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Indiana
Consortium For Mental Health |
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Abstract Reprint # 62: "SORRY, I FORGOT": THE ROLE OF RECALL ERROR IN LONGITUDINAL PERSONAL NETWORK STUDIES Eric
R. Wright, Ph.D., & Bernice A. Pescosolido, Ph.D.
Network
researchers have been concerned with evaluating the accuracy of
individuals' descriptions of their personal networks for many years.
This paper examines the problem of "forgetfulness" and the
extent to which it influences the measurement of ego-centric or personal
social networks over time. The data come from the Indianapolis Network
Mental Health Study (INMHS), a longitudinal study of the social networks
of a cohort of individuals newly diagnosed with mental health problems.
We focus on 114 people who completed two or more waves of the INMHS and
explore the frequency that names mentioned in prior waves were
forgotten. The results indicate that the membership of the respondents'
networks changed significantly over the three waves; however, less than
5 percent of the observed change was due to respondents forgetting ties
mentioned in prior waves. The vast majority of changes observed in
their networks reflected "true" change in the composition of
the respondents' social networks. Overall, the results suggest
that people with mental health problems can provide descriptions of the
changes in their social networks that are reliable and relatively free
of recall bias. The implications of these findings for measuring
personal networks over time are discussed.
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