A Semantic Social Network Analysis Tool for Sensitivity Analysis and What-If Scenario Testing in Alcohol Consumption Studies
Publicated to:International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health. 15 (11): E2420- - 2018-11-01 15(11), DOI: 10.3390/ijerph15112420
Authors: Alberto Benitez-Andrades, Jose; Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Alejandro; Benavides, Carmen; Sanchez-Valdeon, Leticia; Garcia, Isaias;
Affiliations
Abstract
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a set of techniques developed in the field of social and behavioral sciences research, in order to characterize and study the social relationships that are established among a set of individuals. When building a social network for performing an SNA analysis, an initial process of data gathering is achieved in order to extract the characteristics of the individuals and their relationships. This is usually done by completing a questionnaire containing different types of questions that will be later used to obtain the SNA measures needed to perform the study. There are, then, a great number of different possible network-generating questions and also many possibilities for mapping the responses to the corresponding characteristics and relationships. Many variations may be introduced into these questions (the way they are posed, the weights given to each of the responses, etc.) that may have an effect on the resulting networks. All these different variations are difficult to achieve manually, because the process is time-consuming and error-prone. The tool described in this paper uses semantic knowledge representation techniques in order to facilitate this kind of sensitivity studies. The base of the tool is a conceptual structure, called ontology that is able to represent the different concepts and their definitions. The tool is compared to other similar ones, and the advantages of the approach are highlighted, giving some particular examples from an ongoing SNA study about alcohol consumption habits in adolescents.
Keywords
Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2018, it was in position 67/186, thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Public, Environmental & Occupational Health. Notably, the journal is positioned en el Cuartil Q2 para la agencia Scopus (SJR) en la categoría Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis.
From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 1.47, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)
Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-26, the following number of citations:
- WoS: 4
- Scopus: 7
- Europe PMC: 2