Quality of life and multilevel contact network structures: an online participatory cohort study among healthy adults in Taiwan (Preprint)

BACKGROUND People’s quality of life diverges on their demographics, socioeconomic status, and social connections. OBJECTIVE By taking both demographic and socioeconomic features into account, we investigated how quality of life varied on social networks using data from both longitudinal surveys and contact diaries in a yearlong study. METHODS Our four-wave repeated measures of quality of life follow the brief version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life scale (WHOQOL-BREF). In our regression analysis we integrated these survey measures with key time-varying and multilevel network indices based on contact diaries. RESULTS People’s quality of life may decrease if their daily contacts contain high proportions of weak ties or embedded ties. In contrast, people tend to perceive a better quality of life when their daily contacts are face-to-face or initiated by others, and when they contact someone with whom they can discuss important life issues. CONCLUSIONS Our findings imply that both functional and structural aspects of the social network play important but different roles in shaping people’s QoL (quality of life).