Above: Getting started – the welcome screen for the project’s facebook app, AuSON at the ANU website.
By Keryn Curtis
Australian National University (ANU) researchers are calling on facebook users aged 50 and above to participate in a cutting edge research project which seeks to understand relationships between social networks and ‘successful ageing’.
The study, entitled the Social Networks and Ageing Project (SNAP) is an Australian Research Council Linkage Project established in 2010 in conjunction with industry partner, National Seniors Australia. While other elements of the study have involved a paper based and online survey, this component has involved the development of a new Facebook application called AuSON (Australian Seniors’ Online Networks) which researchers hope will help shed light on how this age group uses online social networks.
Dr Heather Booth from the Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute in the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences is leading the project with economist and social networks researcher, Dr Robert Ackland, who has led the development of the AuSON application.
Dr Booth said understanding how online social networking can contribute to successful ageing is critically important in Australia with our ageing population and the attendant health and welfare policy challenges this raises.
“Social isolation is a significant inhibitor to health and wellbeing in later years but social networks offer a potential means to overcome this.
“With the rollout of the National Broadband Network expected to significantly increase internet broadband access, the opportunities for using online media as a tool to promote successful ageing are also likely to grow,” said Dr Booth.
Dr Ackland said the AuSON Facebook application developed for the study had the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the online behaviours of Australians in the older age groups.
“AuSON is an official facebook app, developed with facebook guidelines and with ANU ethics committee approval. Once the application is installed, it automatically collects information on the structure of users’ Facebook networks.
“But the functionality goes beyond that to enable participants to provide additional information about offline friends, how their social networks provide access to resources such as information and assistance (called social capital) and measures of ageing status such as physical and mental wellbeing,” he said.
“We have put in a lot of effort to make it enjoyable and interesting. Participants get to organise their friends into groups and see what their social networks looks like visually [see above].
“The application automatically clusters their friends into groups based on the way they relate with each other. It’s really interesting when they look at the way the clusters work and the crossovers maybe between groups of friends they play sport with or work with or whatever other relationship they have. It is quite engaging in a graphic way,” Dr Ackland said.
Privacy assured
While AuSON enables users to do these new things with their Facebook account, such as grouping friends, Dr Ackland is keen to emphasise that no Facebook names, photos or any other identifying information will be collected.
“The data collected from the Facebook accounts of participants and the information provided to the study is entirely confidential and the researchers will never see anyone’s Facebook identity.
“The AuSON app which collects the data, automatically replaces Facebook IDs of individuals and their friends with randomly-generated codes which are the only data saved in the database at ANU. All analysis is done only at the only at the aggregate level, not on individual people,” Dr Ackland said.
While the core target participants for the study are people aged 50 and older who are eligible to vote in Australia, participants are encouraged to invite their friends to also participate; and these friends are encouraged to invite other friends, and so on.
When using AuSON, a post will appear on your wall saying ‘I’m using AuSON. Join me!’. The researchers are also interested in people who are friends with someone in that aged group, whether they are children, grandchildren, other family members or friends.
Fast facts:
The Social Networks and Ageing Project is based at the Australian National University
AuSON (Australian Seniors’ Online Networks) collects data on Facebook social networks, social capital (both online and offline) and ageing status.
Further information is available here: http://auson.anu.edu.au/information
The SNAP study abides by the Australian Government Privacy Act regulations and by Facebook Policies and Terms of Services.
