About this Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology article
Social Network Structure Is Predictive of Health and Wellness by Suwen Lin; Louis Faust; Pablo Robles-Granda; Tomasz Kajdanowicz; Nitesh V. Chawla is a Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology article available to read on EtoBox.
Social networks influence health-related behavior, such as obesity and smoking. While researchers have studied social networks as a driver for diffusion of influences and behavior, it is less understood how the structure or topology of the network, in itself, impacts an individual's health behavior and wellness state. In this paper, we investigate whether the structure or topology of a social network offers additional insight and predictability on an individual's health and wellness. We develop a method called the Network-Driven health predictor (NetCARE) that leverages features representative of social network structure. Using a large longitudinal data set of students enrolled in the NetHealth study at the University of Notre Dame, we show that the NetCARE method improves the overall prediction performance over the baseline models-that use demographics and physical attributes-by 38%, 65%, 55%, and 54% for the wellness states-stress, happiness, positive attitude, and self-assessed health-considered in this paper.
It is typically read by researchers, students, and practitioners in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology.
- Author
- Suwen Lin; Louis Faust; Pablo Robles-Granda; Tomasz Kajdanowicz; Nitesh V. Chawla
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2019
- Language
- EN
- Field
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (Life Sciences)