Social Network Assessment for Adult Protective Services (SNAAPS)
Network Canvas provides free and open-source software for surveying social networks, designed around the needs of both researchers and their participants.
Older adults’ social networks are central to their well-being — and to understanding their risk for abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Yet practitioners who work with older adults rarely have structured tools to systematically map and interpret the relational information they gather during client encounters.
This protocol was developed by The University of Texas at Arlington’s Social Networks for Social Good Laboratory to help change that.
Working in collaboration with Adult Protective Services staff from a North Texas region and Laura Carter from the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UT Health Science Center at Houston, and with funding support from the National Institute on Aging (1R01AG089193), we developed a prototype Network Canvas interview protocol for gathering social network data from older adult clients. The tool is designed for use by APS workers, social workers, first responders, and other service providers who assess and intervene on behalf of older adults’ well-being. It surfaces relational risk and protective factors that are often invisible in standard assessments — including financial access patterns, conflict within the network, and the presence of highly involved individuals with limited connection to the client’s broader support system.
The protocol is freely available for download and may be retained, reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed without additional permissions, provided proper attribution is given. The protocol is licensed by Rebecca Mauldin under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended citation: Mauldin, R. L., & Carter, L. E. (2026). Social Network Assessment for Adult Protective Services (SNAAPS) (Version 1.0) [Network Canvas protocol]. The University of Texas at Arlington. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hmesH0DYztxFrd74XeUeCqY6YiYaLXM7/view?usp=drive_link
Download OlderAdult_SNA_Protocol_APS_v1 (the Network Canvas protocol)
To use or adapt this protocol, visit the Network Canvas website to download the free Architect, Interviewer, or Fresco applications. No programming experience is required.