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01-12-2011

Strengthening Prevention Program Theories and Evaluations: Contributions from Social Network Analysis

Authors: Scott D. Gest, D. Wayne Osgood, Mark E. Feinberg, Karen L. Bierman, James Moody

Published in: Prevention Science | Issue 4/2011

Abstract

A majority of school-based prevention programs target the modification of setting-level social dynamics, either explicitly (e.g., by changing schools’ organizational, cultural or instructional systems that influence children’s relationships), or implicitly (e.g., by altering behavioral norms designed to influence children’s social affiliations and interactions). Yet, in outcome analyses of these programs, the rich and complicated set of peer network dynamics is often reduced to an aggregation of individual characteristics or assessed with methods that do not account for the interdependencies of network data. In this paper, we present concepts and analytic methods from the field of social network analysis and illustrate their great value to prevention science—both as a source of tools for refining program theories and as methods that enable more sophisticated and focused tests of intervention effects. An additional goal is to inform discussions of the broader implications of social network analysis for public health efforts.

In the sociological literature, social integration refers to the degree to which minority groups are integrated into the mainstream, but here we use the term more broadly to refer to the connectedness of a group of individuals without regard to their minority group status.

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Title: Strengthening Prevention Program Theories and Evaluations: Contributions from Social Network Analysis
Authors: Scott D. Gest
D. Wayne Osgood
Mark E. Feinberg
Karen L. Bierman
James Moody
Publication date: 01-12-2011
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Prevention Science / Issue 4/2011
Print ISSN: 1389-4986
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6695
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-011-0229-2

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Strengthening Prevention Program Theories and Evaluations: Contributions from Social Network Analysis

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