Adolescent Medicine Fellow UPMC Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Background: Social networks play an important role in adolescent development. Social network analysis (SNA) has previously been used to understand relationships between certain network characteristics and aspects of youths’ emotional health; however, little work has considered how network features may bolster other elements of youth well-being, such as psychological empowerment (PE). Objective: Our goal was to use SNA to: 1) evaluate associations between social network characteristics and PE and 2) determine if PE moderates the relationship between network features and emotional health. Design/Methods: We administered cross-sectional egocentric social network surveys to 125 youth aged 13-19. Social networks were generated by asking youth (i.e., egos) to enumerate individuals (i.e., alters) in their social network. Youth answered questions about each alter, including how they are connected, how long they have known that person, and how often they interact. In addition, youth denoted the degree to which pairs of alters know one another. PE was measured with 14 items derived from a validated scale and summarized by averaging responses across items. Emotional health measures included the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, and the Child PTSD Symptom Scale. Summary scores were obtained by summing across items. Social network data will be imported into ORA, a network analysis/visualization software. Quantitative network characteristics for each youth, such as density (e.g., number of links divided by total number possible) and link strength (e.g., frequency of contact), will be calculated. We will use multivariable linear regression to examine associations between each network characteristic and PE, adjusting for age, gender, parental education, and network size. Similar models will assess relationships between network characteristics and each emotional health measure, with an interaction term (PE x network characteristics) to explore moderating effects. This study was approved by the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board.
