Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Family Histories And Multiple Transitions Among Homeless Young Adults: Pathways To Homelessness, Kimberly A. Tyler, Rachel M. Schmitz

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study explored the early family histories of homeless young adults, the types and number of transitions they experienced, and their pathways to the street. Intensive qualitative interviews were audio taped and transcribed with 40 homeless young adults 19 to 21 years of age in the Midwest. Findings show that family backgrounds were generally characterized by substance use, child maltreatment, and witnessing violence, all of which provide social context for understanding why so many of these young people opted to leave home in search of an alternative living situation. The current findings also reveal that while some young adults ran …

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 …

Homeless Youths’ Hiv Risk Behaviors With Strangers: Investigating The Importance Of Social Networks, Kimberly A. Tyler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between homeless youths’ HIV risk behaviors with strangers and risk and protective characteristics of their social networks. Data were from the Social Network and Homeless Youth Project. A total of 249 youth aged 14 to 21 years were interviewed over 15 months in three Midwestern cities in the United States using a systematic sampling strategy. Multivariate results revealed that homeless youth with a greater average number of network members who engaged in more drug risk behaviors and who pressured them into precarious behaviors at least once were more likely to …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …