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This paper reports the impact of a major life event–death–on the physical, psychological and social well-being of the deceased’s close friends. We utilised data from a large longitudinal survey covering a period of 14 years (2002–2015) consisting a cohort of 26,515 individuals in Australia, of whom 9,586 had experienced the death of at least one close friend. This longitudinal cohort dataset comprises responses to the SF-36 (health related quality of life measure) and allowed for analysis of the short and longer-term impacts of bereavement. In order to manage the heterogeneity of the socio-demographics of respondents who did/not experience a death event, we use a new and robust approach known as the Entropy Balancing method to construct a set of weights applied to the bereaved group and the control group (the group that did not experience death). This approach enables us to match the two groups so that the distribution of socio-demographic variables between the two groups are balanced. These variables included gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, personality traits, religion, relative socio-economic disadvantage, economic resources, and education and occupation and where they resided. The data show, for the first time, a range of negative and enduring consequences experienced by people following the death of a close friend. Significant adverse physical and psychological well-being, poorer mental health and social functioning occur up to four years following bereavement. Bereaved females experienced a sharper fall in vitality, suffered greater deterioration in mental health, impaired emotional and social functioning than the male counterparts up to four years after the death. The data show that the level of social connectedness plays an important role in bereavement outcomes. Specifically, we found that less socially active respondents experienced a longer deterioration in physical and psychological health. Finally, we found evidence that the death of a close friend lowered the respondent’s satisfaction with their health. Since death of friends is a universal phenomenon, we conclude the paper by reflecting on the need to recognise the death of a close friend as a substantial experience, and to offer support and services to address this disenfranchised grief. Recognising bereaved friends as a group experiencing adverse outcomes can be used internationally to prompt health and psychological services to assist this specific group, noting that there may be substantial longevity to the negative sequelae of the death of a friend. Facilitating bereaved people’s support networks may be a fruitful approach to minimising these negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual minority young people use licit and illicit substances at disproportionate levels. However, little is known about the perceptions of substance use among members of LGBT communities. This paper reports the results of a content analysis of 45 semi-structured interviews about substance use in LGBT communities with sexual minority young people (n = 31) and community stakeholders (n = 14). Results indicated both sexual minority youth and community stakeholders perceived the use and acceptance of substances to be higher in LGBT communities compared to the general population. Participants identified a range of characteristics potentially leading to higher levels of substance use including peer pressure, high exposure to substance use, and the high concentrations of licensed venues in LGBT communities. Marginalisation, discrimination and mental health were also perceived as important reasons for these disparities. Community stakeholders identified a range of potential interventions including legislation to address discrimination and substance use, increased services and activities, advertising in commercial LGBT venues and social media, and reinvigorating community cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more and more political candidates using social media for campaigning, researchers are looking at measuring the effectiveness of this medium. Most research, however, concentrates on the bare count of likes (or twitter mentions) in an attempt to correlate social media presence and winning. In this paper, we propose a novel method, Interaction Strength Plot (IntS) to measure the passive interactions between a candidate’s posts on Facebook and the users (liking the posts). Using this method on original Malaysian General Election (MGE13) and Australian Federal Elections (AFE13) Facebook Pages (FP) campaign data, we label an FP as performing well if both the posting frequency and the likes gathered are above average. Our method shows that over 60% of the MGE13 candidates and 85% of the AFE13 candidates studied in this paper had under-performing FP. Some of these FP owners would have been identified as popular based on bare count. Thus our performance chart is a vital step forward in measuring the effectiveness of online campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Materials and Methods: In this paper, we propose a theoretical model based upon previous studies about personal and social network dynamics of job performance. We provide empirical support for this model using real-world data within the context of the Australian radiology profession. An examination of radiologists’ professional network topology through structural-positional and relational dimensions and radiologists’ personal characteristics in terms of knowledge, experience and self-esteem is provided. Thirty one breast imaging radiologists completed a purpose designed questionnaire regarding their network characteristics and personal attributes. These radiologists also independently read a test set of 60 mammographic cases: 20 cases with cancer and 40 normal cases. A Jackknife free response operating characteristic (JAFROC) method was used to measure the performance of the radiologists’ in detecting breast cancers. Results: Correlational analyses showed that reader performance was positively correlated with the social network variables of degree centrality and effective size, but negatively correlated with constraint and hierarchy. For personal characteristics, the number of mammograms read per year and self-esteem (self-evaluation) positively correlated with reader performance. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that the combination of number of mammograms read per year and network’s effective size, hierarchy and tie strength was the best fitting model, explaining 63.4% of the variance in reader performance. The results from this study indicate the positive relationship between reading high volumes of cases by radiologists and expertise development, but also strongly emphasise the association between effective social/professional interactions and informal knowledge sharing with high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook, the most widely used social media platform, has been adopted by public health organisations for health promotion and behaviour change campaigns and activities. However, limited information is available on the most effective and efficient use of Facebook for this purpose. This study sought to identify the features of Facebook posts that are associated with higher user engagement on Australian public health organisations’ Facebook pages. We selected 20 eligible pages through a systematic search and coded 360-days of posts for each page. Posts were coded by: post type (e.g., photo, text only etc.), communication technique employed (e.g. testimonial, informative etc.) and use of marketing elements (e.g., branding, use of mascots). A series of negative binomial regressions were used to assess associations between post characteristics and user engagement as measured by the number of likes, shares and comments. Our results showed that video posts attracted the greatest amount of user engagement, although an analysis of a subset of the data suggested this may be a reflection of the Facebook algorithm, which governs what is and is not shown in user newsfeeds and appear to preference videos over other post types. Posts that featured a positive emotional appeal or provided factual information attracted higher levels of user engagement, while conventional marketing elements, such as sponsorships and the use of persons of authority, generally discouraged user engagement, with the exception of posts that included a celebrity or sportsperson. Our results give insight into post content that maximises user engagement and begins to fill the knowledge gap on effective use of Facebook by public health organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]