Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Incomer Status: The Role Of Rural Background, Knowledge Of Mental Health Services, Stigma, And Cultural Beliefs On Help-Seeking Attitudes, Sarah E. Herzberg

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of incomer status, rural background, knowledge and familiarity with mental health services, rural cultural beliefs about mental health and perceived stigma on help-seeking attitudes in a rural Southwest Iowa area. Participants were 106 rural residents over the age of 18 recruited from a rural health clinic. A multiple regression analysis was performed resulting in rural cultural beliefs about mental health being the only statistically significant predictor of help-seeking in the model. Individuals who indicated identifying with rural cultural beliefs were less likely to report positive help-seeking attitudes. Implications of the …

Reflections On The Metamorphosis At Robben Island: The Role Of Institutional Work And Positive Psychological Capital, Wayne F. Cascio, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners from South Africa were imprisoned on notorious Robben Island from the mid-1960s until the end of the apartheid regime in 1991. The stark conditions and abusive treatment of these prisoners has been widely publicized. However, upon reflection and in retrospect, over the years, a type of metamorphosis occurred. Primarily drawing from firsthand accounts of the former prisoners and guards, it seems that Robben Island morphed from the traditional oppressive prison paradigm to one where the positively oriented prisoners disrupted the institution with a resulting climate of learning and transformation that eventually led to freedom …

The Role Of Drinking In New And Existing Friendships Across High School Settings*, Jacob E. Cheadle, Deadric T. Williams

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We use 9 Add Health high schools with longitudinal network data to assess whether adolescent drinkers choose friends who drink, prefer friends whose friends drink, if selection differs between new and existing friendships, and between schools. Utilizing dynamic social network models that control for friend influences on individual alcohol use, the results show that drinkers do not strongly prefer friends who drink. Instead, they favor close friends whose friends’ drink, suggesting that alcohol matters for selection on the social groups and environments that friends connect each other to. The role of alcohol use differs by whether friendships are new or …

Network Firewall Dynamics And The Subsaturation Stabilization Of Hiv, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski, Mohamed Saad, Katherine Mclean, Samuel Friedman

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In 2001, Friedman et al. conjectured the existence of a “firewall effect” in which individuals who are infected with HIV, but remain in a state of low infectiousness, serve to prevent the virus from spreading. To evaluate this historical conjecture, we develop a new graph-theoreticmeasure that quantifies the extent towhich Friedman’s firewall hypothesis (FH) holds in a risk network.We compute this new measure across simulated trajectories of a stochastic discrete dynamical system that models a social network of 25,000 individuals engaging in risk acts over a period of 15 years. The model’s parameters are based on analyses of data collected …

Assessing Respondent Driven Sampling For Network Studies In Ethnographic Contexts, Kirk Dombrowski, Bilal Khan, Joshua Moses, Emily Channell, Evan Misshula

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is generally considered a methodology for recruiting “hard-to-reach” populations for social science research. More recently, Wejnert has argued that RDS analysis can be used for general social network analysis as well (where he labels it, RDS-SN). In this article, we assess the value of Wejnert’s RDS-SN for use in more traditional ethnographic contexts. We employed RDS as part of a larger social network research project to recruit n = 330 community residents (over 17 years of age) in Nain, a predominantly (92%) aboriginal community in northern Labrador, Canada, for social network interviews about food sharing, housing, …

Reducing Courts’ Failure-To-Appear Rate By Written Reminders, Brian H. Bornstein, Alan Tomkins, Elizabeth Neeley, Mitchel Herian, Joseph A. Hamm

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This article examines the effectiveness of using different kinds of written reminders to reduce misdemeanor defendants’ failure- to-appear (FTA) rates. A subset of defendants was surveyed after their scheduled court date to assess their perceptions of procedural justice and trust and confidence in the courts. Reminders reduced FTA overall, and more substantive reminders (e.g., with information on the negative consequences of FTA) were more effective than a simple reminder. FTA varied depending on several offense and offender characteristics, such as geographic location (urban vs. rural), type of offense, and number of offenses. The reminders were somewhat more effective for Whites …

Out On The Land: Income, Subsistence Activities, And Food Sharing Networks In Nain, Labrador, Kirk Dombrowski, Emily Channell, Bilal Khan, Joshua Moses, Evan Misshula

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In recent Inuit ethnography, a major concern has been how and to what extent contemporary Inuit participate in and depend on subsistence activities, particularly in the context of increasing wage employment and growing participation in the cash economy. This paper provides an analysis of these activities in the predominately Inuit community of Nain, Labrador. Using social network data and demographic information collected between January and June 2010, we examine the interconnections between subsistence activities—obtaining “country food” through activities such as hunting, fishing, and collecting—with access to the means of obtaining subsistence resources (such as snow mobiles, cabins, and boats), employment …

Topological And Historical Considerations For Infectious Disease Transmission Among Injecting Drug Users In Bushwick, Brooklyn (Usa), Kirk Dombrowski, Richard Curtis, Samuel Friedman, Bilal Khan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent interest by physicists in social networks and disease transmission factors has prompted debate over the topology of degree distributions in sexual networks. Social network researchers have been critical of “scale-free” Barabasi-Albert approaches, and largely rejected the preferential attachment, “rich-get-richer” assumptions that underlie that model. Instead, research on sexual networks has pointed to the importance of homophily and local sexual norms in dictating degree distributions, and thus disease transmission thresholds. Injecting Drug User (IDU) network topologies may differ from the emerging models of sexual networks, however. Degree distribution analysis of a Brooklyn, NY, IDU network indicates a different topology than …

Theories Of Public Opinion, Patricia Moy, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

While the issue of citizen competency has vexed scholars throughout history, the modern concepts of a mass public and mass media are relatively new. Beginning with the seminal works of Lippmann and Dewey, we chart the evolving theories of public opinion, from the "hypodermic needle" model of the early twentieth century to the more psychologically oriented approach to media effects of today. We argue that in addition to understanding how audiences process media content, theories of public opinion must account for how media content is constructed and disseminated, which is complicated by the ever-changing nature of our media landscape.

North American Indigenous Adolescent Substance Use, Melissa Walls, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objectives—To investigate growth in problem drinking and monthly marijuana use among North American Indigenous adolescents from the upper Midwest and Canada.

Methods—Panel data from a community-based participatory research project includes responses from 619 adolescents residing on or near 7 different reservations/reserves. All respondents were members of the same Indigenous cultural group.

Results—Rates of problem drinking and monthly marijuana use increased steadily across the adolescent years, with fastest growth occurring in early adolescence (before age 15). In general, female participants reported higher rates of substance use prior to age 15; however, male reports of use surpassed those of females in later …

The Importance Of Social Cues For Discretionary Health Services Utilization: The Case Of Infertility, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Katherine M. Johnson, Julia Mcquillan, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Infertility is a discretionary health condition; although it carries with it important life course implications, treatment is rarely necessary for health reasons. Sociological theories of medical help-seeking emphasize demographic factors, perceived need, and enabling conditions in health services utilization, but we find that social cues are also strongly associated with health services utilization for infertility. Adjusted for conventional predictors of medical help-seeking, several social cue indicators have significant associations with utilization, including having friends and family with children, perceiving infertility stigma, and having a partner and/or family member who encourages treatment. Perceived need accounts for the largest portion of the …

Correlates Of Bullying Behaviors Among A Sample Of North American Indigenous Adolescents, Lisa A. Melander, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between familial, educational, and psychosocial factors and bullying among 702 North American Indigenous adolescents aged 11–14 years. The study used multinomial logistic regression models to differentiate correlates of bully perpetration and victimization versus being neither and between being a perpetrator versus being a victim. Analyses reveal that being a bully victim had different correlates than being a perpetrator. Perceived discrimination was associated with increased odds of being either a victim or a perpetrator, relative to being neither. Several factors differentiated being a bully perpetrator from being a bully victim: adolescent …