Identifying Face to Face Interaction Patterns Related to Depressive Symptoms in Organizations through Integrated Observation with Wearable Devices
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Sociometric wearable devices are sensors designed to automatically capture and collect human behavior including face-to-face interactions in real-world organizational settings.Sociometric wearable devices enable comprehensive observation of interactions within organizations, providing quantitative information about the potential influence that individuals can have on one another through their interactions.Depressive symptoms in organizations represent a significant issue as employees influence each other through their interactions.Depressive symptoms have been suggested to be influenced by the structural and physical interaction patterns of others with whom individuals interact.Specifically, the structure of interactions can influence depressive symptoms across multiple scales from the individual to the macro level, and physical movement within the interaction processes can be reduced and coordinated alongside one's own and others' depressive symptoms.However, it remains unclear whether the influence of such interactions on depressive symptoms can be systematically identified through the comprehensive organizational face-to-face interaction data collected using wearable devices.This study aims to investigate structural and physical interaction patterns related to depressive symptoms within organization by using sociometric wearable devices.For this purpose, this study analyzed face-to-face interaction data measured using name-tag type sociometric wearable devices familiar to office workers.These devices captured face-to-face interactions through infrared communication with other devices while simultaneously recording body rhythm as physical movement patterns through accelerometers.The measurements were conducted in organizational units sharing the same workspace, comprising face-to-face interaction records of 449 employees across 10 organizations from various industries.The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale, a self-report depression scale developed for screening depression in the general population, II was used to measure depressive symptoms by quantifying both the variety and frequency of depressive symptoms of employees.The analysis was conducted using two approaches.First, a social network analysis was conducted to comprehensively examine the interaction patterns between individuals and others.Face-to-face interactions among employees were monitored using wearable devices for more than 5 days in each organizational setting, encompassing weekly work patterns.These interactions were used to establish links between employees, with each link weighted by the interaction frequency of the corresponding pair, forming an organizational face-to-face interaction network.The structural characteristics of individuals in the organizational network were quantified at three different scales -individual, surrounding, and organizational -determined by the scope of interactions included in each analysis, and their associations with depressive symptoms were examined.The correlation analysis indicated that high density of face-to-face interactions at the surrounding level, reflecting the prevalence of interactions between an employee's interaction partners, was negatively associated with depressive symptoms.Particularly, the correlation between the interaction density at the surrounding level and depressive symptoms was more evident when employees frequently interacted face-to-face with partners who were also highly connected with each other.These findings suggest the importance of both densely connected structures at the surrounding level and the frequent direct interactions within such structures in relation to depressive symptoms.Second, to examine how physical movements during interactions influence and relate to depressive symptoms between individuals, analyses were conducted on movement patterns of both individuals and their interaction partners, along with their depressive symptoms.Using wearable devices that detect subtle bodily rhythm before and during face-to-face interactions, physical engagement was defined as the increased frequency of bodily rhythm during face-to-face interactions to evaluate only the effects related to the III interactions.Results examining the correlations between physical engagement and depressive symptoms across an employee and their interaction partners revealed that physical engagement negatively correlated with depressive symptoms of the interaction partners.This correlation was significant even when interaction partners were limited to the two most frequently interacting individuals, demonstrating a robust characteristic among frequently interacting people.Furthermore, individuals who served as primary interaction partners for others, having substantial interactive influence within the organization, showed negative correlations across all combinations of physical engagement and depressive symptoms between themselves and their partners.Wearable device observations of face-to-face interactions within organizations revealed that employees whose interaction partners were densely interconnected showed lower depressive symptoms, and employees whose interaction partners had lower depressive symptoms demonstrated higher physical engagement.Specifically, the interaction density and physical engagement, which showed a negative relationship with depressive symptoms among employees and their partners, were notably evident among frequently interacting partners, suggesting that these patterns of interaction density and physical engagement reflect qualitative characteristics of interactions with frequent partners and can be observed and influenced through direct face-to-face interactions.These findings emphasize the importance of considering the structural density among frequently interacting individuals, as well as the degree of physical engagement within their interactions, when analyzing depressive symptoms that can be influenced through interactions within an organization.IV 4.3.Interplay between Depressive Symptoms and Interactions within Organizations .........
Authors: 李, 鍾赫, Lee, Jonghyeok
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7125668216