Do alcohol interventions affect peers who do not receive the intervention? Modeling treatment contagion effects via simulations of adolescent social networks.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Adolescents' drinking is influenced by their friends' drinking. However, it is unclear whether individually-targeted alcohol interventions reduce drinking in the friends of individuals who receive the intervention. This study used simulations of drinking in simulated longitudinal social networks to test whether individually-targeted alcohol interventions may be expected to spread to non-targeted individuals.

Method

Stochastic actor-based models simulated longitudinal social networks where changes in drinking and friendships were modeled using parameters from a meta-analysis of high school 10th grade social networks. Social influence (i.e., how much one's friends' drinking affects their own drinking) and social selection (i.e., how much one's drinking affects who th

SUBMITTER: Hallgren KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9199539 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature