Siobhan A O'Halloran, Joshua Hayward, Melissa Valdivia Cabrera, Tiana Felmingham, Penny Fraser, Cindy Needham, Jaimie Poorter, Doug Creighton, Michael Johnstone, Melanie Nichols, Steven Allender
BACKGROUND: System dynamics approaches, including group model building (GMB) and causal loop diagrams (CLDs), can be used to document complex public health problems from a community perspective. This paper aims to apply Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods to combine multiple CLDs created by local communities into a summary CLD, to identify common drivers of the health and wellbeing of children and young people. METHODS: Thirteen community CLDs regarding children and young people health and wellbeing were merged into one diagram involving three steps: (1) combining variable names; (2) CLD merging, where multiple CLDs were combined into one CLD with a set of unique variables and connections; (3) paring, where the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method was used to generate a cut-point to reduce the number of variables and connections and to rank the overall importance of each variable in the merged CLD...
March 19, 2024: BMC Public Health