BACKGROUND The future of health care services in the European Union faces the triple challenges of aging, fiscal restriction, and inclusion. Co-production offers ways to manage informal care resources to help them cater for the growing needs of elderly people. Social media (SM) is seen as a critical enabler for co-production. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to investigate how SM-pri...

OBJECTIVES Loneliness is an important influence on quality of life in old age and has been conceptualised as consisting of two dimensions, social and emotional. This article describes analyses that sought to produce models of social and emotional loneliness in older people, using demographic, psychological and health, and social variables. METHOD Older people (aged 65+, n=1255) from the Barns...

In this study we apply Social Network Analysis and Agent Based Simulation techniques to visualize and explore informal social networks amongst staff at the Akdeniz University Hospital to assess and evaluate properties of the organization in terms of its ability to share knowledge and innovate, which is crucial for healthcare organizations delivering a health service. We first prepared an e-mail...

This paper seeks to contribute to social capital research by linking measures of formal and informal forms of social capital to social mobility trajectories and assessing their impact on social trust. Drawing on data from a recent national survey--Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (2003/2004)--we analyse formal civic engagement and informal social connections. The latter data are obtained u...

As part of long-term care reforms, home-care organisations in the Netherlands are required to strengthen the linkage between formal and informal caregivers of home-dwelling older adults. Information on the variety in mixed care networks may help home-care organisations to develop network type-dependent strategies to connect with informal caregivers. This study first explores how structural (siz...

OBJECTIVES To describe the structure of informal networks for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) living in the community, to understand the quality of relationship of informal networks, and to understand the role of informal networks in the prevention and management of secondary health conditions (SHCs). DESIGN Mixed-method descriptive study. SETTING Ontario, Canada Participants: C...

Mature social networking services are one of the greatest assets of today’s organizations. This valuable asset, however, can also be a threat to an organization’s confidentiality. Members of social networking websites expose not only their personal information, but also details about the organizations for which they work. In this paper we analyze several commercial organizations by mining data ...

Informal learning is the biggest undiscovered treasure in today’s workplace. Marcia Conner, author and often-cited voice for workplace learning, suggests that “Informal learning accounts for over 75% of the learning taking place in organizations today” (1997). IBM understands the value of the hyperconnected informal workplace and informal learning that comes through mentoring. This case study e...

Latina mothers in the United States enjoy surprisingly favorable birth outcomes despite their social disadvantages. This "Latina paradox" is particularly evident among Mexican-born women. The social and cultural factors that contribute to this paradox are maintained by community networks--informal systems of prenatal care that are composed of family, friends, community members, and lay health w...