IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0036250.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Egocentric Social Network Structure, Health, and Pro-Social Behaviors in a National Panel Study of Americans

Author

Listed:
  • A James O’Malley
  • Samuel Arbesman
  • Darby Miller Steiger
  • James H Fowler
  • Nicholas A Christakis

Abstract

Using a population-based, panel survey, we study how egocentric social networks change over time, and the relationship between egocentric network properties and health and pro-social behaviors. We find that the number of prosocial activities is strongly positively associated with having more friends, or an increase in degree, with approximately 0.04 more prosocial behaviors expected for every friend added. Moreover, having more friends is associated with an improvement in health, while being healthy and prosocial is associated with closer relationships. Specifically, a unit increase in health is associated with an expected 0.45 percentage-point increase in average closeness, while adding a prosocial activity is associated with a 0.46 percentage-point increase in the closeness of one’s relationships. Furthermore, a tradeoff between degree and closeness of social contacts was observed. As the number of close social contacts increases by one, the estimated average closeness of each individual contact decreases by approximately three percentage-points. The increased awareness of the importance of spillover effects in health and health care makes the ascertainment of egocentric social networks a valuable complement to investigations of the relationship between socioeconomic factors and health.

Suggested Citation

  • A James O’Malley & Samuel Arbesman & Darby Miller Steiger & James H Fowler & Nicholas A Christakis, 2012. "Egocentric Social Network Structure, Health, and Pro-Social Behaviors in a National Panel Study of Americans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-9, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036250
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036250
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036250&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0036250?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rassaby, Madeleine & Shakya, Holly B. & Fowler, James H. & Oveis, Christopher & Sieber, William J. & Jain, Sonia & Stein, Murray B. & Taylor, Charles T., 2024. "Application of an egocentric social network approach to examine changes in social connections following treatment for anxiety and depression: A novel measurement tool for clinical trials research?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    2. Eggerman, Jannik J. & Dajani, Rana & Kumar, Praveen & Chui, Susannah & Qtaishat, Lina & El Kharouf, Amal & Panter-Brick, Catherine, 2023. "Social networks, empowerment, and wellbeing among Syrian refugee and Jordanian women: Implications for development and social inclusion," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Sania Ashraf & Cristina Bicchieri & Upasak Das & Tanu Gupta & Alex Shpenev, 2024. "Learning from diversity: ``jati" fractionalization, social expectations and improved sanitation practices in India," Discussion Papers 24-01, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    4. Fotouhi, Babak & Rytina, Steven, 2018. "Mathematical Modeling and Inference for Degree-capped Ego-centric Network Sampling," SocArXiv 5kez8, Center for Open Science.
    5. Shand, Calum & Crozier, Sarah & Vassilev, Ivaylo & Penn-Newman, Daniel & Dhuria, Preeti & Cooper, Cyrus & Rogers, Anne & Baird, Janis & Vogel, Christina, 2021. "Resources in women's social networks for food shopping are more strongly associated with better dietary quality than people: A cross-sectional study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    6. Takagi, Daisuke & Yokouchi, Nobutada & Hashimoto, Hideki, 2020. "Smoking behavior prevalence in one's personal social network and peer's popularity: A population-based study of middle-aged adults in Japan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    7. Mary-Catherine Anderson & Ashley Hazel & Jessica M. Perkins & Zack W. Almquist, 2021. "The Ecology of Unsheltered Homelessness: Environmental and Social-Network Predictors of Well-Being among an Unsheltered Homeless Population," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-22, July.
    8. Lotte Prevo & Stef Kremers & Maria Jansen, 2020. "The Power of Trading: Exploring the Value of a Trading Shop as a Health-Promoting Community Engagement Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(13), pages 1-15, June.
    9. Yusra Ghafoor & Yi-Shin Chen & Kuan-Ta Chen, 2019. "Social Interaction Scaling for Contact Networks," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-14, May.
    10. Collonnaz, Magali & Riglea, Teodora & Kalubi, Jodi & O'Loughlin, Jennifer & Naud, Alexandre & Kestens, Yan & Agrinier, Nelly & Minary, Laetitia, 2022. "Social network analysis to study health behaviours in adolescents: A systematic review of methods," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    11. Sania Ashraf & Cristina Bicchieri & Upasak Das & Tanu Gupta & Alex Shpenev, 2023. "Learning from diversity: jati fractionalization, social expectations and improved sanitation practices in India," Papers 2312.15221, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036250. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.