A longitudinal study on social capital and longevity of older adults:the application of network analysis

社会资本的概念在过去20年里变得流行起来，因为它可能有助于促进老年人的健康。社会资本具有发展人际关系、信任和互惠规范的社区特征。为了理解社会资本和健康之间的联系的动力，在社会计量领域发展的网络分析可能在公共卫生研究领域有用。本研究的目的是了解网络分析在公共卫生研究中应用的可行性和挑战，并调查社区内和群体之间的卫生和卫生资源的人际交流和传染。我们在日本山梨县的一个农村小镇，对所有600岁以上的老年居民进行了一项关于健康和社会关系的邮寄调查，在那里，传统的金融自助团体活动MUJIN仍在积极运作。我们进一步收集了信息…更多关于木真会员姓名生成器的详细信息，来自研究参与者，他们使用滚雪球调查技术回答说他们参加了一项更多的木金活动。我们成功地夺取了该镇大部分的木真集团。我们发现，无论其他潜在的混杂因素，以积极的态度积极参加木金活动的人比不参加木金活动的人更不容易患上功能性残疾。然而，那些参与Mujin Group的人，其主要目的是融资，与功能衰退的风险相当高有关。通过这项研究，我们发现网络分析数据可以被收集起来，并在公共卫生研究的背景下有用，同时也发现了一些挑战。需要进一步的研究，以了解木真对健康的那些积极和消极影响的机制，从小组成员内部的网络动态来看，这将在我们下一个5年的研究项目中完成。较少

The concept of social capital has become popular in the last two decades, as it may contribute to health promotion of older adults. Social capital posits the community characteristics that develops interpersonal ties, trusts, and the norm of reciprocity. To understand the dynamisms of the association between social capital and health, the network analysis developed in the field of sociometry may be useful in the field of public health research. The aim of this study was to understand the feasibility and challenges of the application of network analysis on public health research and investigated the interpersonal exchange and contagion of health and health resources within and between groups in a community. We conducted a mailed survey on health and social relationships for all older residents over 600 people in a rural town in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, where the traditional financial self-help group activity called “mujin” has still been actively operated. We further gathered nforma … More tion on detailed information of name generators for mujin memberships from the study participants who answered that they had participated in one of more mujin activities, using a snowball survey technique. We succeeded in capturing most of mujin groups in the town. We found that persons who participated in mujin actively with a positive attitude were less likely to develop functional disability than nonparticipants of mujin independent of other potential confounding factors. However, those who participated in mujin groups, whose primary purpose was financing,were linked to rather increased risks for functional decline. With this study we found that the network analytic data can be gathered and useful in the setting of public health research, and some challenges were also identified. Further studies would be needed to understand the mechanisms of those positive and negative impacts of mujin on health in terms of the network dynamics within group members, which will be done in our next5-year research projects. Less