An Egocentric Network Contact Tracing Experiment: Testing Different Procedures to Elicit Contacts and Places

Contact tracing is one of the oldest social network health interventions used to reduce the diffusion of various infectious diseases. However, some infectious diseases like COVID-19 amass at such a great scope that traditional methods of conducting contact tracing (e.g., face-to-face interviews) remain difficult to implement, pointing to the need to develop reliable and valid survey approaches. The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness of three different egocentric survey methods for extracting contact tracing data: (1) a baseline approach, (2) a retrieval cue approach, and (3) a context-based approach. A sample of 397 college students were randomized into one condition each. They were prompted to anonymously provide contacts and populated places visited from the past four days depending on what condition they were given. After controlling for various demographic, social identity, psychological, and physiological variables, participants in the context-based condition were significantly more likely to recall more contacts (medium effect size) and places (large effect size) than the other two conditions. Theoretically, the research supports suggestions by field theory that assume network recall can be significantly improved by activating relevant activity foci. Practically, the research contributes to the development of innovative social network data collection methods for contract tracing survey instruments

On the existence and implications of nonbelieved memories

In this article, we review the state of knowledge about a previously-assumed-to-be-rare memory phenomenon called nonbelieved memories. Nonbelieved memories are a counterintuitive phenomenon in which vivid autobiographical memories are no longer believed to have happened even though vivid recollective features remain present. Such memories stand in contrast to the more typical situation that when events are recollected they are also believed to have genuinely occurred. We review data on the frequency, characteristics, and factors that contribute to the development of naturally occurring and laboratory-induced nonbelieved memories and discuss the relationships of nonbelieved memories with theories of autobiographical remembering and the study of remembering in applied domains

Using mobile RE tools to give end-users their own voice

Researchers highlight end-user involvement in system design as an important concept for developing useful and usable solutions. However, end-user involvement in software engineering is still an open-ended topic. Novel paradigms such as service-oriented computing strengthen the need for more active end-user involvement in order to provide systems that are tailored to individual end-user needs. Our work is based on the fact that the majority of end-users are familiar with mobile devices and use an increasing number of mobile applications. A mobile tool enabling end-user led requirements elicitation could be just one of many applications installed on end-users' mobile devices. In this paper, we present a framework of end-user involvement in requirements elicitation which motivates our research. The main contribution of our research is a tool-supported requirements elicitation approach allowing end-users to document needs in situ. Furthermore, we present first evaluation results to highlight the feasibility of on-site end-user led requirements elicitation

Accuracy of Name and Age Data Provided About Network Members in a Social Network Study of People Who Use Drugs: Implications for Constructing Sociometric Networks

Purpose—Network analysis has become increasingly popular in epidemiologic research, but the accuracy of data key to constructing risk networks is largely unknown. Using network data from people who use drugs (PWUD), the study examined how accurately PWUD reported their network members’ (i.e., alters’) names and ages. Methods—Data were collected from 2008 to 2010 from 503 PWUD residing in rural Appalachia. Network ties (n=897) involved recent (past 6 months) sex, drug co-usage, and/or social support. Participants provided alters’ names, ages, and relationship-level characteristics; these data were cross-referenced to that of other participants to identify participant-participant relationships and to determine the accuracy of reported ages (years) and names (binary). Results—Participants gave alters’ exact names and ages within two years in 75% and 79% of relationships, respectively. Accurate name was more common in relationships that were reciprocally reported and those involving social support and male alters. Age was more accurate in reciprocal ties and those characterized by kinship, sexual partnership, recruitment referral, and financial support, and less accurate for ties with older alters. Conclusions—Most participants reported alters’ characteristics accurately, and name accuracy was not significantly different in relationships involving drug-related/sexual behavior compared to those not involving these behaviors

The microstructures of network recall: How social networks are encoded and represented in human memory

AbstractA growing number of studies indicate that aspects of psychology and cognition influence network structure, but much remains to be learned about how network information is stored and retrieved from memory. Are networks recalled as dyads, as triads, or more generally as sub-groups? We employ an experimental design coupled with exponential random graph models to address this issue. We find that respondents flexibly encode social information as triads or groups, depending on the network, but not as dyads. This supports prior research showing that networks are stored using “compression heuristics”, but also provides evidence of cognitive flexibility in the process of encoding relational information

Recent Advancements, Developments and Applications of Personal Network Analysis

We are pleased to introduce recent advancements in personal network analysis and applications in this special issue of the International Review of Social Research - IRSR. The idea of this special issue yielded in the summer of 2015, during the 8th edition of the Summer Course on personal networks given by the Universitat Autònoma deBarcelona(specifically, the egolab-GRAFO research team at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, UAB). That idea very soon turned into an invitation to international scholars to submit original papers focused on either a fully personal research design or on a design combining personal network analysis with other approaches (e.g. mixed research methods). In addition, we encouraged authors from all disciplines and fields to submit both theoretically and methodologically oriented papers, as long as they employ a personal network analysis approach. In the end, a bouquet of ten papers was kept for publication. Equally eclectic and complementary, these papers are related under the personal network analysis umbrella. In what follows, our foreword continues with two interrelated sections. First, we provide a glance on the field of personal network studies, which targets a wide general public less familiarized with structurally analytic approaches (for a detailed view on structural thinking underpinning social network analysis (SNA), see Borgatti et al. 2014; Wellman, 1988). And, second, we briefly introduce each of the ten papers comprising this special issue

Can a piece of music with a positive emotional elicitation improve dream content and the phenomenological experience?

Dreams can be defined as a series of thoughts, ideas and sensations that occur involuntarily within our minds during the stages of sleep. As there is a current lack of research connecting music and its effects on dreams, this thesis will investigate if music can have a positive effect on dreaming. Longer lasting effects if music can positively alter our dreams, is a reduction in nightmares and stressful dreaming. Many of us dream or experience dreaming on a nightly basis whether it be wild, vivid experiences or just the recall of a sensation. First, five pieces of music across five different genres were assessed (using the BRECVEMA model of music psychology), and then presented to a group of participants to see how emotions were perceived across the five selected genres/pieces (scores attained from the Emotion Worksheets). It was found that the ‘Musical Theatre’ piece of music had the highest level of positive emotional elicitation within participants.Then, various aspects of dreaming including dream contents and various experiences of dreaming (PANAS, vividness, coherence, recall and sensory information) were examined for two weeks, one week where the participants listened to the selected piece of music and one where participants listened to no music. Participants were given a dream journal to complete throughout the two weeks which included; pre-sleep questionnaire, a space to record dreams and a post-sleep questionnaire. It was found that when the participants were listening to music, they experienced significantly more positive contents of their dreams, whereas dreaming experiences were not altered in accordance with the music. Although, further research within this field is needed to fully assess whether all music as a whole can alter our emotions strong enough to change our dream content and our phenomenological experience. Other pieces of music within other genres and the same genre could be deemed more powerful and have more of a lasting effect