Sociostructural 2-mode network analysis: Critical connections for HIV transmission elimination

摘要

Social network analysis is increasingly used to better understand the drivers of HIV transmission because this analytic approach moves beyond the monolith of individual risk behavior as the dominant explanatory factor of onward HIV transmission. Explanations of risk and transmission are dependent on where one is located within a network of interest and the pattern of behaviors and infections among other network members that surround a given individual. Within network analysis, there are multiple network levels that can help illuminate network risk. Most common in the field of sexually transmitted infection (STI) networks is that of the sexual network, that is, the characterization, visualization, and analysis of the direct sex connections between individuals. These have been critical to understanding patterns of STI transmission, leading scholars to observe network level risk, which has included concurrency, network position, personal network density, and assortative mixing. Most analyses that examine networks, whether they be social, sexual, risk, or support, focuses on the ties between individuals. However, increasingly, there has been interest in the structural features of the social environment-we call this sociostructural features-the networks and spaces that surround individuals and confers HIV risk.