Social Networks across the Lifecourse and the Development of the Niakhar Social Networks Survey Instrument

John Sandberg, McGill University
Steven Rytina, McGill University
Richard Lalou, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)
Valerie Delaunay, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)

This paper describes an innovative social network project carried out in conjunction with the Niakhar, Senegal Demographic Surveillance System (DSS). The Niakhar Social Networks Project is an attempt to use this advantageous setting to address a number of previously intractable problems in the demographic network research literature. In the first phase of the project, extensive qualitative research in the study area drew on the broader sociological network literature to pose questions designed to ascertain the breadth of social networks in this context and thus facilitate the development of an efficient survey instrument to accurately capture these networks. This qualitative work is described in depth here, as is the development and structure of the survey instrument and the process of linking named alters in the instrument to the Niakhar DSS database.