Abstract
Social network analysis (SNA) is a term that describes a set of methodologies to understand and depict social relations or ties. SNA is different from other research methods in several ways that have important ethical implications, as well as specific considerations for study design. Recruitment of participants and attrition during the study, where there are several data collection time points, pose significant challenges. Furthermore, there are implications of non-participation in studies, whereby gaps in network maps may result in an inaccurate representation of how a network is working and this, in turn, means the results may be of lesser value in terms of informing policy and practice. Given the widely noted challenge of recruiting healthcare staff to research, this paper adopts a case study approach to discussing considerations for researchers, as well as offering recommendations and insights from our own research and from the published literature about how to tackle these issues. This paper examines data sourcing, decision-making about defining the network for data collection, and ethical considerations and their implications for the recruitment of healthcare staff to social network studies. We use a case study example exploring leadership in a hospital group network to illustrate techniques and challenges in the recruitment of healthcare staff.
Highlights
Social network analysis (SNA) is a term that describes a set of methodologies to understand and depict social relations or ties [1]
We describe the methods undertaken to recruit healthcare managers and clinical leaders to a social network study and share our reflections and learning from the process in the context of the literature on recruitment and sampling in social network studies
The research we discuss in this case study aimed to recruit senior healthcare managers, executives, and clinical leaders to take part in a network study to explore if collective leadership emerged in a newly established hospital group [16]
Summary
Social network analysis (SNA) is a term that describes a set of methodologies to understand and depict social relations or ties [1]. Through posing specific questions to a group of respondents, the method enables researchers to make the relational patterns between individuals, events or organizations explicit. These relations are visually mapped and understood using social network metrics to examine the nature and structure of the network [2]. SNA is different from other research methods in several ways that have important ethical implications, as well as specific considerations for study design and dissemination of results. The potential impact of these challenges on the trustworthiness of results and conclusions when data sets are incomplete is a key consideration for researchers employing SNA methods
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