Like it or not, Facebook and friends can be used to influence health behavior
USC public health researcher examines social networks and how they can be used to stimulate change
2012-07-06
(Press-News.org) Most people call it the "art" of persuasion, but public health researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) are trying to pinpoint the "science" behind social influence.
They hope a better understanding of human interactions — both face-to-face and online — can help prevent disease and promote general health.
Whether the goal is to curb smoking at a local school or to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases within a community, it is important to understand the social structure of the group and the dynamics of influence at play, says Thomas W. Valente, Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
"If I want to go into a high school and change physical activity or other obesity behaviors, I have to understand there are cliques and subgroups of students that exhibit different risks," Valente said. "I would design different interventions for the different groups. We constantly are concerned about how ineffective our interventions are — this is a big reason why those interventions are not working. We can do a much better job promoting healthy behaviors if we understand the social network contexts and design these interventions with those cues in mind."
Valente, whose research focuses on social networks and influence, has compiled a collection of methods that public health advocates use to stimulate changes in behavior and explains why certain methods may be more effective than others in particular situations. The analysis appears in the July 6 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Science, the world's leading outlet for scientific news, commentary and research.
Due to the large number of interventions available to researchers — Valente identifies 24, each with at least several variations — the researcher says a more robust framework is needed for deciding which tactics are best used in particular settings.
Word-of-mouth interventions, for example, depend on the social network to succeed. In some cases, word of mouth is used to spread the word and in other cases to create groups of like-minded friends.
"Existing evidence indicates that network interventions are quite effective," Valente writes. "Yet, the science of how networks can be used to accelerate behavior change and improve organizational performance is still in its infancy. Research is clearly needed to compare different network interventions to determine which are optimal under what circumstances."
Valente notes that behavioral research is often used in marketing and business arenas; the public health sector is just beginning to implement that information as tools like Facebook and Twitter have made it easier to collect data and spread information, he says.
INFORMATION:
Valente's research was supported by National Institutes of Health grant 1RC1AA019239-01 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-07-06
MELBOURNE, FLA.—Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). "As humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate is once again on the threshold of a new regime, with dire consequences for reef ecosystems unless we ...
2012-07-06
VIDEO:
A blood clot within a mouse artery disappears following the injection of a clot-busting, shear-activated nanotherapeutic. The bright areas are fluorescent-labeled platelets.
Click here for more information.
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a novel biomimetic strategy that delivers life-saving nanotherapeutics directly to obstructed blood vessels, dissolving blood clots before they cause ...
2012-07-06
DURHAM, N.C. -- Although many areas of the human brain are devoted to social tasks like detecting another person nearby, a new study has found that one small region carries information only for decisions during social interactions. Specifically, the area is active when we encounter a worthy opponent and decide whether to deceive them.
A brain imaging study conducted by researchers at the Duke Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Science (D-CIDES) put human subjects through a functional MRI brain scan while playing a simplified game of poker against a computer and human ...
2012-07-06
The discovery is an important step toward therapies that aim to repair the brain not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, says the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. The fact that it's a drug that is so widely used and so safe makes the news all that much better.
Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons. As it happened, ...
2012-07-06
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--July 5, 2012--Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered that environmental factors critically influence the growth of a type of stem cell--called an iPS cell--that is derived from adult skin cells. This discovery offers newfound understanding of how these cells form, while also advancing science closer to stem cell-based therapies to combat disease.
Researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, have for the first time shown that protein factors released by other cells affect the "reprogramming" ...
2012-07-06
On a recent expedition to the inhospitable North Atlantic Ocean, scientists at the University of Washington and collaborators studying the annual growth of tiny plants were stumped to discover that the plankton had started growing before the sun had a chance to offer the light they need for their growth spurt.
For decades, scientists have known that springtime brings the longer days and calmer seas that force phytoplankton near the surface, where they get the sunlight they need to flourish.
But in research results published this week in the journal Science, scientists ...
2012-07-06
Aneurysm screening for men aged over 65 is cost effective and rescreening those at highest risk, at least once, should be considered, suggests a study published on bmj.com today.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms (caused by ballooning of the artery wall) usually occur in men aged between 65 and 75 years old and are more common among smokers. If the artery wall ruptures, the risk of death is high, but aneurysms at risk of rupture can be detected by screening and surgically repaired.
One-off screening for men aged over 65 is known to be cost effective and national screening ...
2012-07-06
A group of US researchers has produced a robotic set of legs which they believe is the first to fully model walking in a biologically accurate manner.
The neural architecture, musculoskeletal architecture and sensory feedback pathways in humans have been simplified and built into the robot, giving it a remarkably human-like walking gait that can be viewed in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnD7LqisBhM&feature=youtu.be.
The biological accuracy of this robot, which has been presented today, Friday 6 July, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering, ...
2012-07-06
Ottawa (July 5th, 2012) – An international expert panel has assessed that decisions regarding science funding and performance can't be determined by metrics alone. A combination of performance indicators and expert judgment are the best formula for determining how to allocate science funding.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) spends approximately one billion dollars a year on scientific research. Over one-third of that goes directly to support discovery research through its flagship Discovery Grants Program (DGP). However, concerns ...
2012-07-06
In secrecy, the "apps" forward private data to a third party. Computer scientists from Saarbrücken have developed a new approach to prevent this data abuse. They can put a stop to the data theft through the app "SRT AppGuard". The chief attraction: For the protection to work, it is not necessary to identify the suspicious programs in advance, nor must the operating system be changed. Instead, the freely available app attacks the program code of the digital spies.
"My smartphone knows everything about me, starting with my name, my phone number, my e-mail address, my interests, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
