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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health

Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1621420

Associations Between Structural Holes in Personal Networks and Health Behaviors Among Young and Middle-Aged Adults in Japan: A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Department of Health and Social Behavior, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  • 2Department of Social Impact Assessment, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Previous studies have emphasized that tightly knit networks influence health behaviors.However, effective network structures for behavioral adoption may vary by diffusion stage.This study examines how the association between personal network structures and health behaviors varies across behaviors with different prevalence degrees. We used data from the third-wave Japanese Study on Stratification, Health, Income, and Neighborhood (J-SHINE) conducted in 2017, targeting residents aged 32-58 years in Japanese metropolitan areas. Peer characteristics, behaviors, and interconnections were collected using the name generator method. Data from 1,705 respondents (egos) and 6,820 peers were analyzed. Structural holes, as the network structural characteristic, were evaluated using the reciprocal of the dyad constraint index of each ego-peer pair and categorized into tertiles. Logistic regression analyses examined the associations of structural holes with ego's exercise and preventive dental care use (intermediate prevalence stage) and non-smoking behavior (later prevalence stage), adjusting for covariates. Results showed that, compared to peers with middle-level structural holes, those with many structural holes were positively associated with ego's exercise habits (odds ratio [OR], 1.35; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.19-1.52) and preventive dental care use (OR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.07-1.35), while peers with few structural holes were negatively associated with ego's non-smoking behavior (OR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.70-0.94). The findings suggest that the association between structural holes and health behaviors varies according to the diffusion stage. Considering social connections with different levels of structural holes by diffusion stage of the target behavior may be effective for public health interventions.

Keywords: Japan, Social network, Structural hole, Health Behavior, Diffusion stage, Egocentric network

Received: 01 May 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Kuribayashi and Takagi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yasutaka Kuribayashi, Department of Health and Social Behavior, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

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