Hi Mary, I'm not super familiar with that specific topic, but I know a couple of things, so hopefully it helps. The first is that a woman at U. Washington in Seattle, Martina Morris, does a lot of that and may have published something about how networks were measured. If you're talking about dating/marriage/sex, a woman Shelley Clarke at McGill does work that uses an in-depth calendar to identify past sexual partners among men and women in Subsaharan Africa. Finally, Jack Sandberg & Steve Rytina have a study that uses a long-form 'name generator' in Senegal, usually used in social networks research, that could be adapted for such a purpose.

Hi Mary, you can considered participatory GIS tools.

Could you please be more specific?

I`m asking you because we´ve been delivering lectures (no more than 10 people) in small communities, followed for Psicologist and or Primary Care docs with "question & answer" approach. "petit commite" they feel more confortable going through sexual, relationship, intimacy questions.

So sorry if I did not get the main issue... Teloken

The Avahan programme in India is a very good resource to contact as this is what they have done initially in Bangalore and Sonagachi and later in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh

http://www.aidstar-one.com/focus_areas/prevention/resources/case_study_series/avahan_project_india

I'm assuming that by low-income you are referring to not necessarily having the resources to buy expensive mapping software. With that in mind, there is Epi Map - free from the CDC (http://wwwn.cdc.gov/epiinfo/), which is part of their Epi Info suite. And ArcGIS (from ESRI; http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer) has a free version with limited capabilities, but fine for relatively simple mapping/analysis. I haven't used it, but there is also a free, open-source GIS software called GRASS GIS (http://grass.osgeo.org/). I don't do much GIS work so that's all I'm familiar with at the moment. Good luck!

i also don't fully get the question but some of my collegues working at the Dutch STI/Aids organisation developed a nice online tool in which visitors were asked to enter the total number of sex partners they had. The tool then made an automatic calculation showing how big your actual sexual network is. So, suppose you had 4 sex partners, but each of these 4 sex partners also had 4 sex partners, you already have 4 x 4 = 16 sex-partners in your network; etc etc. So it kind of visualised your 'sexual network' with all the sexual-connections. The idea was to make people aware that you can never be sure about the STI-status of your partner as your partner very likely also had partners, who also had partners etc. I dont think this tool is still active otherwise i could have sent you the link.

Mevissen

Could you please send us the link you´ve mentioned?

Thanks

i will try to find it for you but they changed all their websites and i'm not sure if the tool is still in use. I'll get back to you.

OKay, i found it: http://www.sense.info/vrijsoavrij/exometer/

it's all in Dutch but from above to below you have to fill in the following:

1) what is your gender? 2) what is the gender of your partener(s)? 3) your age 4) your total number of partners so far 5) the number of partners that your current partner had (approx.)

Have fun! :-)

Mevissen

Thank you, I`ll go over this.

Thank you everyone for such great responses and resources!

I shall clarify my question and tell you about the possible directions this project might take.... at the moment it's still a concept! The main idea is to get men together in small groups to talk about their sexual relationships (with spouses/main partners, casual partners, sex workers, minors) in detail and determine (any) overlaps in their sexual encounters and the extensiveness of their individual and collective sexual networks. This could be done through geographical mapping or time-based (daily/weekly/monthly etc.) "mapping" and represented diagrammatically. We hope that a visual would impact on men's sexual behaviours with time. We also intend to capture other data on their sexual behaviours.

Having said that, the participatory GIS tools, the Avahan programme in India and various mapping software mentioned by Yordanos, Achyuta and Tyler respectively would be useful and easily adaptable to our setting, granted they have been used in other low-income settings. So many thanks!

In terms of time-based "mapping", Shelley Clarke's Relationship History Calendar is really useful and interesting and perhaps the direction in which we are leaning towards. Thank you for bringing this (and Martina Morris' work) to my attention, Sean! I have yet to study the name generator...

Fraukje, when I clicked on the link for the online tool (very interesting, from your description), the page didn't load. Is the site working? Or could you send another link I could look at?

Not forgetting Claudio... I would like to know more about your approach, please! Aside from Q&A are there other exercises that your participants do? And Samia, thank you. The "snowball method" is helpful in recruiting hard to reach many people, particularly those deemed hard to reach.

Again, thanks for all your input! :)

Mary: i don't know why the page didnt load. I just copy-pasted the link in my browser and it works. Maybe your PC blocks some features? Give it a try on another computer?

Good luck with your project!

Thanks Faukje, I managed to open it in Google Chrome. This is great! Probably more useful in an urban setting where access to computers and internet is more likely than in a rural setting, where we plan to roll out the intervention. I was able to test it based on the English translation you gave for the first page. I wonder are there any plans to translate the tool for use elsewhere? It could be useful among students or int he workplace, those are my immediate thoughts!

Mary

I`ll send you our protocol

Claudio

Great thanks!

I just went to a talk on an algorithm to map social networks and check for patterns. It looks really neat - it's free to download. YOu just need to provide the data after you collect it. Don't know if it helps. But it is called NODE XL and you can google it.

Thanks Debra, I'll have a look at it! My apologies for such a late response....