Pilot study of repeated social network analysis (SNA) to assess structural changes in an educational program evaluation

• Published in: SN Social Sciences 2023-01, Vol.3 (1), Article 20
• Main Authors: Smith, C. Scott, Fisher, Amber K., King, India C., Naidoo, Sarah W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Education; Linguistics; Original Paper; Psychology; Social Sciences
• ISSN: 2662-9283; 2662-9283
• DOI: 10.1007/s43545-022-00592-5

This study was performed at one site of a multi-site, multi-year interprofessional educational intervention. Objective Perform a pilot study to assess the ability of repeated Social Network Analyses to document a structural change from hierarchical to small-world networks in an educational intervention. Design we performed Social Network Analysis (SNA) of all interprofessional conferences each year looking for co-presentation (joint presentation by more than one speaker), especially when it involved more than one profession. We created NxN matrices, where N was the total number of speakers, which were coded by profession. Each matrix element was filled by the number of co-presentations between that faculty pair. The matrices were imported into Ucinet for quantitative analysis. We also graphed the social network maps of all speaker pairings. Subjects We included all listed speakers from the four core professions (medicine, pharmacy, nurse practitioner, psychology) for all conferences and grand rounds between 2013–2016. Main Measures For each year, we calculated the clustering coefficient, the small-world index, and Eigenvalue centrality for that year’s speakers. Key results over the four years of the study, clustering coefficients increased from 0.5 to 1.027, the small-world index increased from 3.149 to 31.39, and Eigenvalue centrality grew to include persons with large values (more importance) from each profession. Co-teaching events outside the program also increased and developed more relational structure (connectedness), suggesting an influence from the educational intervention on institutional norms of coteaching. The analytical results suggest a change from a physician-centric hierarchical to an egalitarian small-world social structure. Social network maps confirm this impression. This pilot study suggests that repeated Social Network Analysis may work well for documenting important structural changes as part of a program evaluation of interprofessional educational interventions.