Social Activity Patterns Research Articles

Exploring social activity patterns among community-dwelling older adults in South Korea: a latent class analysis

BackgroundWith the trend of digitalization, social activities among the older population are becoming more diverse as they increasingly adopt technology-based alternatives. To gain a comprehensive understanding of social activities, this study aimed to identify the patterns of digital and in-person social activities among community-dwelling older adults in South Korea, examine the associated factors, and explore the difference in depressive symptoms by the identified latent social activity patterns.MethodsData were extracted from a nationwide survey conducted with 1,016 community-dwelling older adults (mean age 68.0 ± 6.5 years, 47.8% male). The main variables assessed were digital social activities (eight items), in-person social activities (six items), and depressive symptoms (20 items). Data were analyzed using latent class analysis, multinomial logistic regression, and multiple linear regression.ResultsWe identified four distinct social activity patterns: “minimal in both digital and in-person” (22.0%), “moderate in both digital and in-person” (46.7%), “moderate in digital & very high in in-person” (14.5%), and “high in both digital and in-person” (16.8%). Younger age, living in multi-generational households, and higher digital literacy were associated with a higher likelihood of being in the “moderate in both digital and in-person” than the “minimal in both digital and in-person” group. Younger age, male, living in multi-generational households, residing in metropolitan areas, no dependency on IADL items, doing daily physical exercise, and higher digital literacy were associated with a higher likelihood of being in the “moderate in digital & very high in in-person” than the “minimal in both digital and in-person” group. Younger age, living in multi-generational households, no dependency on IADL items, doing daily physical exercise, and higher digital literacy were associated with a higher likelihood of being in the “high in both digital and in-person” than the “minimal in both digital and in-person” group. Depressive symptoms were significantly higher in the group with minimal engagement in both digital and in-person activities, compared to other three groups.ConclusionsThis study highlights distinct patterns of social activities among Korean community-dwelling older adults. Since older adults with minimal social activity engagement can be more vulnerable to depressive symptoms, interventions that address modifiable attributes, such as supporting digital literacy and facilitating physical activity of older adults, could serve as potential strategies to enhance their social activity engagement and, consequently, their mental well-being.

Intentional travel group and social network: Identification and dynamics during a pandemic

Using multiday continuous smartcard data in 2020, we investigate group-based travel in Hong Kong metro system by identifying metro riders intentionally traveling in groups (ITGs). ITGs serve as our proxies for citywide physical social interactions. Considering ITG members are interrelated through group-based trips, we construct a social network (an ITG network) formed by ITGs to explore the network properties and structures of ITG activities. Examining ITGs both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we measure the spatial patterns of ITGs and their dynamics across locales and over time. We find that the degree of the ITG network follows a heavy-tailed distribution. The network size and interconnections vary across time. Some ITG members are more influential vertices than others in maintaining the networks’ topological properties. We illustrate how new data and methods can be used to explore in-person interactions and social activity patterns in transit-reliant cities.

Musicality and functions of Mandolin Gamelans in Pupuan Tabanan Village

Gamelan Mandolin is a traditional music in Pupuan Village, Tabanan whose existence is still maintained today. Gamelan Mandolin as part of Balinese karawitan, is very rich in musical elements. The richness of his musical elements can be seen from the form and type of repertoire, composition, rhythm, melodic formula, and patterns he works on. Apart from containing elements of musicality, Gamelan Mandolin in Pupuan Village has a close correlation with the function of art in people's lives. Its existence is indispensable in community life which can be functioned in various patterns of social activities. In its development in society, Gamelan Mandolin has several functions, both primary and secondary functions. This paper discusses the musicality and function of the Mandolian Gamelan in the social life of the Pupuan people. The method used is a qualitative method by describing the musicality and function of Gamelan Mandoli in the social life of the community.

Organizações de estudantes universitários na Ucrânia: política juvenil no campus e participação social

Abstract There is a widespread view that youth (students) are deeply involved into various social activities during their studies. However, are the majority of university students’ real participants and consumers of the local social agenda? The present paper critically examines the social activity of students in Ukraine. It focuses on several inter-related issues, namely how often students are socially active, how they feelabout their immediate surrounding, and its influence. The author also researches the attitudes of university youth towards student organizations and activities they provide, paying special attention to analysis of universities’ internal youth policy. The paper also seeks to diagnose, describe and explain the behavioural patterns of social activity dominating the social consciousness of students in their local environment. Overall, the results of the study are not very optimistic. They clearly indicate that students experience tangible engagement and interaction problems inside the academic and social environment at their universities.

Human mobility data in the COVID-19 pandemic: characteristics, applications, and challenges

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges around the world. Many studies have applied mobility data to explore spatiotemporal trends over time, investigate associations with other variables, and predict or simulate the spread of COVID-19. Our objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of human mobility open data to guide researchers and policymakers in conducting data-driven evaluations and decision-making for the COVID-19 pandemic and other infectious disease outbreaks. We summarized the mobility data usage in COVID-19 studies by reviewing recent publications on COVID-19 and human mobility from a data-oriented perspective. We identified three major sources of mobility data: public transit systems, mobile operators, and mobile phone applications. Four approaches have been commonly used to estimate human mobility: public transit-based flow, social activity patterns, index-based mobility data, and social media-derived mobility data. We compared mobility datasets’ characteristics by assessing data privacy, quality, space–time coverage, high-performance data storage and processing, and accessibility. We also present challenges and future directions of using mobility data. This review makes a pivotal contribution to understanding the use of and access to human mobility data in the COVID-19 pandemic and future disease outbreaks.

What Is Cultural World Image and How Cultural Tradition Is Formed

The article is devoted to the analysis of such phenomena as the cultural world image, sociocultural organism, tradition, in the terms that do not contradict Orthodox anthropology. Sociocultural organism means socium (that can be bigger or smaller than ethnos), which is the culture bearer, transforming pure social connections into organically-cultural ones. The socium is subject to socio-biological and personalistic-spiritual rules, which manifest in the structure and functions of the cultural world image and in the patterns of social activity. Tradition is one of the most striking examples of how the natural, social, cultural, personal and spiritual factors overlap and combine, and lead to the formation of important social institutions.

The Effect of COVID-19 Shelter in Place Orders on Loneliness of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Patients

Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic may increase social isolation and loneliness. No previous work has investigated this hypothesis among severe mentally ill (SMI) patients collecting information on both digital and in-person social activity using a smartphone application. In a multi-year mHealth study we evaluate the impact of COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders on loneliness and social activity. Our study enrolled 47 schizophrenia and bipolar patients between 2015 and 2020. Patients completed daily surveys on digital and in-person social activity and loneliness using the Beiwe application. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to quantify the effect of shelter in place orders on loneliness and social activity in-person or digital. 11 participants had at least 2 months of follow-up prior and post the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders enacted on March 23, 2020 in Massachusetts. Social distancing led to an increase in loneliness (ORpre/post=1.55, pvalue=0.056) along with reduction in self-reported social activity in-person (ORpre/post=0.55, pvalue=0.013) and increase in digital social activity (ORpre/post=7.2, pvalue<0.0001). The effect of the shelter-in-place order on loneliness declined after adjusting for social activity factors, suggesting that the effect operates primarily by changing patterns of social activity. Our study identifies strong effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social activity and loneliness in SMI patients leveraging daily information on digital and in-person social activity. Our analyses provide pilot data that using smartphones to monitor loneliness and social activity among SMI individuals is feasible. The results suggest the vulnerability of SMI individuals to social isolation.

Human Mobility Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Characteristics, Applications, and Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges around the world. Many studies indicate that human mobility data provide significant support for public health actions during the pandemic. Researchers have applied mobility data to explore spatiotemporal trends over time, investigate associations with other variables, and predict or simulate the spread of COVID-19. Our objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of human mobility open data to guide researchers and policymakers in conducting data-driven evaluations and decision-making for the COVID-19 pandemic and other infectious disease outbreaks. We summarized the mobility data usage in COVID-19 studies by reviewing recent publications on COVID-19 and human mobility from a data-oriented perspective. We identified three major sources of mobility data: public transit systems, mobile operators, and mobile phone applications. Four approaches have been commonly used to estimate human mobility: public transit-based flow, social activity patterns, index-based mobility data, and social media-derived mobility data. We compared mobility datasets’ characteristics by assessing data privacy, quality, space-time coverage, high-performance data storage and processing, and accessibility. We also present challenges and future directions of using mobility data. This review makes a pivotal contribution to understanding the use of and access to human mobility data in the COVID-19 pandemic and future disease outbreaks.

Digital resocialisation of the elderly people in the territorial centre of social services

The relevance of the study is stipulated by the fact that modern digital technologies are radically changing the economy and lifestyle in general. The information society determines the transformation of social structure, revision of patterns of social activities and stereotypes of behaviour, strategies and tactics of adaptation. Today's information technology and software encourages our society to accelerate in order to learn more and keep up with the scientific and technological progress. Under such conditions, the people of the "third" age appear to be the most vulnerable ones. Without social services and educational services, they are not able to independently master the array of innovative knowledge, including e-technology. Nowadays, a good command of the basics of the personal computer, E-technologies is becoming a necessary condition for orientation in the information flow and successful resocialisation and adaptation of the elderly people in the modern society, for overcoming digital inequality, immersion into the global information flows. The purpose of the study is to determine the features of the mechanisms enabling digital resocialisation of the elderly people within the educational environment of the University of the Third Age. The method of questionnaire survey was used to collect data, as this form of survey has an advantage – it allows respondents to carefully consider their answers without limiting their time. The article characterises and identifies the features of the impact of digital resocialisation mechanisms on the elderly within the educational environment of the University of the Third Age functioning on the platform of the territorial centre of social services (the one which provides social services). Different approaches to the mechanisms of digitalisation are presented, the importance of the University of the Third Age as an institution of digital resocialisation of elderly students is substantiated. The adaptability of the educational environment of the University of the Third Age as a resocialisation space, motivational components of the elderly have been determined, which allows the latter to realise the essential properties of the human personality at a respectable age. A social role of the digital resocialisation is transmitted through its contribution to the improvement of the quality of human life. The use of e-technologies can be considered one of the topical problems of social work with the elderly. There is still no consensus on the extent or impact of digital stratification on the process of resocialisation at an old age, which may be considered the prospect of our further research.

Social participation patterns and their associations with health and well-being for older adults.

Older adults are at an elevated risk of adverse health effects associated with social isolation and loneliness. Social participation is considered a modifiable determinant of health and well-being and has been proposed as a means to reduce this risk. However, there is limited knowledge to date about patterns of social activities among older adults. Using two waves of the Swiss Household Panel, a latent class analysis is performed to obtain discrete social participation profiles of adults aged 60 and older. Descriptive statistics and regression methods are used to study group compositions and estimate associations with self-assessed health, negative and positive affect, and life satisfaction. Once individual time-constant characteristics are controlled for, the majority of the positive associations between social participation and health or well-being found in the pooled data becomes small and insignificant, which is indicative of self-selection into different activity profiles. The role of self-selection into social participation implies that the design of interventions targeting social participation in the older adult population should be tailored to their heterogeneous needs and preferences.

The impact of social interactions and pain on daily positive and negative affect in adults with osteoarthritis of the knee

This study utilized experience sampling methodology (ESM) to examine the relationship of social interactions with daily pain and mood symptoms in people with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. Two hundred sixty-eight adults with physician-diagnosed OA of the knee underwent a baseline in-person interview and subsequent week-long ESM protocol to assess their daily activity patterns, pain, and mood via phone interview four times a day. A coding system was developed to assess presence and type of social interactions based on subject self-report of activity patterns. Multilevel modeling was used to examine between- and within-subject variation in outcomes based on both global and momentary measures of social activities, pain, and mood, while controlling for key demographic and potentially confounding variables. Positive associations were demonstrated between the ratio of positive to negative affect and both global (β = 0.49, p < .001) and momentary, especially positive (β = 0.24, p < .05), social activity patterns. Additionally, the association between negative affect and pain (β = −0.07, p < .01) was attenuated in those with more baseline social interactions. Social interaction has the potential to influence mood in adults with OA of the knee, both on a global scale, and through daily variations in interactions. These interactions seem to be directly related to mood, as well as the apparently attenuating the relationship between pain and depression. Daily social interactions showed a robust positive association with contemporaneous positive affect.

User social activity-based routing for cognitive radio networks

The social activities of Primary Users (PUs) and Secondary Users (SUs) affect actual accessible whitespace in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs). However, the impacts of primary activities on available whitespace have been extensively investigated due to the dominating priority of PUs, while the impacts of secondary activities on actual accessible whitespace have been ignored. Therefore, we propose to incorporate the primary and secondary activities in the analysis and decision of the accessible whitespace, namely, both the dominance of PUs over SUs and the competitions among SUs are simultaneously taken into account. Specifically, we first approximate primary activity probability based on the real datasets of mobile phone usage records, then the spectrum opportunity between a pair of communication SUs is deduced based on primary activities. Next, we infer the access probability limit of SUs successfully accessing the whitespace according to the primary activity probability, and depict the secondary activity probability from the views of social activity patterns and social networks respectively. Furthermore, the actual accessible probability of whitespace is given by introducing the competitions among SUs. Finally, a greedy routing algorithm, considering the accessible whitespace and the distance to the destination, is proposed to verify our idea. The experiment results based on the real datasets demonstrate the correctness of our analysis and the advantages of the proposed algorithm.

Social Activity Patterns Drive High Rates of Latent Tuberculosis Infection among Adolescents in Urban Tanzania&amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;—Latent TB Infection in Adolescents, Tanzania

SETTING: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI) among adolescents in a country with a high TB burden, and examine risks of LTBI according to their social activity patterns. METHODS: A cross-sectional study nested within a phase 2b randomised, placebo controlled, double blind study and consisted of 824 adolescents, 13 - 15 years old who had received Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, were attending public secondary schools and had no evidence of active tuberculosis (TB). Anthropometric measurements were obtained, a questionnaire administered, and phlebotomy performed for a T spot interferon-γ release assay (IGRA) to detect LTBI. RESULTS: Among 824 subjects, 149 (18%) had a positive IGRA. After adjusting for the influence of household socioeconomic status, history of TB contact, living environment and nutritional status, LTBI risk was higher in subjects with than without regular informal encounters with traditional alcoholic beverage drinkers (AOR, 6.37 [1.84 - 22.00]). Other significant factors for LTBI risk included contact with TB patient at school (AOR, 3.34 [1.14 - 9.80]), and living close to a health facility, as was observed among those from houses within a 10 - 30-minute walking distance to the nearest health facility, who were less likely to be IGRA-positive than those who were living within a 10-minute walking distance (AOR, 0.30 [95%CI, 0.13 - 0.69]). CONCLUSION: This IGRA study revealed a high prevalence of LTBI among adolescents in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with prior BCG immunization. Informal social encounters were identified as independent risk factors for LTBI, along with a history of contact with TB patients, living environment characteristics and household socioeconomic status. Efforts focusing on risk of MTB transmission in adolescents at informal social gatherings will improve interventions to reduce LTBI in this population and consequently the subsequent risk of developing active TB disease.

MHealth Technologies for Palliative Care Patients at the Interface of In-Patient to Outpatient Care: Protocol of Feasibility Study Aiming to Early Predict Deterioration of Patient's Health Status.

BackgroundPalliative care patients are a particularly vulnerable population and one of the critical phases in patients’ trajectories is discharge from specialized in-patient palliative care into outpatient care, where availability of a palliative care infrastructure is highly variable. A relevant number of potentially avoidable readmissions and emergency visits of palliative patients is observed due to rapid exacerbation of symptoms indicating the need for a closer patient monitoring. In the last years, different mHealth technology applications have been evaluated in many different patient groups.ObjectiveThe aim of our study is to test feasibility of a remote physical and social tracking system in palliative care patients.MethodsA feasibility study with explorative, descriptive study design, comprised of 3 work packages. From the wards of the Clinic of Radiation-Oncology at the University Hospital Zurich, including the specialized palliative care ward, 30 patients will be recruited and will receive a mobile phone and a tracking bracelet before discharge. The aim of work package A is to evaluate if severely ill patients accept to be equipped with a tracking bracelet and a mobile phone (by semiquantitative questionnaires and guideline interviews). Work package B evaluates the technical feasibility and quality of the acquired electronic health data. Work package C will demonstrate whether physical activity parameters, such as step count, sleep duration, social activity patterns like making calls, and vital signs (eg, heart rate) do correlate with subjective health data and can serve as indicator to early detect and predict changes in patients’ health status. Activity parameters will be extracted from the mobile phone’s and wristband’s sensor data using signal processing methods. Subjective health data is captured via electronic version of visual analog scale and Distress Thermometer as well as the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer – Quality of Life Questionnaire C30 in paper version.ResultsEnrollment began in February 2017. First study results will be reported in the middle of 2018.ConclusionsOur project will deliver relevant data on patients’ acceptance of activity and social tracking and test the correlation between subjective symptom assessment and objective activity in the vulnerable population of palliative care patients. The proposed study is meant to be preparatory work for an intervention study to test the effect of wireless monitoring of palliative care patients on symptom control and quality of life.

DynamiCITY: Revealing city dynamics from citizens social media broadcasts

Social media and mobile devices have revolutionized the way people communicate and share information in various contexts, such as in cities. In today’s “smart” cities, massive amounts of multiple forms of geolocated content is generated daily in social media, out of which knowledge for social interactions and urban dynamics can be derived. This work addresses the problem of detecting urban social activity patterns and interactions, by modeling cities into “dynamic areas”, i.e., coherent geographic areas shaped through social activities. Social media users provide the information on such social activities and interactions in cases when they are on the move around the city neighborhoods. The proposed approach models city places as feature vectors which represent users visiting patterns (social activity), the time of observed visits (temporal activity), and the context of functionality of visited places category. To uncover the dynamics of city areas, a clustering approach is proposed which considers the derived feature vectors to group people’s activities with respect to location, time, and context. The proposed methodology has been implemented on the DynamiCITY platform which demonstrates neighborhood analytics via a Web interface that allows end-users to explore neighborhoods dynamics and gain insights for city cross-neighborhood patterns and inter-relationships.

Dynamic response and transfer function of social systems: A neuro-inspired model of collective human activity patterns

The interaction of social networks with the external environment gives rise to non-stationary activity patterns reflecting the temporal structure and strength of exogenous influences that drive social dynamical processes far from an equilibrium state. Following a neuro-inspired approach, based on the dynamics of a passive neuronal membrane, and the firing rate dynamics of single neurons and neuronal populations, we build a state-of-the-art model of the collective social response to exogenous interventions. In this regard, we analyze online activity patterns with a view to determining the transfer function of social systems, that is, the dynamic relationship between external influences and the resulting activity. To this end, first we estimate the impulse response (Green’s function) of collective activity, and then we show that the convolution of the impulse response with a time-varying external influence field accurately reproduces empirical activity patterns. To capture the dynamics of collective activity when the generating process is in a state of statistical equilibrium, we incorporate into the model a noisy input convolved with the impulse response function, thus precisely reproducing the fluctuations of stationary collective activity around a resting value. The outstanding goodness-of-fit of the model results to empirical observations, indicates that the model explains human activity patterns generated by time-dependent external influences in various socio-economic contexts. The proposed model can be used for inferring the temporal structure and strength of external influences, as well as the inertia of collective social activity. Furthermore, it can potentially predict social activity patterns.

Complex Systems Characteristics and Theoretical Development for Analysis Inside Institutions

:Institutions are patterns of social activity that design roles for persons as social actors, service and are serviced by other institutions, and operate as systems. The main activity inside institutions that is utilized to complete the service responsibilities — which includes production — is the formulation and enforcement of rules, regulations, and requirements. The concepts of closed systems, endogeneity, and self-organized systems have been offered as being relevant for the analysis of institutional systems. As explained here, those concepts are inconsistent with the processing of real-world institutions. When conducting analysis inside institutions, it is necessary to recognize, observe, and model the rules, regulations, and requirements which are formulated to be consistent with the normative belief, technological, and ecological criteria of institutions. Generally, social scientists have emphasized belief criteria, and ignored technological and ecological criteria.

Heritage and Sustainability: the Matter of Temporal Shifting and Narrativity in Terms of Urban Development

Due to a raise of network-based society and interaction based decision making processes in contemporary World cultural heritage field must respond by being an active actor of holistic development. Contemporary theory in heritage hardly sheds light on an adjacent processes happening in a field of economy, policy or alteration of social activity patterns. Therefore, the following issue focuses on broader perception on cultural heritage field on the basis of the theory of the narrative. As pointed out in Ricoeur’s (1985) linguistic approach towards narrative theory whereas he suggested to derive the past out of the future and thus to make our present to be a time of initiative in purpose to transpose history into a reasonable decision making. Therefore, the narrative based approach towards an urban heritage (urban heritage here is to be a matrix where various of static structures of past, present and future meet and bias torrents of vivid social structure) contributes to a constant procedure of alteration that is likely enabled by the global-local continuum. The issue is to claim that the latter alteration procedures (those that provide a growth of quantity in terms of Human development) are a set of tools and methods used to rethink and interpret the past; yet the model of the future has been nearly designed. The use of narrativity in heritage is still novel trial to adjust the prevailing heritage discourse. However, the methodology of narrativity either enhances a field of cultural ecology that plays a key role to achieve a convivial place. On the basis of some urban patterns made by Alexander as well as rethinking some researches of Zaleckis, I suggest to take a look back to a politan city structure in order to preserve and transmit a relevant leftovers of a genotype of the Polis into a megapolitan paradigm. To sum it up, the idea of ecological is to be understood as novelty or already designed future to our cities that turn smart . However, the shape or frame for this kind of future must be sculpted by rethinking our past and the processes of alteration inside the past. Urban heritage (stable structures and vivid torrents) dwelled in a field of narrative may suggest a unique ways to turn about the physical environment in order to ensure convivial presence of cities as well as to prevent drastic alteration processes (that is already happening) and preserve a genotypic identity of the past. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.13.4.13555

Locations that Support Social Activity Participation of the Aging Population.

Social activities are an important aspect of health and quality of life of the aging population. They are key elements in the prevention of loneliness. In order to create living environments that stimulate older adults to engage in social activities, more insight is needed in the social activity patterns of the aging population. This study therefore analyzes the heterogeneity in older adults’ preferences for different social activity location types and the relationship between these preferences and personal and mobility characteristics. This is done using a latent class multinomial logit model based on two-day diary data collected in 2014 in Noord-Limburg in the Netherlands among 213 respondents aged 65 or over. The results show that three latent classes can be identified among the respondents who recorded social activities in the diary: a group that mainly socializes at home, a group that mainly socializes at a community center and a group that is more likely to socialize at public ‘third’ places. The respondents who did not record any interactions during the two days, are considered as a separate segment. Relationships between segment membership and personal and mobility characteristics were tested using cross-tabulations with chi-square tests and analyses of variance. The results suggest that both personal and mobility characteristics play an important role in social activity patterns of older adults.

Routing Relevant Data to Group Mobile Users by Mining Social Trajectory Pattern

A routing scheme for a group of mobile users for wireless ad-hoc networks is presented. The proposed scheme mines social activity patterns from wireless traces, and exploits social user group for efficient data routing among users based on a data publish approach. Simulation results based on real-world wireless traces show that our routing scheme reduces routing cost for a large mobile user group with a factor of 1.8 compared to a baseline counterpart.