Studies on the social networks in Singapore

Abstract

There have been recent cases of human to human transmission infectious diseases such as bird flu that has took the lives of many people. Studies have shown that there are cases of human-to-human transmissions of infectious diseases that had occurred and indications that the virus has acquired the ability to spread among humans are becoming a major concern for all of us. This has caused the number of contacts an individual has to become important as the relationship comes with the risk of infection. The more contacts an individual has, the higher the risk of getting infected and/or spreading the infection to their contacts. Therefore it is important to characterize and study the interpersonal contact patterns of a social network in Singapore, which can potentially lead to disease transmissions in a community. Surveys were conducted to gather information of the people living in Singapore. The information includes demographic, social contacts and geographic data. The data would be used to determine the contact patterns of the participants from the different gender and age groups. An analysis will be done on the data that are collected and it include the studies of the relationships of contacts, distribution of contacts similar recurring contacts and the different contact types met and experienced by all the participants, over the period of the different weekdays and weekends. From the findings on the different genders, one can infer that genders make slight differences to the total number of people the participants come in contact with regardless of their age. It is evident from the findings that the contacts patterns occurring over the different weekdays had a significant impact on the components of analyses. Therefore, in the event of a pandemic, where the human-to-human transmissions of infectious diseases are imminent, priority treatments and immunizations should be targeted at the population aged 35-44, which have the highest number of average contacts on the different weekdays.