Suchergebnisse

Research on the process of classification has long revealed biases and limitations embedded within social data. Expanding or contracting definitions of homelessness and the perception of housing status as relevant information play a large part in data and knowledge about homelessness. The author explores how homelessness is conceptualized and documented (or not documented) within death records through the use of qualitative interviews with field investigators ( n = 20) who attend and document circumstances related to suspicious deaths in New Mexico. The findings reveal uncertainty in marking a person as homeless that is newly described as labeling ambivalence, which can be resolved more systematically through a process of increasing social mattering in which the social determinants of health are accentuated as factors related to premature mortality. The findings suggest important considerations for more systematically describing housing status and other indicators of the social determinants of health within social records.

As refugees move from forced displacement to resettlement, their networks change dramatically alongside their living conditions and surroundings. The relative benefit of different kinds of ties in this context is not well known. Data for this study came from quantitative and qualitative interviews that were part of the Refugee Well-Being Project (N = 290), a longitudinal randomized controlled trial study inclusive of refugees resettling from the Great Lakes region of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Quantitative results revealed that greater numbers of kinship ties were related to better psychological quality of life ( p < .01) and greater numbers of reported services providers as social ties were related to higher emotional distress ( p < .001). Greater numbers of friendship ties were not statistically related to psychological quality of life or emotional distress. Qualitative findings suggest that cultural brokers—social ties that can bridge cultures, languages, and backgrounds—were particularly important to well-being, blending the benefits of strong and weak ties.

With forcible displacement at unprecedented levels and only expected to increase as conflict, economic inequities, and climate change escalate, it is critical to understand the ways in which social networks of migrants are disrupted and reconstituted in new contexts. This requires critical examination and expansion of existing social network conceptualization, measurement, and theory that considers transnational movement and experiences to ensure cultural and contextual validity. As part of a community-engaged intervention study designed to promote the well-being of recently resettled refugees by addressing social determinants of mental health, the social networks of refugees were measured over time. This paper describes the conceptualization, operationalization, data collection, and data analysis of refugees' social networks; challenges and lessons learned; and implications for transdisciplinary social network theory and methodologies. Tracing the development of quantitative and qualitative instruments and participatory processes of iteratively refining them throughout implementation with four cohorts of refugees (2013–2017; N = 290) resettling in a medium-sized city in the Southwestern United States, we offer innovative ways of viewing social networks that expand conceptualization, improve measurement, and extend theory. Our findings address known challenges to social network data collection (e.g., instrument bias, participant recall bias, and interviewer capacity) and suggest how social networks data collection can be strengthened through approaches that include (1) community members as collaborative researchers, (2) transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological perspectives, and (3) team-based practices that share leadership, learning experiences, and responsibility for data analysis, interpretation, and dissemination.

The Agenda for Social Justice: Solutions for 2020 provides accessible insights into some of the most pressing social problems in the United States and proposes public policy responses to those problems. Written by a highly respected team of authors brought together by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), it offers recommendations for action by elected officials, policy makers, and the public around key issues for social justice, including a discussion of the role of key issues of sustainability and technology in the development and timbre of future social problems. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, advocates, and students interested in public sociology and the study of social problems