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二十年中变得流行起来，因为它可能有助于促进老年人的健康。社会资本假定了发展人际关系、信任和互惠规范的社区特征。为了了解社会资本与健康之间关系的动态，在社会计量学领域发展起来的网络分析在公共卫生研究领域可能是有用的。本研究旨在了解网络分析应用于公共卫生研究的可行性和挑战，并调查社区内和群体间健康和卫生资源的人际交换和传染。我们对日本山梨县一个农村小镇的600多名老年人进行了一项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”仍然活跃。我们进一步收集了更多关于mujin会员名称生成器的详细信息，这些参与者回答说他们参加了一个或多个mujin活动，使用雪球调查技术。我们成功地占领了该镇的大部分mujin集团。我们发现，与其他潜在的混杂因素无关，以积极的态度积极参加mujin的人比不参加mujin的人发生功能残疾的可能性更小。然而，那些参加以融资为主要目的的mujin团体的人，与功能衰退的风险相当高有关。通过本研究，我们发现网络分析数据可以在公共卫生研究的背景下收集和有用，并确定了一些挑战。我们将在未来5年的研究项目中进一步研究mujin对健康的积极和消极影响的机制，即群体成员之间的网络动态。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