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Longitudinal analysis of large social networks: Estimating the effect of health traits on changes in friendship ties by A. James O'Malley; Nicholas A. Christakis is a Mathematics article available to read on EtoBox.

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We develop novel mixed effects models to examine the role of health traits on the status of peoples' close friendship nominations in the Framingham Heart Study. The health traits considered are both mutable (body mass index (BMI), smoking, blood pressure, body proportion, muscularity, and depression) and, for comparison, basically immutable (height, birth order, personality type, only child, and handedness); and the traits have varying degrees of observability. We test the hypotheses that existing ties (i.e. close friendship nominations) are more likely to dissolve between people with dissimilar (mutable and observable) health traits whereas new ties are more likely to form between those with similar (mutable and observable) traits while controlling for persons' age, gender, geographic separation, and education. The mixed effects models contain random effects for both the nominator (ego) and nominated (alter) persons in a tie to account for the fact that people were involved in multiple relationships and contributed observations at multiple exams. Results for BMI support the hypotheses that people of similar BMI are less likely to dissolve existing ties and more likely to form ties

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Author

A. James O'Malley; Nicholas A. Christakis

Publisher

John Wiley and Sons; Wiley (John Wiley & Sons); John Wiley & Sons Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 0277-6715)

Published

2011

Language

EN

Field

Mathematics (Physical Sciences)