Contact patterns in a high school: a comparison between data collected using wearable sensors, contact diaries and friendship surveys

Abstract: Given their importance in shaping social networks and determining how information or diseases propagate in a population, human interactions are the subject of many data collection efforts. To this aim, different methods are commonly used, from diaries and surveys to wearable sensors. These methods show advantages and limitations but are rarely compared in a given setting. As surveys targeting friendship relations might suffer less from memory biases than contact diaries, it is also interesting to explore how daily contact patterns compare with friendship relations and with online social links. Here we make progresses in these directions by leveraging data from a French high school: face-to-face contacts measured by two concurrent methods, sensors and diaries; self-reported friendship surveys; Facebook links. We compare the data sets and find that most short contacts are not reported in diaries while long contacts have larger reporting probability, with a general tendency to overestimate durations. Measured contacts corresponding to reported friendship can have durations of any length but all long contacts correspond to reported friendships. Online links not associated to reported friendships correspond to short face-to-face contacts, highlighting the different nature of reported friendships and online links. Diaries and surveys suffer from a low sampling rate, showing the higher acceptability of sensor-based platform. Despite the biases, we found that the overall structure of the contact network, i.e., the mixing patterns between classes, is correctly captured by both self-reported contacts and friendships networks. Overall, diaries and surveys tend to yield a correct picture of the structural organization of the contact network, albeit with much less links, and give access to a sort of backbone of the contact network corresponding to the strongest links in terms of cumulative durations.

• The paper compares wearable sensors, contact diaries, and friendship surveys, revealing that sensors capture many short interactions while diaries tend to overestimate longer ones.
• It finds that declared friendships in surveys align with longer sensor-recorded contacts, whereas Facebook links often do not correspond to real-world interactions.
• The study highlights the value of merging diverse data sources to refine social behavior models and improve public health intervention strategies.

Human Interaction Data Collection and Analysis in a High School Setting

This paper conducts a nuanced examination of human contact patterns within a high school environment, comparing data collected through wearable sensors, self-reported contact diaries, and friendship surveys. The primary objective is to analyze the discrepancies and alignments between different data collection methods, offering insights into their respective advantages and limitations.

Methods and Data Collection

The study utilizes wearable sensors from the SocioPatterns collaboration to record face-to-face interactions among students over one week. Concurrently, it involves contact diaries where students explicitly detail their daily interactions and friendship surveys to map out social links within the school. A subset of the population also provides data on their Facebook social networks.

These methodologies contribute diverse data types: temporally resolved contact information from sensors, aggregated interaction durations from diaries, and social network topology from surveys.

Key Findings

1. Contact Durations and Reporting Bias: Wearable sensors captured a wide range of contact durations, with many short-duration contacts going unreported in diaries. Conversely, longer-duration interactions had a higher rate of diary reporting. This indicates a tendency toward overestimating durations in self-reports.
2. Network Structure and Class Mixing: Despite the lower link density in diary-reported networks, the general structural organization and class mixing patterns were consistent across both sensor and diary data.
3. Friendship Surveys vs. Contact Data: A significant number of reported friendships matched with sensor-recorded contacts, particularly those with longer durations. However, not all face-to-face contacts corresponded to declared friendships, underscoring the difference in interaction types.
4. Facebook vs. Physical Interactions: The nature of Facebook friendships varied substantially from reported friendships. Many Facebook links did not correspond to reported friendships, suggesting different interaction dynamics in online versus real-world settings.
5. Multiplex Network Analysis: The investigation into multiplex networks of students' relationships revealed that while reported friendships correlate with longer duration contacts, Facebook friendships are more transient and often lack the sustained interaction indicative of friendship surveys.

Implications

This study illustrates the complexities inherent in data collection of human interactions. While sensors provide comprehensive contact data, diaries and surveys offer insights into perceived relationships and social structure. Understanding these methodologies' respective biases allows for more effective modeling of social dynamics and epidemiological simulations.

The research highlights the significance of blending multiple data types to gain a holistic view of social interactions, which is especially useful for designing public health interventions and understanding information propagation in social networks.

Future Directions

To enhance the robustness of interaction analysis, future studies could expand to varied environments beyond high schools, exploring contexts with different social dynamics. Further development of hybrid models integrating sensor and survey data could yield richer insights. Such integration is crucial for the design and evaluation of policies that depend on accurate social mixing data, such as epidemic control measures.

Overall, this work provides a critical examination of the methodologies used in social network data collection, laying the groundwork for improved strategies in understanding human social behavior.