Fiona Dobbie

Social Network Research, Egonets and Qualitative Research: Methodology Guidance and Critical Reflection in the Case of IncludeAge

Dr. Fiona Dobbie is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research for the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. Fiona is an applied qualitative and mixed method researcher working in health promotion and public health for over 20 years, as a research commissioner, researcher and research manager across the public, voluntary and private sectors. In 2011, she returned to academia where her research focus has predominantly centred on the design and evaluation of complex health behaviour change interventions, with a particular interest in social network interventions. She has particular expertise in conducting process evaluations to explore how interventions work in real-life settings. In this seminar, Fiona will share how she has incorporated social network research into qualitative interviews using the UK IncludeAge Project as a case example to gain a deeper understanding of the place and context in which social networks are situated.

Ego-centric networks (Egonets) are a research methodology which examines the close personal contacts of an individual and how they can influence behaviour, attitudes or outcomes of a particular phenomenon. Egonets are part of social network analysis (SNA), which is often criticized for being too quantitative in focus resulting in a lack of engagement from qualitative researchers. Dr Dobbie, an applied qualitative and mixed method public health researcher, has conducted several qualitative research studies where she has integrated egonet mapping into one-to-one interviews to generate a deeper understanding of the context in which social networks are situated. Drawing on an applied example from the Include Age study (https://includeage.co.uk/).

Please find the recording of the lecture through this link.