1. Cross-sectional personal network analysis of adult smoking in rural areasBianca-Elena Mihǎilǎ, Marian-Gabriel Hâncean, Matjaž Perc, Jürgen Lerner, Iulian Oană, Marius Geanta, José Luis Molina González, Cosmina Cioroboiu, 2024, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Research on smoking behaviour has primarily focused on adolescents, with less attention given to middle-aged and older adults in rural settings. This study examines the influence of personal networks and sociodemographic factors on smoking behaviour in a rural Romanian community. We analysed data from 76 participants, collected through face-to-face interviews, including smoking status (non-smokers, current and former smokers), social ties and demographic details. Multilevel regression models were used to predict smoking status. The results indicate that social networks are essential in shaping smoking habits. Current smokers were more likely to have smoking family members, reinforcing smoking within familial networks, while non-smokers were typically embedded in non-smoking environments. Gender and age patterns show that women were less likely to smoke, and older adults were more likely to have quit smoking. These findings suggest that targeted interventions should focus not only on individuals but also on their social networks. In rural areas, family-based approaches may be particularly effective due to the strong influence of familial ties. Additionally, encouraging connections with non-smokers and former smokers could help disrupt smoking clusters, supporting smoking cessation efforts.
Ključne besede: network science, human behaviour, data science, smoking, social physics
Objavljeno v DKUM: 03.12.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 0
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2. Assortative mixing of opinions about COVID‑19 vaccination in personal networksMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Jürgen Lerner, Matjaž Perc, José Luis Molina González, Marius Geanta, 2024, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Many countries worldwide had difculties reaching a sufciently high vaccination uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this context, we collected data from a panel of 30,000 individuals, which were representative of the population of Romania (a country in Eastern Europe with a low 42.6% vaccination rate) to determine whether people are more likely to be connected to peers displaying similar opinions about COVID-19 vaccination. We extracted 443 personal networks, amounting to 4430 alters. We estimated multilevel logistic regression models with random-ego-level intercepts to predict individual opinions about COVID-19 vaccination. Our evidence indicates positive opinions about the COVID-19 vaccination cluster. Namely, the likelihood of having a positive opinion about COVID-19 vaccination increases when peers have, on average, a more positive attitude than the rest of the nodes in the network (OR 1.31, p < 0.001). We also found that individuals with higher education and age are more likely to hold a positive opinion about COVID-19 vaccination. With the given empirical data, our study cannot reveal whether this assortative mixing of opinions is due to social infuence or social selection. However, it may nevertheless have implications for public health interventions, especially in countries that strive to reach higher uptake rates. Understanding opinions about vaccination can act as an early warning system for potential outbreaks, inform predictions about vaccination uptake, or help supply chain management for vaccine distribution.
Ključne besede: assortative mixing, opinions, vaccination, personal network, social physics
Objavljeno v DKUM: 27.11.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 0
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3. The formation of political discussion networksMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Matjaž Perc, Adrian Gheorghiță, George G. Vega Yon, Bianca-Elena Mihǎilǎ, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Dialogues among politicians provide a window into political landscapes and relations among parties and nations. Existing research has focused on the outcomes of such dialogues and on the structure of social networks on which they take place. Little is known, however, about how political discussion networks form and which are the main driving forces behind their formation. We study a collection of ego-networks from 30 randomly sampled Romanian politicians to reveal fundamental processes behind the formation of political discussion networks. We show that ties in such networks tend to be strong and balanced, and that their organization is not affected by sex, age or education homophily. We use the exponential family of random graph models for small networks to assess likely closure mechanisms and possible homophily effects, but we note that further research and additional data are needed to fully understand the impact of context and political affiliations on the generalization of our findings.
Ključne besede: political discussion, homophily, exponential random graphs, social physics
Objavljeno v DKUM: 20.09.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 1
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4. Disaggregated data on age and sex for the first 250 days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bucharest, RomaniaMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Maria Cristina Ghiţǎ, Matjaž Perc, Jürgen Lerner, Iulian Oană, Bianca-Elena Mihǎilǎ, Adelina Alexandra Stoica, David-Andrei Bunaciu, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Experts worldwide have constantly been calling for high-quality open-access epidemiological data, given the fast-evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Disaggregated high-level granularity records are still scant despite being essential to corroborate the effectiveness of virus containment measures and even vaccination strategies. We provide a complete dataset containing disaggregated epidemiological information about all the COVID-19 patients officially reported during the first 250 days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bucharest (Romania). We give the sex, age, and the COVID-19 infection confirmation date for 46.440 individual cases, between March 7th and November 11th, 2020. Additionally, we provide context-wise information such as the stringency levels of the measures taken by the Romanian authorities. We procured the data from the local public health authorities and systemized it to respond to the urgent international need of comparing observational data collected from various populations. Our dataset may help understand COVID-19 transmission in highly dense urban communities, perform virus spreading simulations, ascertain the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions, and craft better vaccination strategies.
Ključne besede: disaggregated data, age, sex, COVID-19, pandemic, Romania
Objavljeno v DKUM: 15.07.2024; Ogledov: 92; Prenosov: 8
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5. Occupations and their impact on the spreading of COVID-19 in urban communitiesMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Jürgen Lerner, Matjaž Perc, Iulian Oană, David-Andrei Bunaciu, Adelina Alexandra Stoica, Maria Cristina Ghiţǎ, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: The current pandemic has disproportionally afected the workforce. To improve our understanding of the role that occupations play in the transmission of COVID-19, we analyse real-world network data that were collected in Bucharest between August 1st and October 31st 2020. The data record sex, age, and occupation of 6895 patients and the 13,272 people they have interacted with, thus providing a social network from an urban setting through which COVID-19 has spread. Quite remarkably, we fnd that medical occupations have no signifcant efect on the spread of the virus. Instead, we fnd common transmission chains to start with infected individuals who hold jobs in the private sector and are connected with non-active alters, such as spouses, siblings, or elderly relatives. We use relational hyperevent models to assess the most likely homophily and network efects in the community transmission. We detect homophily with respect to age and anti-homophily with respect to sex and employability. We note that, although additional data would be welcomed to perform more in-depth network analyses, our fndings may help public authorities better target under-performing vaccination campaigns.
Ključne besede: occupation, urban community, spreading of disease, covid-19
Objavljeno v DKUM: 15.07.2024; Ogledov: 79; Prenosov: 8
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6. Early spread of COVID-19 in Romania: imported cases from Italy and human-to-human transmission networksMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Matjaž Perc, Jürgen Lerner, 2020, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: We describe the early spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the first human-to-human transmission networks, in Romania. We profiled the first 147 cases referring to sex, age, place of residence, probable country of infection, return day to Romania, COVID-19 confirmation date and the probable modes of COVID-19 transmissions. Also, we analysed human-to-human transmission networks and explored their structural features and time dynamics. In Romania, local cycles of transmission were preceded by imported cases, predominantly from Italy. We observed an average of 4.8 days (s.d. = 4.0) between the arrival to a Romanian county and COVID-19 confirmation. Furthermore, among the first 147 COVID-19 patients, 88 were imported cases (64 carriers from Italy), 54 were domestic cases, while for five cases the source of infection was unknown. The early human-to-human transmission networks illustrated a limited geographical dispersion, the presence of super-spreaders and the risk of COVID-19 nosocomial infections. COVID-19 occurred in Romania through case importation from Italy. The largest share of the Romanian diaspora is concentrated especially in the northern parts of Italy, heavily affected by COVID-19. Human mobility (including migration) accounts for the COVID-19 transmission and it should be given consideration while tailoring prevention measures.
Ključne besede: coronavirus, COVID-19, transmission networks, human mobility, migration, nosocomial infections
Objavljeno v DKUM: 16.12.2020; Ogledov: 903; Prenosov: 213
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7. Homophily in coauthorship networks of East European sociologistsMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Matjaž Perc, 2016, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: We study to what degree and how homophily and network properties affect individual citation counts of researchers in the sociology departments of three East European countries, namely Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. We built first-order personal coauthorship networks out of the Web of Science publication records. Each sociologist is assigned as a focal node or ego, while her coauthors are alters. We analyze the data using structural measurements methods, hierarchical regression models, and we make visualizations based on the clustered graph technique. For all three populations, our results indicate that the mean score of the citations of alters substantially predicts the citation counts of egos. In particular, citation similarity increases the chances for coauthorship ties. Evidence for the impact of network properties on the citation levels of egos is mixed. For Poland, normalized ego-betweenness shows a negative effect on citation counts, while network density displays a positive one. For Romania and Slovenia, network characteristics have only a minor impact. Even if the visual summarization of the personal networks uncovers a wide palette of coauthorship patterns, homophily appears to be pervasive. These results are relevant for domestic policy makers who aim to improve the aggregated research performance in East European countries.
Ključne besede: social network, sociology, homophily, physics of social systems
Objavljeno v DKUM: 23.06.2017; Ogledov: 1002; Prenosov: 426
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8. Fragmented Romanian sociology: growth and structure of the collaboration networkMarian-Gabriel Hâncean, Matjaž Perc, Lazǎr Vlǎsceanu, 2014, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Structural patterns in collaboration networks are essential for understanding how new ideas, research practices, innovation or cooperation circulate and develop within academic communities and between and within university departments. In our research, we explore and investigate the structure of the collaboration network formed by the academics working full-time within all the 17 sociology departments across Romania. We show that the collaboration network is sparse and fragmented, and that it constitutes an environment that does not promote the circulation of new ideas and innovation within the field. Although recent years have witnessed an increase in the productivity of Romanian sociologists, there is still ample room for improvement in terms of the interaction infrastructure that ought to link individuals together so that they could maximize their potentials. We also fail to discern evidence in favor of the Matthew effect governing the growth of the network, which suggests scientific success and productivity are not rewarded. Instead, the structural properties of the collaboration network are partly those of a core-periphery network, where the spread of innovation and change can be explained by structural equivalence rather than by interpersonal influence models. We also provide support for the idea that, within the observed network, collaboration is the product of homophily rather than prestige effects. Further research on the subject based on data from other countries in the region is needed to place our results in a comparative framework, in particular to discern whether the behavior of the Romanian sociologist community is unique or rather common.
Ključne besede: collaboration network, small-world network, community structure, sociology, network science
Objavljeno v DKUM: 19.06.2017; Ogledov: 1230; Prenosov: 418
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