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Abstract:
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This article examines changes in network structure using data on women’s AIDS related conversational networks from the 1998 and 2001 rounds of the Malawi Diffusion and Ideation Change project. The principal aims are to show that the structure of conversational networks can change significantly in relatively short periods and that multilevel analysis is an effective way to explore the scope of these types of changes. The article demonstrates that: (i) conversations about AIDS are increasingly occurring within and across all demographic groups in rural Malawi, (ii) AIDS-related conversational networks have therefore diversified, (iii) there is statistically significant village-level variance in characteristics of reported network partners, but it is a minimal source of total variance in such characteristics, and (iv) there is significant covariance between the estimated residuals associated with key predictors of size of the conversational networks. |