Using social network-based complexity profiles to understand attitudes to medical care

Aggregate complexity deals with how individual elements (within a system – e.g., social system) work harmoniously and holistically to create systems with complex behaviour. Here, we develop an aggregate complexity framework (ACF) based on social network measures of density (the extent of connected ties or relationships within a social network) and inclusiveness (the extent of connected actors (e.g., doctors & specialists) within a social network) to capture ‘degree of interrelatedness’ of the social system. Using this with the number of actors within one’s professional network, it is possible to characterize one’s network with a complexity profile (ranging from ‘simple’, ‘complicated’, ‘relatively complex’ to ‘complex’), which is then associated with attitudes to medical care. Results from a sample data set of 109 rural general practitioners (GP) in New South Wales, Australia show that GPs with a ‘simple’ profile score lower on attitudes to medical care compared with those with ‘non-simple’ profiles.