epidemiology

Identifing Key Opinion Leaders in Social Networks

Knowledge transfer: is a process whereby evidence based medicine is transferred through various media to decision makers for application in practice. Evidence suggests that informal communication among physicians, like interactions between opinion leaders and others, plays a vital role in knowledge transfer and in changing practice behaviour.      In the diffusion of innovation process, opinion leaders are not necessarily innovators, but more evaluators whose judgments are trusted by their followers. One of the most distinctive features of the opinion leadership method as a diffusion method is the use of informal and interpersonal communication, rather than formal and other means of communication, such as media.  Opinion leaders are those peoples (physicians) who are perceived by their colleagues as educationally influential. Rogers identified several generalizable characteristics of opinion leaders: They have greater exposure to mass media, are more cosmopolite, have greater contact with change agents, have greater social participation, have higher socioeconomic status, and are more innovative rather than their followers. Typical characteristic principles of opinion leadership include: homophily, status, education, credibility, individuation, and innovation. The role of this person is :Advocates and endorses evidenced based care/guidelines, Willing innovator, Contributes time and leadership to multidisciplinary teams, increase quality projects, Empowers others to facilitate change, Uses data to raise awareness, promote change. Identifying opinion leaders methods in terms of synthesizing characteristics of social network data collection methods categorized five methods–sociometric, informants’ rating, snowball, observation, and self-designating methods–through a literature review of opinion leadership studies. Each network centrality measures can be explained as: 1) Degrees–measure of activity 2) Betweenness–measure of control 3) Closeness–measure of access. In opinion leadership studies, individuals who have higher degrees in one of these three are conventionally regarded as those who would be opinion leaders.

Collected by: Mostafa Shokouhi

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