Mobile Phone Social Network Research Articles

Analyzing the impacts of cultural backgrounds on migrants' acculturation strategies in mobile phone social networks

By employing a large-scale mobile phone dataset and constructing a social network with 6,351,033 nodes and 14,735,425 ties, this research empirically studies how the individualistic and collectivistic (I-C) cultural backgrounds of migrants influence their acculturation strategies under different contexts. We introduced the rice theory and developed new network-based constructs to measure their acculturation strategies, I-C cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic status. We found that migrants with more collectivistic cultural backgrounds tend to interact more with people from their hometowns rather than locals of their host societies. Surprisingly, this relationship is contingent on cultural distance: when a migrant's cultural background is similar to the host society, this migrant tends to interact more with local friends than people from her hometown. Moreover, higher socioeconomic status is found to decrease the cultural conservatism tendencies of migrants with more collectivistic cultural backgrounds. These findings can help stakeholders to devise more refined policies to better integrate migrants with diverse backgrounds and reduce potential cultural conflicts.

The impact of social network-based nursing care training on oncology nurses’ occupational stress and self-efficacy: Non-randomized clinical trial

Background & Aim: Inadequate clinical knowledge is one of the leading causes of stress and low occupational self-efficacy among nurses. Nursing training can enhance self-efficacy and reduce stress. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effect of social network-based nursing care training, using mobile phones, occupational stress, and self-efficacy among oncology nurses. Methods & Materials: This non-randomized clinical trial study was conducted on 78 nurses working in oncology wards of two selected educational hospitals in Tehran in 2018. The nurses entered the study through available sampling. They were randomly assigned to two groups of control and intervention. Nursing care training in chemotherapy was provided to the nurses in the intervention group through a mobile phone social network for four weeks. On the other hand, the nurses in the control group were provided with the routine training pamphlets and brochures in the oncology ward. The nurses’ stress level was examined using an expanded nursing stress scale and their occupational stress was measured using a job self-efficacy questionnaire once before the intervention and then one month after the intervention. The data analysis was then performed according to independent t-test, paired t-test, and chi-square using SPSS software version 16. Results: The two groups were homogeneous in terms of age, gender, work experience, and education. There was no significant difference in terms of occupational stress and self-efficacy between the two groups before the intervention (P<0.05). The changes in the occupational stress score were statistically significant (P<0.05) among the nurses in the intervention group. Moreover, the changes in the occupational self-efficacy score were statistically significant among nurses in the intervention group compared to the control group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Educational intervention through social networking can lead to a reduction of occupational stress and an increase in self-efficacy among oncology nurses. Reducing stress and increasing nurses’ occupational self-efficacy will improve their performance at the bedside. This is an easy, inexpensive, and effective training method that can be used by health managers and educators to enhance employee’s performance.

D-ToSS: A Distributed Throwaway Spatial Index Structure for Dynamic Location Data

Many applications deal with moving object datasets, e.g., mobile phone social networking, scientific simulations, and ride-sharing services. These applications need to handle a tremendous number of spatial objects that continuously move and execute spatial queries to explore their surroundings. To manage such update-heavy workloads, several throwaway index structures have recently been proposed, where a static index is rebuilt periodically from scratch rather than updated incrementally. It has been shown that throwaway indices outperform specialized moving-object indices that maintain location updates incrementally. However, throwaway indices suffer from scalability due to their single-server design and the only distributed throwaway index (D-MOVIES), extension of a centralized approach, does not scale out as the number of servers increases, especially during query processing phase.

Use of the Location-Based Social Networking Application GRINDR as a Recruitment Tool in Rectal Microbicide Development Research

Mobile phone social networking applications such as GRINDR are potential tools for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) for HIV prevention research. Demographics and sexual risk behaviors of men recruited through GRINDR and through traditional media were compared. GRINDR participants were younger (mean age 31 vs. 42, p<0.0001), more White identified (44 vs. 30%, p<0.01), and had more sex partners in the previous 14 days (1.88 vs. 1.10, p<0.05) than other recruits. Email responses were less successful for enrollment than phone calls (5 vs. 50%). This approach resulted in successful recruitment of younger and more educated, White identified MSM.