1,720,987 research outputs found
Capstone, Cautions, and Enthusiasms
No full textAdjunct to the preceding excerpt from Structural Holes, this chapter’s goal is to provide a capstone summarizing where we are on Structural Holes’ subject of network brokerage, and my cautions and enthusiasms concerning directions in which things are going. I focus on core ideas and results rather than on literature.1 In the capstone, I discuss the information breadth, timing, and arbitrage advantages of network brokers,
and returns to those advantages contingent on a broker’s social standing. Research linking network structure with success has been a first generation of work. That work is well advanced, but far from complete. I discuss the current position becoming stronger and broader with replication, attention to negative results, and attention to dynamics. Shifting to an exciting second generation of ongoing work, research has emerged focused on the behavior by which broker advantage is linked with success. I discuss framing and frame shifts, the importance of personal engagement, the uncertain moderating effects of culture and personality, and a few behavioral variations in brokerage. I discuss the context dependence of tertius gaudens tactics iungens versus separans, and the distinction between brokers who consume versus produce emotional energy in their
colleagues
STATUS AND THE PSYCHE: HOW MENTAL HEALTH PARADOXES CHALLENGE THEORIES OF INEQUALITY
Full text linkThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Sociology, 2023.Social scientists have documented a set of unexpected sociodemographic patterns they call health paradoxes or epidemiological paradoxes. Like all paradoxes, such findings compel scholars to reconsider their assumptions about the social world—findings are only “paradoxical” when viewed from a certain perspective. This dissertation centers on mental health paradoxes, cases in which persons deemed low-status (less educated individuals, racial minorities, immigrants) report better mental health despite greater marginalization. I examine three paradoxes: (1) elevated rates of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB) in socioeconomically advantaged college students, (2) greater risk of psychiatric disorders in White vs. Black Americans (the Black-White mental health paradox), and (3) higher rates of mental health problems among the native-born (the healthy immigrant paradox). For each paradox, I test a range of potential mechanisms including social support, stressors, and identity measures. I leverage data from two national studies: the Healthy Minds Study (HMS) of college and university students (2009–2019) and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions–III (NESARC–III, 2012–2013). Findings challenge the distributive paradigm inherent in dominant approaches such as the stress process model and fundamental cause theory, both of which are limited by a similar focus on material and psychosocial “resources.” Taken together, my results highlight the resilience of groups deemed low-status and suggest that structural and cultural arrangements imposed by high-status groups (including an individualist focus on success and self-advancement) may harm well-being
IN THE SYSTEM BUT NOT OF THE SYSTEM: UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE AND EXPERIENCES OF MENTAL HEALTH PEER SPECIALISTS
Full text linkThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Sociology, 2023Certified peer specialists are mental health professionals who provide non-clinical mental health services to individuals in the community who may be struggling with mental health difficulties. They focus on providing support, hope, and the goal of recovery and do so by drawing upon their own lived experiences with mental illness or, to use non-psychiatric terms, distress, difficulties in living, and extreme states. The case of certified peer specialists allows for an investigation into how peer specialists carry out and experience their work and the implications of their unique approach. Specifically, I consider how peer specialists resist biomedicalization by emphasizing and prioritizing nonmedical, social environmental factors in the etiology and “treatment” of mental health problems. They identify trauma as a key contributor to individuals’ experiences of distress and push back against psychiatric labeling, which may contribute to stigma. Further, the professionalization of peer specialists lends insight into how new professions operate to seek and establish legitimacy, autonomy, and credibility. They must resist stigmatizing attitudes and uncertainty about the profession’s status to legitimize their expert knowledge from lived experience as lay professionals. Finally, peer specialists must engage in emotion work in their everyday work and must cope with their emotions through social support and personal coping strategies. Due to the mutuality, or even power differential, of peer support, what is considered appropriate emotion work for peer specialists may look different than what is appropriate for other professions, namely the ability to openly experience emotions with those receiving support. Using a combination of in-depth interviews with peer specialists, viii participant observation fieldwork at a peer-run nonprofit organization, and a survey of peer specialists across the United States, I investigate how peer specialists operate to demedicalize mental illness, legitimize their profession, and navigate emotions and boundaries at work. This research has meaningful theoretical and practical implications and contributes to a major gap in the sociological literature on peer support, professions, and resistance to biomedicalization
Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal
Full text linkWidespread uptake of vaccines is necessary to achieve herd immunity. However,
uptake rates have varied across U.S. states during the first six months of the
COVID-19 vaccination program. Misbeliefs may play an important role in vaccine
hesitancy, and there is a need to understand relationships between
misinformation, beliefs, behaviors, and health outcomes. Here we investigate
the extent to which COVID-19 vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy are
associated with levels of online misinformation about vaccines. We also look
for evidence of directionality from online misinformation to vaccine hesitancy.
We find a negative relationship between misinformation and vaccination uptake
rates. Online misinformation is also correlated with vaccine hesitancy rates
taken from survey data. Associations between vaccine outcomes and
misinformation remain significant when accounting for political as well as
demographic and socioeconomic factors. While vaccine hesitancy is strongly
associated with Republican vote share, we observe that the effect of online
misinformation on hesitancy is strongest across Democratic rather than
Republican counties. Granger causality analysis shows evidence for a
directional relationship from online misinformation to vaccine hesitancy. Our
results support a need for interventions that address misbeliefs, allowing
individuals to make better-informed health decisions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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