Social Position Predicting Physical Activity Level in Youth: An Application of Hidden Markov Modeling on Network Statistics

Social positioning has been shown to have impacts on physical activity in youth. In this study Hidden Markov Modeling is used to infer latent social positions from a set of computed network statistics in two network of youth over time. The association between physical activity and social position is analyzed. Youth in less centrally located social roles tended to have less physical activity than youth with more centrally located social positions.