How various design decisions on matching individuals in relationships affect the outcomes of microsimulations of sexually transmitted infection epidemics

PloS One
Nathan Geffen, Stefan Michael Scholz

Abstract

Microsimulations are increasingly used to estimate the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). These models consist of agents which represent a sexually active population. Matching agents into sexual relationships is computationally intensive and presents modellers with difficult design decisions: how to select which partnerships between agents break up, which agents enter a partnership market, and how to pair agents in the partnership market. The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of these design decisions on STI prevalence. We compared two strategies for selecting which agents enter a daily partnership market and which agent partnerships break up: random selection in which agents are treated homogenously versus selection based on data from a large German longitudinal data set that accounts for sex, sexual orientation and age heterogeneity. We also coupled each of these strategies with one of several recently described algorithms for pairing agents and compared their speed and outcomes. Additional design choices were also considered, such as the number of agents used in the model, increasing the heterogeneity of agents' sexual behaviour, and the proportion of relationships which are casual sex encounters...Continue Reading

References

Aug 1, 1996·American Journal of Epidemiology·M KretzschmarA J Severijnen
Oct 10, 2003·Annals of Behavioral Medicine : a Publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine·Kerstin E E SchroderPeter A Vanable
Oct 31, 2007·Population Health Metrics·Jeremy D Goldhaber-FiebertJoshua A Salomon
Apr 22, 2010·International Journal of Epidemiology·Rebecca F BaggaleyMarie-Claude Boily
Oct 11, 2011·The Journal of Infectious Diseases·Ann N BurchellEduardo L Franco
Nov 16, 2011·Sexually Transmitted Diseases·Richard T GrayDavid P Wilson
Jun 24, 2015·Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes : JAIDS·Ekkehard C BeckBrian Mustanski
Feb 10, 2016·Sexually Transmitted Diseases·Leigh F Johnson, Nathan Geffen

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
circumcision

Software Mentioned

CSPM
Blossom
Blossom V
RANDOM

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