Using Social Network Analysis to Assess Mentorship and Collaboration in a Public Health Network
ORIGINAL RESEARCH — Volume 12 — July 30, 2015
PEER REVIEWED
Circles represent 97 individual members and partners (actors). Circle color indicates organizational affiliation to member centers and partner organizations. A line between 2 circles indicates that 1 or both actors reported the mentorship or collaboration tie between them. The lines in Figure 1a (approximately 150 lines) represent mentorship offered or received by the actors; the lines in Figure 1b (approximately 540 lines) represent collaboration on any kind of product.
Figure 1. Sociograms of the individual-level mentorship and collaboration networks of the Healthy Aging Research Network members and partners, United States, January 2014.
Figure 2a shows 10 circles, 9 of which surround the center circle. Seven of the circles represent Member Centers A through G, and the remaining 3 represent affiliate centers: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other aging organizations. Most circles are linked to all other circles through bidirectional arrows. These arrows have different widths that reflect the number of mentorship pairs between the 2 organizations. Some circles have self-ties, because mentorship can exist between members of the same organization. Figure 2b shows the same circles. All circles are connected to all other circles through simple lines. These lines also have different widths that reflect the number of collaboration pairs between the 2 organizations. All circles have self-ties, indicating that internal collaboration was observed for all organizations.
Figure 2. Sociograms of the mentorship and collaboration networks of the Healthy Aging Research Network members and partners aggregated at the organizational level, January 2014.
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