Parent Engagement with a Self-Tailored Cancer Prevention Digital Behavior Change Intervention: Exploratory Application of Affiliation Network Analysis.

Abstract

Evaluating digital behavior change intervention engagement is complex and requires multidimensional and novel approaches that are emerging. The relationship and interdependence between engagement with the technology and engagement with the psychosocial or behavior change process often presents conceptual and evaluative challenges. Large objective data sets detailing technology use are plentiful but meaningful interpretation can be challenging at granular levels. Affiliation network analysis which describes two-mode network data may provide a novel approach to evaluate engagement of digital behavior change interventions. The purpose of this paper is to use affiliation network analysis as an exploratory method to describe, assess and visualize content-specific patterns underlying psychosocial characteristics related to HPV vaccine safety concerns of parents using the HPVcancerFree intervention. Results indicate that affiliation network analysis shows promise in supplementing existing methods to assess engagement of digital interventions.