The Nordic Society for Veterinary Epidemiology (NOSOVE) is an informal organization with the vision of advancing veterinary epidemiology. The volunteering board aim to fulfill the vision by providing courses and opportunities to socialise and strengthen the network among post graduate students, researchers and others with an interest in epidemiology. Events are presented through the society network (blogspot).
NOSOVE started in 1988 as a collaboration between the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and has expanded to include the Baltic countries, but welcome members and participants from all countries.

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Network Analysis Workshop

 [Proposal for next NOSOVE course in June 2014, please vote in the poll] 

Rob Christley

Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology

Head of Epidemiology & Public Health

School of Veterinary Science

University of Liverpool,

UK


Provisional Outline

The course will introduce the terminology, methods and some of the software available to analyse networks. The workshop will be a combination of short lectures, discussions and hands-on analysis (half of each day will be spent completing exercises designed to give participants practical experience of network analysis). By the end of the workshop participants will be able to design and undertake studies appropriate for the collection of network data, and use such data to create network images, describe important features of the network and identify important individuals and subgroups within the network. In addition, we will cover aspects of the statistical analysis of network data and the impact of networks on infectious disease dynamics..

Data will be provided for the practical sessions; however, participants will be encouraged to bring their own data to work on during the workshop. In addition, participants are encouraged to discuss their ideas for network analysis with the group.

The course outline below provides the basic course structure and topics to be covered. This may be subject to some modification.



DAY 1

a.m.
Theory
INTRODUCTION
  • Overview of the course
  • What is network analysis?
-   What is a network?
-   The network paradigm
-   History
  • Applications of network analysis
-   Veterinary
-   Other applications
  • Network topology; types and properties of networks
  • Books, references, and other useful information!



p.m.
Practical
FROM DATA TO ILLUSTRATION
  • Introduction to data sets
  • Introduction to the software
  • Data entry
  • Viewing and editing data
  • Data manipulation
  • Importing attribute data
  • Visualising a network
  • Saving NetDraw files




DAY 2

a.m.
Theory
FROM ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS
§   Analysis of individual nodes
-    Centrality
§   Analysis of a network
-    Cohesion
§   Analysis of groups and regions
-    Components, cohesive sub-groups
-    Structural & regular equivalence, blockmodelling



p.m.
Practical
FROM ILLUSTRATION TO ANALYSIS
§   Analysis of individual nodes
§   Analysis of networks
§   Analysis of sub-groups







DAY 3

a.m.
Theory
FURTHER TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS
§   Network data collection
§   Networks and disease dynamics
§   Discussion session
-    Presentation of research ideas or data by the participants (if they choose)



p.m.
Practical
FURTHER TOPICS IN NETWORK ANALYSIS
§   Brief overview of other network software
§   Statistical analysis of network data
§   Continue working on exercises from day 1 and 2
§   Work on your own data

Requirements:

·      Course material with notes, practicals and solutions to the exercises will be provided during the first session of the workshop.
·      Participants will be required to bring their own laptop.

·      Software required: UCINET. A free trial version will be provided for the course.

4 comments:

  1. I would like to have this course

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would like to have this course too

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm also interrested in this course. What is the status on whether this or the syndromic surveillance course will be held?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The conclusion was that there will be a course on Social Network Analysis in the summer 2014 in Estonia.
    http://nosove.blogspot.com/2013/06/future-nosove-course-social-network.html

    ReplyDelete