Recent research on the social network concept and cancer

Abstract

Purpose of reviewThis review covers articles in 2018 and early 2019 that employed the concept of networks and social interactions in research on how patients with cancer cope, receive and respond to medical treatment and allied support. The use of social aspects, and more formally the method of social network analysis for research on social aspects of cancer is quite new. Although we paid special attention to articles that used formal social network analysis, we noted that those articles cover just over a quarter of the material we reviewed. Most articles that incorporated social aspects of cancer did not intend to formalize those aspects but treated the network concept as a way to characterize social support, social influence, or social responsibilities. Recent findingsWe identified 74 recent articles that mentioned the network concept for research about cancer, excluding gene interaction networks. Of those 74 articles, 21 measured specific relationships between individuals or organizations and/or attributes of those individuals or organizations connected to participants or to others. Primary foci of the network analysis and nonnetwork analysis studies were breast cancer, social support for patients, and they usually at least considered sex and age of the cancer patients/survivors. Social media received some attention, and there were some studies considering quality of life and mental health. Among network analysis studies, size of network and number of people providing emotional/informational/ instrumental support occurred in more than a couple studies but not the majority. There was little similarity among studies -whether using network analysis or not -suggesting that theory building and methodological development are in early stages.

Influence of Social Support Network and Perceived Social Support on the Subjective Wellbeing of Mothers of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…A breadth of studies have suggested the important role of social networks in maintaining physical and mental health ( Peer and Hillman, 2014 ; Latkin and Knowlton, 2015 ; Jones and Storksdieck, 2019 ; Lin et al, 2019 ), but scholars have yet to explore such an effect further ( Hunter et al, 2019 ; Chen Y. T. et al, 2021 ). Originally, the relation between social networks and individuals’ physical and mental health was viewed from two perspectives.…”

Web-Based Research Trends on Child and Adolescent Cancer Survivors Over the Last 5 Years: Text Network Analysis and Topic Modeling Study

“…In the field of adult cancer and cancer survivor care, the number of studies applying a text network analysis to confirm the knowledge structure and overall research trends in the field of interest have increased over the past 10 years [16,[22][23][24][25]. However, few studies that were published in 2017 applied a network analysis method to child and adolescent cancer survivors [15].…”

“…Exploiting a text network analysis to study research trends provides useful information with new ideas for future research [ 15 , 16 ]. These results can be used to form a body of knowledge by quantitatively analyzing a large number of papers and qualitatively interpreting the discovered knowledge structure to identify a certain pattern in the scattered data [ 17 ].…”

Feasibility, usability, and acceptability of personalized web-based assessment of social network and daily social support interactions over time

“…Some work indicates that larger social networks can protect against mortality in cancer survivors [ 31 ] and ease burden for caregivers [ 18 ]. Size of network alone, however, is unlikely to explain the buffering influence of social support independent of network membership and quality and quantity of interactions [ 25 ].…”

“…Social network assessment measures used in oncology populations are secondary analyses of retrospective data, or prospective studies that collect information about support at baseline only [ 16 , 25 ] and tend to rely on general measures of social integration or participation (e.g., marital status, volunteering, church attendance) and/or static measures of functional social support (e.g., global ratings of perceived support) [ 19 ]. While informative, these studies are limited by a lack of robust egocentric network data that are necessary for drawing conclusions about the structure and compositions of real-world support networks, including information about relationships and ties between personal support network members [ 16 ].…”