A personal network analysis of health-advice seeking and dietary influence in a rural community

Health advice circulates through everyday relationships. The sources of informal health authority are less clear: the adviser's knowledge and conduct, or their network position. We examine personal network data from 89 adults in a rural community (1,625 respondent-contact relationships). We distinguish contacts consulted for health advice from contacts who tried to change the respondent's eating, model both relations with multilevel and penalised regressions, and test their differences. Both relations are embedded in frequent, close, and commensal ties and point to contacts more educated than the respondent. We find no characteristic that is more strongly associated with one relation than with the other. Health advice seeking also correlates with co-residence, the marital relationship, and responsibility for cooking. Respondents perceive their advisers as healthier, but advisers' own reports give no evidence of healthier diets or lower body mass. Informal health authority here is constituted by relational position (intimacy, domestic food work, and a contact's higher education relative to the respondent). We find no evidence that it rests on demonstrated conduct. Interventions that work through nominated advisers should not assume that being consulted implies expertise. Our design is cross-sectional and single-site. Future dyadic and longitudinal studies should test whether advice is followed.