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Migration To The Us Among Rural Puerto Ricans Who Inject Drugs: Influential Factors, Sources Of Support, And Challenges For Harm Reduction Interventions, Roberto Abadie, Patrick Habecker, C. Gelpi-Acosta, Kirk Dombrowski

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Background: While PWID of Puerto Rican origin have been migrating to the US for decades, the range of factors influencing their migration to the US and the resources they draw on to do so are not well understood. This is particularly true for rural Puerto Rican PWID, and the present study is the first empirical research to document migration patterns among this population. The specificities of their migration raise important challenges that need to be documented in order to implement more effective harm reduction policies at home (Puerto Rico) and abroad (US).

Methods: This paper draws from data obtained employing …

Political Polarization And Long-Term Change In Public Support For Environmental Spending, Eric W. Johnson, Philip Schwadel

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Public support for environmental protection has evinced declines in recent years that are widely attributed to growing antipathy among self-identified Republicans. Fractures in what was long considered broad and enduring support for the environment in the United States have called attention to the broader sociopolitical context in which individual opinion on the environment is formed, and especially the role of political parties and their leaders in shaping opinion. Empirical analyses of environmental support, however, remain strongly focused on individual-level correlates of support. We apply recent methodological advances in age-period-cohort models to scrutinize changes in Americans’ willingness to pay more for …

The Intergenerational Transmission Of Discrimination: Children’S Experiences Of Unfair Treatment And Their Mothers’ Health At Midlife, Cynthia G. Colen, Qi Li, Corinne Reczek, David R. Williams

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

A growing body of research suggests that maternal exposure to discrimination helps to explain racial disparities in children’s health. However, no study has considered if the intergenerational health effects of unfair treatment operate in the opposite direction—from child to mother. To this end, we use data from mother-child pairs in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to determine whether adolescent and young adult children’s experiences of discrimination influence their mother’s health across midlife. We find that children who report more frequent instances of discrimination have mothers whose self-rated health declines more rapidly between ages 40 and 50 years. Furthermore, …

Doing Family: The Reproduction Of Heterosexuality In Accounts Of Parenthood, Emily Kazyak, Nicholas K. Park

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The cultural and legal landscape in the United States has shifted towards increased recognition of LGBQ-parent families. This shift raises questions about the everyday experiences of LGBQ parents and whether the cultural and legal changes also manifest in diminished experiences of discrimination. Drawing on data from 74 interviews with LGBQ parents, we analyze their accounts of whether they are read as a parent by others in their daily interactions. Our findings reveal the ways in which heterosexuality is a key component of how membership to the category of ‘parent’ is produced in social interactions. Our findings also illustrate how assumptions …

“Money Helps”: People Who Inject Drugs And Their Perceptions Of Financial Compensation And Its Ethical Implications, Roberto Abadie, Brandon Brown, Celia B. Fisher

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study documents how people who inject drugs (PWID) in rural Puerto Rico perceive payments for participating in HIV epidemiological studies. In-depth interviews were conducted among a subset (n = 40) of active PWID older than 18 years of age who had been previously enrolled in a much larger study (N = 360). Findings suggest that financial compensation was the main motivation for initially enrolling in the parent study. Then, as trust in the researchers developed, participants came to perceive compensation as part of a reciprocal exchange in which they assisted researchers by providing a trustful account of their experiences …

Change In Motherhood Status And Fertility Problem Identification: Implications For Changes In Life Satisfaction, Arthur L. Greil, Julia Mcquillan, Andrea R. Burch, Michele H. Lowry, Stacy Tiemeyer, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objective: To determine whether the association between changes in life satisfaction and becoming a mother (or not) depends on fertility problem identification status.

Background: Evidence and symbolic interactionist theory suggest that, for women who initially perceive a fertility barrier, gaining the valued identity “mother” should be associated with increases and continuing to face a blocked goal (i.e., not becoming a mother) should be associated with decreases in life satisfaction.

Method: This study used the nationally representative two-wave National Survey of Fertility Barriers to conduct a change-score analysis with chained multiple imputation. The focal dependent variable was change in life satisfaction. …

Gender, Millennials, And Leisure Constraints: Exploring Golf’S Participation Decline, Lee Phillip Mcginnis, James W. Gentry, Trenton M. Haltom

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the dearth of research regarding why the golf industry, specifically in the United States, is stagnating and, in some cases, losing participants. We focus on why Millennials are not playing golf to the same extent as previous generations. This is a conceptual paper, drawing upon literature in sports, leisure, gender, and marketing to track the current trends in sports participation, leisure, and household production to determine the constraints that might limit golf participation. In this paper, we highlight gender as an important social structure and conceptual lens for understanding social changes, particularly among Millennials, which could also …

Network Effects In Blau Space: Imputing Social Context From Survey Data, Miller Mcpherson, Jeffrey A. Smith

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We develop a method of imputing ego network characteristics for respondents in probability samples of individuals. This imputed network uses the homophily principle to estimate certain properties of a respondent’s core discussion network in the absence of actual network data. These properties measure the potential exposure of respondents to the attitudes, values, beliefs, etc. of their (likely) network alters. We use American National Election Survey data (2016 ANES) to demonstrate that the imputed network features show substantial effects on individual level measures, such as political attitudes and beliefs. In some cases, the imputed network variable substantially reduces the effects of …

Review Of How Places Make Us: Novel Lbq Identities In Four Small Cities, By Japonica Brown-Saracino., Emily Kazyak

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Japonica Brown-Saracino’s How Places Make Us is an engaging book that illustrates the centrality of cities in shaping understandings of sexuality. She analyzes the identities and lives of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women in four cities: Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Portland, Maine; and Greenfield,Massachusetts. Despite the fact that these cities are home to a high number of female same-sex couples and are imagined as sites of acceptance for LGBTQ people, Brown-Saracino discovers, through her ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, something surprising: the LBQ women in each city offered radically different narratives about sexuality. The book is devoted …

Economic Hardship During Childhood Increases The Risk Of Premature Death Later In Life, Blakelee R. Kemp

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Experiencing economic hardship during childhood can have long lasting consequences for health. This is especially true for individuals who face multiple forms of hardship early in life. Adults over the age of 50 who reported experiencing several types of childhood economic hardship, such as moving due to financial difficulties or having poor family finances, were more likely to die over the next 10 years than adults who reported no economic hardship during childhood. In fact, experiencing two or more economic hardships during childhood was associated with a 23% increase in the risk of death from any cause. The trend indicates …

Bat Meets Girl: Adapting The Dark Knight’S Love Life To The Big Screen, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that Hollywood loves a good romance. What is perhaps sometimes overlooked however is how important romance and female characters are to male-dominated action films. Esma Kartal argues women and romance are deliberately placed into action films to create “romantic relief” and attract female viewers for greater crossover appeal.¹ In addition to romance, Yvonne Tasker observes how women in action films serve as a witness for “the hero’s suffering” and humanity in action films.² Finally, a classic use of women and romance in action films is that of the damsel-indistress, which continues to this day …

Treating Participation As An Assignment, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Participation is a funny thing. Some of us grade it obliquely, bumping up the final grades for students that were truly exceptional at it. Some of us explicitly state on the syllabus how important it is for students to come to class “ready and willing to participate,” but only allocate 10% of the overall grade to this supposedly valued activity. But perhaps the most common thing that we do as instructors with participation is this: despite the fact that participation is one of the most commonly “submitted” activities in a class, very few instructors treat participation like an actual assignment. …

Mixed Methods In Body And Embodiment Research, Samantha Kwan, Trenton M. Haltom

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This chapter outlines the foundations of mixed methods research and discusses several examples of mixed methods research in the sociology of the body and embodiment. It begins with a brief history of mixed methods and conceptualizations of this term. To illustrate mixed methods in practice, including its benefits, drawbacks, and relevance to intersectionality research, the authors discuss the first author’s research on body weight (Kwan 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2010; Kwan and Graves 2013), as well as a study about young women’s contraceptive use (England et al. 2016) and a study about nude embodiment (Weinberg and Williams 2010). The chapter concludes …

A Social Space Approach To Testing Complex Hypotheses: The Case Of Hispanic Marriage Patterns In The United States, Jeffrey A. Smith

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Where do individuals identifying as Hispanic fit in the racial landscape of the United States? The answer offered by past work is complex: The empirical results do not lend themselves to simple interpretation as no single hypothesis fits the Hispanic case very well. Instead, Hispanic integration is described as mixtures of different archetypical hypotheses, like panethnic formation, white assimilation, and racialized assimilation. My goal is to develop a formal framework to help make sense of this complex picture. I extend past work by showing which combination of integration processes (panethnic formation, white assimilation, etc.) best characterizes Hispanic marriage patterns. I …

Effects Of Stem And Response Order On Response Patterns In Satisfaction Ratings, Jolene D. Smyth, Glenn D. Israel, Milton G. Newberry Iii, Richard G. Hull

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Considerable research has examined the effect of response option order in ordinal bipolar questions such as satisfaction questions. However, no research we know of has examined the effect of the order of presentation of concepts in the question stem or whether stem order moderates response option order. In this article, we experimentally test the main and interaction effects of both stem and response option order for items in self-administered surveys on response distributions and answer changes in eight satisfied/dissatisfied questions. We find consistent evidence that response option order impacts answers. We also find that the order of “satisfied” or “dissatisfied” …

Childhood Misfortune And Handgrip Strength Among Black, White, And Hispanic Americans, Natalie R. Smith, Kenneth F. Ferraro, Blakelee R. Kemp, Patricia M. Morton, Sarah A. Mustillo, Jacqueline L. Angel

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objective: Although early-life insults may affect health, few studies use objective physical measures of adult health. This study investigated whether experiencing misfortune during childhood is associated with handgrip strength (HGS) in later life.

Method: Data on childhood misfortune and adult characteristics from the Health and Retirement Study were used to predict baseline and longitudinal change in HGS among White, Black, and Hispanic American men and women.

Results: Regression analyses revealed that multiple indicators of childhood misfortune were related to HGS at baseline, but the relationships were distinct for men and women. Over the study, having one childhood impairment predicted steeper …

Culture And The Development Of Traditional Medicine In Africa, Rowland Edet, Oyedolapo Isaac Bello, Julianah Babajide

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Traditional medicine has been the dominant healthcare system in Africa before westernization, civilization and colonialism. For people living in the rural areas, traditional medicine is easily available, accessible and affordable. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the cultural way of the life of Africans has contributed to the emergence and development of traditional therapeutic systems in the continent. By explaining the way Africans perceive illness and disease, this paper argues that various forms of healing were predicated on the sociocultural environment of the people. The paper therefore opts for concerted efforts in the development of traditional medicine …

Biological Risk Profiles Among Latino Subgroups In The Health And Retirement Study, Catherine García, Jennifer A. Ailshire

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Background and Objectives: Latinos residing in the United States exhibit an increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases compared to non-Latino whites. This elevated risk contributes to a significantly higher prevalence of diabetes and hypertension among Latino adults. Examining biological risk profiles of older Latinos as a “pan-ethnic group” and by Latino subpopulations may help to explain the increased burden of disease in later life among this population. The objective of this study is to document biological risk profiles among a nationally representative sample of older U.S. Latinos by nativity and country of origin.

Research Design and Methods: We use …

Demography Of Aging, Marc A. Garcia, Catherine García, Kyriakos Markides

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

From 2010-2015, the annual growth rate of older adults was 3.3 percent globally (United- Nations 2017). As the proportion of the world’s population continues to age, the increasing number of older adults in the population presents significant challenges for policy makers in nearly all sectors of society. According to the United Nations Population Ageing Report 2017, the global population of adults 60 years and older increased more than two-fold from 382 million in 1980 to 962 million in 2017, and the number is expected to reach nearly 2.1 billion by 2050 (United Nations 2018). While population aging affects nearly …

Understanding Daily Depression, Drinking, And Marijuana Use Among Homeless Youth Using Short Message Service Surveying, Kimberly Tyler, Kristen M. Olson, Colleen M. Ray

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We used short message service surveying (SMS) with 150 homeless youth to examine the time ordering of feeling depressed with drinking alcohol, using marijuana, and using substances with friends. Multilevel binary logistic regression results revealed that youth who were depressed earlier in the day were more likely to drink alcohol later that day. Among depressed youth, heterosexual youth were less likely to drink alcohol than lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth. Depressed youth had increased odds of using marijuana by a factor of 1.6, while heterosexual youth, compared to LGB youth, were 80% less likely to use marijuana. Females were …

Physical Performance Trajectories And Mortality Among Older Mexican Americans, Miriam Mutambudzi, Nai-Wei Chen, Bret Howrey, Marc A. Garcia, Kyriakos S. Markides

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Background: We sought to identify distinct trajectory classes of physical performance in Mexican Americans aged 75 years and older and to examine whether these trajectories predict mortality.

Methods: We used four waves of Hispanic Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (H-EPESE) data for adults 75 years and older from 2004–2005 to 2013. Latent growth curve analysis was used to identify distinct trajectory classes. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between baseline characteristics and the newly constructed trajectories. Cox proportional hazards regression models examined the hazard of mortality as a function of Short Physical Performance …

Drawing On Lgb Identity To Encourage Participation And Disclosure Of Sexual Orientation In Surveys, Mathew Stange, Jolene D. Smyth, Kristen M. Olson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper reports an experiment that tested how three survey cover designs—images of traditional families and individuals displaying themselves in typical gender ways; images of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual individuals and families; and no cover images—affected LGB people’s participation and disclosure of LGB identity and non-LGB people’s participation. Analyses showed the LGB-inclusive cover led to significantly more LGB respondents than the other designs, without significantly affecting the demographic, political, and religious makeup of the completed sample. We discuss what these findings mean for addressing two challenges: getting LGB people to respond to surveys and to disclose their …

Avoiding The Major Causes Of Death: Does Childhood Misfortune Reduce The Likelihood Of Being Disease Free In Later Life?, Monica M. Williams, Blakelee R. Kemp, Kenneth F. Ferraro, Sarah A. Mustillo

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Although previous research reveals the detrimental effects of early misfortune on the development of chronic diseases in later life, few studies have investigated its effects on remaining disease free. This study draws on cumulative inequality theory to investigate whether experiencing childhood misfortune reduces the likelihood of remaining disease free over time.

Method: This study utilizes five waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study to test whether five domains of childhood misfortune predict being disease free at baseline (2004) and developing disease over time (2004–2012).

Results: Respondents reporting risky parental behaviors during childhood were less likely to be …

Late Life Depressive Symptoms And Cognitive Function Among Older Mexican Adults: The Past And The Present, Joseph L. Saenz, Marc A. Garcia, Brian Downer

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objective: To evaluate associations between depression and individual cognitive domains and how changes in depressive symptoms relate to cognition three years later in the context of Mexico, a developing country experiencing rapid aging.

Method: Data comes from waves 3 (2012) and 4 (2015) of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (n=12,898, age 50+). Depression is ascertained using a modified Center for Epidemiologic Studies – Depression Scale. Cognition is assessed using verbal learning, verbal memory, visual scanning, verbal fluency, visuospatial ability, visual memory, and orientation tasks. Depressive symptoms and cognitive functioning were both measured in 2012 and 2015. Scores across cognitive …

Within-Household Selection Methods: A Critical Review And Experimental Examination, Jolene Smyth, Kristen M. Olson, Mathew Stange

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Probability samples are necessary for making statistical inferences to the general population (Baker et al. 2013). Some countries (e.g. Sweden) have population registers from which to randomly select samples of adults. The U.S. and many other countries, however, do not have population registers. Instead, researchers (i) select a probability sample of households from lists of areas, addresses, or telephone numbers and (ii) select an adult within these sampled households. The process by which individuals are selected from sampled households to obtain a probability-based sample of individuals is called within-household (or within-unit) selection (Gaziano 2005).Within-household selection aims to provide each member …

Humans In The Loop: Incorporating Expert And Crowd-Sourced Knowledge For Predictions Using Survey Data, Anna Filippova, Connor Gilroy, Ridhi Kashyap, Antje Kirchner, Allison C. Morgan, Kivan Polimis, Adaner Usmani, Tong Wang

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Survey data sets are often wider than they are long. This high ratio of variables to observations raises concerns about overfitting during prediction, making informed variable selection important. Recent applications in computer science have sought to incorporate human knowledge into machine-learning methods to address these problems. The authors implement such a “human-in-the-loop” approach in the Fragile Families Challenge. The authors use surveys to elicit knowledge from experts and laypeople about the importance of different variables to different outcomes. This strategy offers the option to subset the data before prediction or to incorporate human knowledge as scores in prediction models, or …

A Qualitative Study Of Changes In The Traditional Roles Of Housewives In Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria, Rowland Edet, Julianah Babajide, Oluwayimika Ekundina

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although hinged on the principles of patriarchy, the Nigerian society has witnessed appreciable changes in the roles of women. This change is noticed in marriage particularly among married women or housewives. Thus, the phenomenon of full housewife is gradually fading away due to the joint influence of westernization, globalization, and modernization. Thus, this study delved into interrogating the various changes that have taken place in the traditional roles of housewives in selected locations in Ibadan. This study utilized a purely qualitative method of research because the subject matter focuses on making sense of meanings people attach to gender, gender roles, …

Sexual Behaviours Of Adolescents In Creek Town, Cross River State, Nigeria, Kabiru K. Salami, Rowland E. Edet

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Risky sexual behaviors of adolescents in Creek Town have not been fully profiled. This study investigated the sexual behaviors of adolescents and their various dimensions in Creek Town, in Cross River State, Nigeria. This cross-sectional survey design adopted multi-stage sampling procedure to administer a 112-items questionnaire to 422 adolescents, to elicit information on their sexual behaviors and practices. Four focus group discussion sessions were also conducted with in-school and out-of-school adolescents. The mean age of adolescents was 17 years. Majority (65.4%) of the adolescents were sexually active. The mean age at sexual debut was 15 years for both male and …

Cohort Differences In Cognitive Impairment And Cognitive Decline Among Mexican-Americans Aged 75 Years Or Older, Brian Downer, Marc A. Garcia, Mukaila Raji, Kyriakos S. Markides

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Research suggests that the prevalence and incidence of cognitive impairment among older adults is decreasing. This analysis used data from 9 waves (1993–2016) of the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly to assess cognitive status and cognitive decline for 2 cohorts of Mexican-Americans aged ≥75 years in 1993–1994 versus 2004–2005. Logistic regression, joint longitudinal survival models, and illness-death models for interval-censored data were used to examine cohort differences in the odds of prevalent cognitive impairment, trajectories of cognitive decline, and the risk of 10-year incident cognitive impairment, respectively. Results indicated that compared with the 1993–1994 cohort, …

Gender And Age Of Migration Differences In Mortality Among Older Mexican Americans, Adriana M. Reyes, Marc A. Garcia

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Using a gendered life course perspective, we examine whether the relationship between age of migration and mortality is moderated by gender among a cohort of older Mexican-Americans.

Methods: Data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly and recently matched mortality data are used to estimate Cox proportional hazard models.

Results: Our findings indicate the relationship between age of migration and mortality is moderated by gender suggesting a more nuanced perspective of the immigrant mortality paradox. Among men, midlife migrants exhibit an 18 percent lower risk of mortality compared to their U.S.-born …