Mascia Daniele, Iacopino Valentina, Frisicale Emanuela Maria, Iacovelli Antonia, Boccia Stefania, Poscia Andrea
Department of Business and Management, LUISS Guido Carli University, 00197 Rome, Italy.
Local Health Authority (ASL) Roma 1, 00193 Rome, Italy.
Vaccines (Basel). 2020 Jan 29;8(1):55. doi: 10.3390/vaccines8010055.
Psychological and social characteristics of individuals are important determinants of their health choices and behaviors. Social networks represent "pipes" through which information and opinions circulate and spread out in the social circle surrounding individuals, influencing their propensity toward important health care interventions. This paper aims to explore the relationship between students' vaccination health choices and their social networks. We administered a questionnaire to students to collect data on individual students' demographics, knowledge, and attitudes about vaccinations, as well as their social networks. Forty-nine pupils belonging to 4 classrooms in an Italian secondary school were enrolled in the study. We applied a logistic regression quadratic assignment procedure (LR-QAP) by regressing students' positive responsive behavior similarity as a dependent variable. LRQAP findings indicate that students' vaccination behavior similarity is significantly associated with after-school social ties and related social mechanisms, suggesting that pupils are more likely to share information and knowledge about health behaviors through social relationships maintained after school hours rather than through those established during the school day. Moreover, we found that vaccination behaviors are more similar for those students having the same ethnicity as well as for those belonging to the same class. Our findings may help policymakers in implementing effective vaccination strategies.
个体的心理和社会特征是其健康选择和行为的重要决定因素。社交网络代表着“管道”，信息和观点通过这些“管道”在个体周围的社交圈子中流通和传播，影响他们对重要医疗保健干预措施的倾向。本文旨在探讨学生的疫苗接种健康选择与其社交网络之间的关系。我们向学生发放了一份问卷，以收集有关学生个人人口统计学、对疫苗接种的知识和态度以及他们的社交网络的数据。意大利一所中学4个班级的49名学生参与了这项研究。我们通过将学生的积极反应行为相似性作为因变量进行回归分析，应用了逻辑回归二次分配程序（LR-QAP）。LRQAP的研究结果表明，学生的疫苗接种行为相似性与课后社交关系及相关社会机制显著相关，这表明学生更有可能通过课后维持的社会关系而非上学期间建立的关系来分享有关健康行为的信息和知识。此外，我们发现，具有相同种族以及属于同一个班级的学生的疫苗接种行为更为相似。我们的研究结果可能有助于政策制定者实施有效的疫苗接种策略。
