Session: A Social fMRI: Integrating Mobile Technology, Social Network Analysis, and Ecological Momentary Assessment to Understand the Daily Lives of Adolescents (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium is present a unique methodology that captures the mechanisms of the social ecology of adolescents generating rich data and imaging of their social and environmental determinants of health. Social Functional Mechanisms Relationship Imagining (fMRI), (Aharony, 2011) is a methodology that collects and combines psychological, behavioral, social, and spatial daily life data by integrating multiple technologies and methodologies. Recent technological and methodological advances provide the opportunity to examine these mechanisms in natural settings and in unprecedented detail. Utilizing mobile phone-based data collection, we collect automated location data (GPS & cell phone tower triangulation) and manually entered Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data to assess the social and environmental determinants of health for 250 urban youth for two years.  This unique data set is applied to developing system-level models of the co-evolution of substance use behaviors, peer affiliations, and the use and meaning of geographical space over time.  We will present a highly contextually specific research approach that grounds social networks within the physical and social environment of adolescents’ lives. We use EMA methodology to simultaneously assess situational contingencies (behaviors, emotions, evaluations, peers, and locations) on adolescent substance use in real time with teens for two years, beginning at ages 13 or 14. By combining sampled specific coordinate data of location with a series of standard surveys, this approach will integrate the personal, social, and environmental processes associated with initiation and escalation of substance use. We are modeling the evolution of risk and protective mechanisms affecting substance, constituting a necessary step for building scientifically driven preventive interventions.

This symposium will include three presentations covering the following themes: a) Design of an Interactive Text Messaging Platform for Adolescent Intervention; b) A Bipartite Dynamic Networks Approach to Place-Based Risk among Urban Adolescents; and c) Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Capture Adolescents’ Experiences. These presentations will focus on theory and practice about place-based understanding of risk, approaches toward ecological understanding of person-environment interactions, examples of work from diverse areas, using diverse methods attempting to incorporate these understandings into a single study design.  Presentations will be followed by a nationally recognized discussant to review and reflect on presentations strengths and challenges for prevention science.

Specifically, the goals of this symposium are:
1. Provide exposure to current technological and methodological efforts in place-based prevention research
2. Identify problems and challenges in this area of research and articulate strategies to address these issues
3. Find commonalities and overlapping interests among SPR members