Educational Intervention Re-Wires Social Interactions in Isolated Village Networks

Abstract

Social networks shape behavior, disseminate information, and undergird collective action within communities. Consequently, they can be very valuable in the design of effective interventions to improve community well-being. But any exogenous intervention in networked groups, including ones that just involve the provision of information, can also possibly modify the underlying network structure itself, and some interventions are indeed designed to do so. While social networks obey certain fundamental principles (captured by network-level statistics, such as the degree distribution or transitivity level), they can nevertheless undergo change across time, as people form and break ties with each other within an overall population. Here, using a randomized controlled trial in 110 remote Honduran villages involving 8,331 people, we evaluated the effects of a 22-month public health intervention on pre-existing social network structures. We leverage a two-stage randomized design, where a varying fraction of households received the intervention in each village. In low-dosage villages (5%, 10%, 20%, and 30%) compared to untreated villages (0%), over a two-year period, individuals who received the intervention tended to sever both inbound and outbound ties with untreated individuals whom they previously trusted for health advice. Conversely, in high-dosage villages (50%, 75%, and 100%), treated individuals increased both their inbound and outbound ties. Furthermore, although the intervention was health-focused, it also reshaped broader friendship and financial ties. In aggregate, the imposition of a novel health information regime in rural villages (as a kind of social institution) led to a significant rewiring in individuals particular connections, but it still had a limited effect on the overall global structure of the village-wide social networks.