusions could be drawn from them about the different social networks that are present in a class. We also examined whether the number of questions in the questionnaire used for the survey could be reduced in a purely informational sense, thus speeding up and assisting future data collection.
Results: We were able to detect three distinct groups of questions: questions on rejection, popularity, and sympathy. Along these questions, three completely different social networks form in a class. Also, according to our results, the reproduction of the information collected by using the 29-question questionnaire, could be 90% with only 10 questions and 95% with 15 questions.
Conclusion: Based on our results, when designing school interventions for adolescent-focused behavior change, it seems sufficient to map only one from the three social networks present in a class with an abbreviated questionnaire. Thus, with less data collection and simpler analysis, more targeted interventions can be designed and implemented, which is likely to increase the success of the behavior change intervention.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Péter Varsányi, , Gergely Tóth, , Zoltán Vokó, (Szerző)
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