Social Psychology and Interaction Commons^™

“Bomb Talk” And Erving Goffman’S Frame Analysis, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis is introduced (together with several of Goffman’s basic concepts, including “strips”, “frames”, “keys”, “fabrications”, etc.) and applied to “bomb talk” (i.e., the different ways in which westerners discuss and/or refer to the reality of nuclear weapons). This analysis confirms (as Goffman predicts) that the manner in which everyday life is conceptualized and subsequently transformed is extraordinarily flexible. Goffman offers a coherent knowledge-producing system, one that is best carefully studied before applying his precisely-defined concepts to other aspects of our social world. Frame Analysis provides the means for analyzing the organization of everyday life and answering many …

Towards A Formal Understanding Of Bateson's Rule: Chromatic Symmetry In Cyclic Boolean Networks And Its Relationship To Organism Growth And Cell Differentiation, Yuri Cantor, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

There has been considerable prior research on the biological processes of morphogenesis and cellular differentiation, and the manner by which these processes give rise to symmetries in biological structures. Here we extend our previous work on thermal robustness and attractor density in cyclic formal Boolean dynamical systems, introducing a new form of spectral analysis on digital organisms at the cellular level. We interpret the phenomena of radial and bilateral symmetry in terms of spatial periodicities in the color sequences, as manifested by an organism while it orbits in its attractors. We provide new results on the influence of various organism …

What Makes A Man: Gender And Sexual Boundaries On Evangelical Christian Sexuality Websites, Kelsy Burke

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This article examines how some evangelical Christian men create alternative meanings associated with gender-deviant sex in order to justify it within an evangelical framework. The author shows how Christian sexuality website users construct gender omniscience—a spouse and God’s all-knowing certainty about one’s ‘‘true’’ gender identity—to reconcile men’s interests in non-normative sex with their status as Christian patriarchs. By constructing gender as relational and spiritual, they simultaneously normalize their behaviors while condemning others who participate in similar acts but fail to meet the requirements of gender omniscience. Challenging common assumptions about evangelical sexuality, this article offers insights into the intersection of …

Hepatitis C Virus Infection Among Hiv-Positive Men Who Have Sex With Men: Protocol For A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Holly Hagan, Joshua Neurer, Ashly E. Jordan, Don C. Des Jarlais, Jennifer Wu, Kirk Dombrowski, Bilal Khan, Ronald Scott Braithwaite, Jason Kessler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Background: Outbreaks of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have been reported in HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) in North America, Europe and Asia. Transmission is believed to be the result of exposure to blood during sexual contact. In those infected with HIV, acute HCV infection is more likely to become chronic, treatment for both HIV and HCV is more complicated and HCV disease progression may be accelerated. There is a need for systematic reviews and meta-analyses to synthesize the epidemiology, prevention and methods to control HCV infection in this population.

Methods/design: Eligible studies will include …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

Marijuana Use Development Over The Course Of Adolescence Among North American Indigenous Youth, Jacob E. Cheadle, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the links between marijuana use trajectories and marijuana abuse/ dependence (DSM-IV) using five waves of data from 718 North American Indigenous adolescents between 10 and 17 years from eight reservations sharing a common language and culture. Growth mixture models indicated that 15% of youth began using by 11–12 years of age and that another 20% began shortly thereafter. These early users had odds of abuse/dependence 6.5 times larger than abstainers. Girls were also unexpectedly found to be particularly at risk of early use, and this did not reflect other background and psychosocial factors, including friend use. While …

Superstars And Misfits: Two Pop-Trends In The Gender Culture Of Contemporary Evangelicalism, Kelsy Burke, Amy Mcdowell

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines gender in two forms of mediated contemporary Protestant evangelicalism in the United States: a male-dominated punk network, called Misfits United, and a women’s group studying Beth Moore’s Bible study, It’s Tough Being a Woman (ITBAW). While the appearance and performance styles of these two groups are drastically different, both support gender hierarchies in similar ways. Misfits United and Moore’s ITBAW present the gender of their Christian God as flexible, even transformative, and in effect open up discursive space to conceptualize gender on non-traditional grounds. Paradoxically, however, both reinforce traditional gender roles by emphasizing what distinguishes God from …

Extracurricular Activity Involvement And Adolescent Self-Esteem, Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Extracurricular activities figure prominently in the lives of adolescents, as most youth report participating at some level in a school-based extracurricular activity (Feldman & Matjasko, 2005). Scholars, practitioners, educators, and policy makers alike promote the potential benefits of extracurricular involvement for personal and prosocial development among adolescents. Researchers from a variety of fields have taken an interest in how participation influences health, well-being, and social development. This research has demonstrated a connection between structured activity involvement and several indicators of positive youth development (Busseri & Rose-Krasnor, 2009). Of particular interest in this article is the relationship between activity participation and …

The Intergenerational Effects Of Relocation Policies On Indigenous Families, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This research utilizes life-course perspective concepts of linked lives and historical time and place to examine the multigenerational effects of relocation experiences on Indigenous families. Data were collected from a longitudinal study currently underway on four American Indian reservations in the Northern Midwest and four Canadian First Nation reserves where residents share a common Indigenous cultural heritage. This paper includes information from 507 10 – 12 year old Indigenous youth and their biological mothers who participated in the study. Results of path analysis revealed significant direct and indirect effects whereby grandparent-generation (G1) participation in government relocation programs negatively impacts not …

Women’S Agency In Gender-Traditional Religions: A Review Of Four Approaches, Kelsy Burke

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The concept of agency is useful for feminist research on women in gender-traditional religions. By focusing on religious women’s agency, scholars understand these women as actors, rather than simply acted upon by male-dominated social institutions. This article reviews the advantages and limitations of feminist scholarship on the agency of women who participate in gender-traditional religions by bringing into dialog four approaches to understanding agency. The resistance agency approach focuses on women who attempt to challenge or change some aspect of their religion. The empowerment agency approach focuses on how women reinterpret religious doctrine or practices in ways that make them …

Correlates Of Homeless Episodes Among Indigenous People, Les B. Whitbeck, Devan M. Crawford, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study reports the correlates of homeless episodes among 873 Indigenous adults who are part of an ongoing longitudinal study on four reservations in the Northern Midwest and four Canadian First Nation reserves. Descriptive analyses depict differences between those who have and have not experienced an episode of homelessness in their lifetimes. Multivariate analyses assess factors associated with a history of homeless episodes at the time of their first interview. Results show that individuals with a history of homeless episodes had significantly more individual and family health, mental health, and substance abuse problems. Periods of homelessness also were associated with …

Factors Associated With Growth In Daily Smoking Among Indigenous Adolescents, Les B. Whitbeck, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Julia Mcquillan, Devan M. Crawford

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

North American Indigenous adolescents smoke earlier, smoke more, and are more likely to become regular smokers as adults than youth from any other ethnic group yet we know very little about their early smoking trajectories. We use multilevel growth modeling across five waves of data from Indigenous adolescents (aged 10 to 13 years at Wave 1) to investigate factors associated with becoming a daily smoker. Several factors, including number of peers who smoked at Wave 1 and meeting diagnostic criteria for major depressive episode and conduct disorder were associated with early daily smoking. Only age and increases in the number …

Advanced Seminar – Interviewer-Respondent Interaction: Survey Research & Methodology Special Topics 898, Spring 2012, Robert Belli

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This course will explore the theory and observations that underlie the attempt of survey methodologists to understand the nature of interviewer-respondent interactions and their impact on data quality. This exploration will entail the examination of different interviewing methods and different methods to observe and analyze the verbal behavioral streams that occur between interviewers and respondents. In addition, analytic approaches that seek to understand the impact of verbal behaviors on data quality will be considered.

Book Review: Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric Of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns, By Christine J. Gardner, Kelsy Burke

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Evangelical messages about adolescent sexuality appear straight-forward: unless they are married (and heterosexual), teens should not have sex. However, as communications scholar Christine J. Gardner shows in her book, Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns, how evangelicals go about promoting abstinence is both complicated and unexpected. Gardner focuses on how social meanings about religion and sexuality are constructed in evangelical abstinence campaign by examining the rhetoric of three U.S. campaigns (the primary focus of the book) and one African campaign. One of her most surprising findings—and the one for which the book’s title is based—is that U.S. …

Does The Reason Matter? Variations In Childlessness Concerns Among U.S. Women, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil, Patricia Wonch Hill, Kari C. Gentzler, John D. Hathcoat

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Does the reason why women have no children matter with regard to level of childlessness concerns? Reasons include biomedical barriers, situational barriers, delaying motherhood, and choosing to be childfree. The concept of ‘‘childlessness concerns’’ captures the idea that holidays and family gatherings are difficult because of not having children or feeling left out or sad that others have children. Life course and identity theories guided the structural equation model analyses of a representative sample of 1,180 U.S. women without children from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. The results indicated that women with the least control over pregnancy, those with …

The Effects Of Item Saliency And Question Design On Measurement Error In A Self-Administered Survey, Michael J. Stern, Jolene D. Smyth, Jeanette Mendez

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent survey design research has shown that small changes in the structure and visual layout of questions can affect respondents’ answers, but the results are not always consistent across studies. One possible reason for some of the inconsistency may be differences in the item saliency of the questions used in the experiments. In this article, the authors examine how item saliency might influence visual design effects. The authors report the results of three experimental alterations in question format and visual design using data from a 2005 random sample mail survey of 1,315 households. The results suggest that the saliency of …

Estimating The Size Of The Methamphetamine-Using Population In New York City Using Network Sampling Techniques, Kirk Dombrowski, Bilal Khan, Travis Wendel, Katherine Mclean, Evan Misshula, Ric Curtis

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

As part of a recent study of the dynamics of the retail market for methamphetamine use in New York City, we used network sampling methods to estimate the size of the total networked population. This process involved sampling from respondents’ list of co-use contacts, which in turn became the basis for cap-ture-recapture estimation. Recapture sampling was based on links to other respondents derived from demographic and “telefunken” matching procedures–the latter being an anonymized version of telephone number matching. This paper describes the matching process used to discover the links between the solic-ited contacts and project respondents, the capture-recapture calculation, the …

Guinea Pigging In Philadelphia, Roberto Abadie

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

On June 16, 2001, the national press first reported the death of Ellen Roche, a healthy 24-year-old who volunteered for an asthma study at Johns Hopkins University. The story revealed that a few days into the trial she felt very sick, was discharged, and sent home. Within some hours she checked into the emergency room at a local hospital and fell into a coma. Ellen remained in this state until her death a month later. She had received $375 for participating in seven to nine sessions as an outpatient in the clinical drug study that resulted in her death.

This …

Pregnancy Loss And Distress Among U.S. Women, Karina M. Shreffler, Arthur L. Greil, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although pregnancy loss—especially miscarriage— is a relatively common experience among reproductive-aged women, much of our understanding about the experience has come from small clinic-based or other nonrepresentative samples. We compared fertility-specific distress among a national sample of 1,284 women who have ever experienced a stillbirth or miscarriage. We found that commitment/attachment to pregnancy that ended in loss as well as current childbearing contexts and attitudes were associated with distress following pregnancy loss. Practitioners working with women or couples who have experienced pregnancy loss should be aware of the importance of characteristics associated with higher distress, such as whether the pregnancy …

Organs Watch: Possibilities And Perils For Public Anthropology, Roberto Abadie

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent technological advances in biomedicine have introduced new therapeutic possibilities but have also contributed to the emergence of a global market for human bodies and body parts. For example, artificial modes of human reproduction created a market for eggs, semen, and surrogate wombs. In addition, organ transfer generated a demand for kidneys and half livers. The whole body has become a valuable commodity as professional research subjects venture into the economy of Phase I Clinical Trials, testing drug safety for pharmaceutical companies. In the process, the trade has become a deeply unequal one in which poor, vulnerable, and easily exploited …

Self-Esteem And Mastery Trajectories In High School By Social Class And Gender, Christina D. Falci

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Using longitudinal data from 769 white adolescents in the Midwest, this research applies a social structure and personality perspective to examine variation in self-esteem and mastery trajectories by gender and SES across the high school years. Analyses reveal that high SES adolescents experience significantly steeper gains in self-esteem and mastery compared to low SES adolescents, resulting in the reversal of SES differences in self-esteem and the emergence of significant SES differences in mastery. Pre-existing gender differences in self-esteem narrow between the 9^th and 12^th grade because self-esteem increases at a faster rate among girls than boys during high …

Distress Among Indigenous North Americans: Generalized And Culturally Relevant Stressors, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Stress process and life-course models of mental distress emphasize socio-cultural and historical processes that influence stress exposure and the impact of stress on mental health outcomes. Drawing from these theoretical orientations as well as concepts from the historical trauma literature, we examine the effects of culturally relevant and more generalized sources of stress on distress among North American Indigenous adults, and tests for the potential cumulative and interactive effects of stress on distress across the life-course via self-reported early childhood and adult/contemporary stressors. Results of OLS regression analyses reveal positive, significant associations between general stressors and distress as well as …