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Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions

Leveraging social influence is an increasingly common strategy to change population behavior or acceptance of public health policies and interventions; however, assessing the effectiveness of these social network interventions and projecting their performance at scale requires modeling of the opinio...

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Autores principales: Johnson, Kara Layne, Walsh, Jennifer L., Amirkhanian, Yuri A., Carnegie, Nicole Bohme
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8709162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34949003
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413394
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author Johnson, Kara Layne
Walsh, Jennifer L.
Amirkhanian, Yuri A.
Carnegie, Nicole Bohme
author_facet Johnson, Kara Layne
Walsh, Jennifer L.
Amirkhanian, Yuri A.
Carnegie, Nicole Bohme
author_sort Johnson, Kara Layne
collection PubMed
description Leveraging social influence is an increasingly common strategy to change population behavior or acceptance of public health policies and interventions; however, assessing the effectiveness of these social network interventions and projecting their performance at scale requires modeling of the opinion diffusion process. We previously developed a genetic algorithm to fit the DeGroot opinion diffusion model in settings with small social networks and limited follow-up of opinion change. Here, we present an assessment of the algorithm performance under the less-than-ideal conditions likely to arise in practical applications. We perform a simulation study to assess the performance of the algorithm in the presence of ordinal (rather than continuous) opinion measurements, network sampling, and model misspecification. We found that the method handles alternate models well, performance depends on the precision of the ordinal scale, and sampling the full network is not necessary to use this method. We also apply insights from the simulation study to investigate notable features of opinion diffusion models for a social network intervention to increase uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among Black men who have sex with men (BMSM).
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spelling pubmed-87091622021-12-25 Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions Johnson, Kara Layne Walsh, Jennifer L. Amirkhanian, Yuri A. Carnegie, Nicole Bohme Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Leveraging social influence is an increasingly common strategy to change population behavior or acceptance of public health policies and interventions; however, assessing the effectiveness of these social network interventions and projecting their performance at scale requires modeling of the opinion diffusion process. We previously developed a genetic algorithm to fit the DeGroot opinion diffusion model in settings with small social networks and limited follow-up of opinion change. Here, we present an assessment of the algorithm performance under the less-than-ideal conditions likely to arise in practical applications. We perform a simulation study to assess the performance of the algorithm in the presence of ordinal (rather than continuous) opinion measurements, network sampling, and model misspecification. We found that the method handles alternate models well, performance depends on the precision of the ordinal scale, and sampling the full network is not necessary to use this method. We also apply insights from the simulation study to investigate notable features of opinion diffusion models for a social network intervention to increase uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among Black men who have sex with men (BMSM). MDPI 2021-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8709162/ /pubmed/34949003 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413394 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Johnson, Kara Layne
Walsh, Jennifer L.
Amirkhanian, Yuri A.
Carnegie, Nicole Bohme
Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title_full Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title_fullStr Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title_full_unstemmed Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title_short Performance of a Genetic Algorithm for Estimating DeGroot Opinion Diffusion Model Parameters for Health Behavior Interventions
title_sort performance of a genetic algorithm for estimating degroot opinion diffusion model parameters for health behavior interventions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8709162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34949003
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413394
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