Network science and oral health research

The present overview of research methods describes a scientific enquiry paradigm that is well established in other disciplines, including health research, but that is fairly new to oral health research. Social networks analysis (SNA) or network science research is a set of relational methods purporting to identify and characterize the connections between members of a system or network, as well as the structure of the network. Persons and communities making up the members of networks have commonly been the focus of SNA studies but corporations or living organisms might just as well be organized in networks. SNA is grounded in both graphic imagery and computational models. SNA is based on the assumptions that features and structure of networks are amenable to characterization, that such information sheds light on the ways members of the network relate to each other (sharing information, diseases, norms, and so on), and that through these connections between members the overall network structure and characteristics are shaped. The overview resorts to examples specific to oral health themes and proposes a few general avenues for population-based research.