Analysis of friendship network and its role in explaining obesity
Abstract
We employ Add Health data to show that friendship networks, constructed from mutual friendship nominations, are important in building weight perception, setting weight goals, and measuring social marginalization among adolescents and young adults. We study the relationship between individuals' perceived weight status, actual weight status, weight status relative to friends' weight status, and weight goals. This analysis helps us understand how individual weight perceptions might be formed, what these perceptions do to the weight goals, and how friends' relative weight affects weight perception and weight goals. Combining this information with individuals' friendship network helps determine the influence of social relationships on weight-related variables. Multinomial logistic regression results indicate that relative status is indeed a significant predictor of perceived status, and perceived status is a significant predictor of weight goals. We also address the issue of causality between actual weight status and social marginalization (as measured by the number of friends) and show that obesity precedes social marginalization in time rather than the other way around. This lends credence to the hypothesis that obesity leads to social marginalization not vice versa. Attributes of the friendship network can provide new insights into effective interventions for combating obesity since adolescent friendships provide an important social context for weight-related behaviors.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2013
- Source ID
- 10.1145/2483669.2483689
Entities
People
- Achla Marathe
- Andrea Apolloni
- Zhengzheng Pan
Organizations
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Division of Computer and Network Systems
- Division of Computing and Communication Foundations
- Division of Social and Economic Sciences
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Meta
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences
- Seventh Framework Programme
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Virginia Tech