Assessing Person-Specific Symptom Networks From Brief Narratives: Development and Initial Evaluation of the Narrative-to-Network (N2N) Approach
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Person-specific symptom networks formalize which problems characterize an individual and how those problems are perceived to influence one another, making them increasingly relevant for individualized case conceptualization, treatment planning, and personalized psychotherapy. However, existing approaches typically rely on structured causal assessment or intensive longitudinal data, both of which can increase assessment burden. We developed and initially evaluated the Narrative-to-Network (N2N) framework for deriving directed person-specific networks from brief spoken narratives in which individuals describe their psychological difficulties and perceived relations among them in their own words. Following a development phase (N = 22), an independent evaluation sample (N = 50) completed a narrative assessment and a Perceived Causal Networks (PECAN) assessment. Narratives lasted approximately three minutes. Manual coding showed relatively high agreement for node identification (Dice = .76) and edge direction conditional on a shared relation (agreement = .81), with lower agreement for edge presence (Dice = .62). Narrative-derived and PECAN networks showed partial but incomplete convergence (mean Jaccard = .29). Most problems identified in narratives were also identified through PECAN (62.6%), whereas only 36.7% of PECAN problems appeared in the corresponding narratives. Despite containing substantially fewer problems and relations, narrative-derived networks were perceived as highly representative; among participants with complete ratings (n = 39), mean representativeness scores were 33.26 for narrative-derived networks and 34.10 for regulated PECAN networks, with no statistically significant difference (p = .527). Narrative node count was positively associated with psychological distress both concurrently (ρ = .34) and at follow-up (ρ = .40). These findings provide initial evidence that structured person-specific symptom networks can be reproducibly derived from brief prompted spoken narratives and may offer an economical, complementary representation of individuals’ difficulties.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214433066