Journal article
Influence of contact definitions in assessment of the relative importance of social settings in disease transmission risk
KJ Bolton, JM McCaw, K Forbes, P Nathan, G Robins, P Pattison, T Nolan, J McVernon
Plos One | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE | Published : 2012
Abstract
Background: Realistic models of disease transmission incorporating complex population heterogeneities require input from quantitative population mixing studies. We use contact diaries to assess the relative importance of social settings in respiratory pathogen spread using three measures of person contact hours (PCH) as proxies for transmission risk with an aim to inform bipartite network models of respiratory pathogen transmission. Methods and Findings: Our survey examines the contact behaviour for a convenience sample of 65 adults, with each encounter classified as occurring in a work, retail, home, social, travel or "other" setting. The diary design allows for extraction of PCH-interactio..
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Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The pilot contact diary study was funded by the Melbourne Research Grants Scheme of the University of Melbourne (600530). K. Bolton acknowledges support from a University of Melboure McKenzie Fellowship. J. McVernon is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Award (566635). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.