The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China
Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China.
J R Soc Interface. 2018 Jan;15(138). doi: 10.1098/rsif.2017.0838.
Patterns of social contact between individuals are important for the transmission of many pathogens and shaping patterns of immunity at the population scale. To refine our understanding of how human social behaviour may change over time, we conducted a longitudinal study of Hong Kong residents. We recorded the social contact patterns for 1450 individuals, up to four times each between May 2012 and September 2013. We found individuals made contact with an average of 12.5 people within 2.9 geographical locations, and spent an average estimated total duration of 9.1 h in contact with others during a day. Distributions of the number of contacts and locations in which contacts were made were not significantly different between study waves. Encounters were assortative by age, and the age mixing pattern was broadly consistent across study waves. Fitting regression models, we examined the association of contact rates (number of contacts, total duration of contact, number of locations) with covariates and calculated the inter- and intra-participant variation in contact rates. Participant age was significantly associated with the number of contacts made, the total duration of contact and the number of locations in which contact occurred, with children and parental-age adults having the highest rates of contact. The number of contacts and contact duration increased with the number of contact locations. Intra-individual variation in contact rate was consistently greater than inter-individual variation. Despite substantial individual-level variation, remarkable consistency was observed in contact mixing at the population scale. This suggests that aggregate measures of mixing behaviour derived from cross-sectional information may be appropriate for population-scale modelling purposes, and that if more detailed models of social interactions are required for improved public health modelling, further studies are needed to understand the social processes driving intra-individual variation.
个体之间的社会接触模式对于许多病原体的传播和塑造群体免疫模式都非常重要。为了更深入地了解人类社会行为可能随时间发生的变化，我们对香港居民进行了一项纵向研究。我们记录了 1450 名个体的社会接触模式，在 2012 年 5 月至 2013 年 9 月期间，每人最多记录了 4 次。我们发现，个体在 2.9 个地理位置内平均与 12.5 人有过接触，并且在一天中与他人的平均接触总时长约为 9.1 小时。在不同的研究波次中，接触人数和接触地理位置的分布没有显著差异。接触具有年龄选择性，并且年龄混合模式在各研究波次中基本一致。通过拟合回归模型，我们研究了接触率（接触人数、总接触时长、接触地理位置数）与协变量的关系，并计算了接触率的个体内和个体间变异。参与者年龄与接触人数、总接触时长和接触发生的地理位置数显著相关，儿童和父母年龄的成年人接触率最高。接触人数和接触持续时间随接触地理位置数的增加而增加。个体内接触率的变异始终大于个体间变异。尽管存在个体层面的大量变异，但在群体水平上观察到接触混合的一致性非常显著。这表明，从横截面信息中得出的混合行为综合指标可能适用于群体水平的建模目的，如果需要更详细的社交互动模型来改进公共卫生建模，那么需要进一步研究以了解驱动个体内变异的社会过程。
