A relational view of Psychological Empowerment and Sense of Community in academic contexts: a preliminary study

Scholars need to pay attention to understand the factors that shape the interactions between individuals and social groups. Constructs like Psychological Sense of Community (PSoC) and Psychological Empowerment (PE) are powerful constructs used to evaluate the antecedents and the consequences of individual attachment to social settings. In parallel, recent advances in network analysis show that the position occupied within whole networks and ego-centric networks are relational factors that affect the subjective perception of membership to social groups. Studies that are conducted in organizational and community settings show strong associations between PSoC and PE. However, these connections have rarely been evaluated within natural settings such as the classroom context. On the other hand, although the theoretic basis of PSoC and PE claims that both processes are formed in a relational way, there are few studies that empirically evaluate the effects of social connectedness on the emergence of PSoC—referred to the classroom—and PE referred to academic-task development. The aim of this research is to determine the effects that the position occupied in formal and informal exchange networks induce on PSoC and PE dimensions. Sixty-four students enrolled in a master degree program (women = 68.8%, Mean age = 26.09, SD = 3.88) participated in this cross-sectional study. Multivariate analyses and network analyses were performed to test the hypotheses under study. The main research finding is that PSoC and PE are synergistic constructs that mutually shape to each other. In relational terms, by sending several nominations in informal networks, it is possible to generate notable impacts on some PSoC dimensions, while receipt of a wide number of nominations in formal contact networks is associated with high levels of PE. In addition, individuals who present high levels of PE are located in the core of formal exchange networks. These results are discussed in order to design actions to increase PSoC and PE in postgraduate academic settings

Norms within Networks: Opinion Leader and Peer Network Influences on Mothers/Caregivers' Childhood Immunization Decisions in Rural Northern Nigeria

Why do some mothers/caregivers immunize their children while others don't? What role do social norms within networks play in the inequitable uptake of childhood immunizations in northern Nigeria? A large body of research has been devoted to investigating the determinants of immunization acceptance in developing countries. Up to this point, however, most of this research has focused on individual-level explanations - such as maternal age, maternal education, household wealth, maternal knowledge about the benefits of immunizations, and previous health-seeking experiences - to account for variance in immunization use. Scant attention has been paid to the ways that social factors influence this outcome. This dissertation aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by investigating the impact of social network characteristics and norms on immunization use among a sample of mothers/caregivers in rural, northern Nigeria. More specifically, this study uses a formal social network analysis to examine how the structure of mothers/caregivers' relationships with opinion leaders and peers impact their decisions to immunize their children. This research makes a unique contribution to the literature by putting the social networks of mothers/caregivers at the center of its analyses, and examining how social relationships impact immunization decisions in a setting with some of the worst childhood immunization coverage rates in the world. This study draws on theories of social networks and social norms in order to explain the variance in childhood immunization coverage rates among a sample of mothers/caregivers in Zamfara State, northern Nigeria. The aims of this research are to 1) test whether injunctive and descriptive norms towards immunizations are linked to mothers/caregivers' immunization decisions; 2) examine whether the theorized constructs of social control and social learning underlie injunctive norms and descriptive norms around immunizations; 3) assess the degree to which injunctive and descriptive norms influence mothers/caregivers immunization behaviors; and 4) test whether the structural properties of closeness and frequency of communication about immunizations moderate the influence of injunctive and descriptive norms on mothers/caregivers' immunization use. This study employed a refined ego-centric network design that uses quantitative and geographic data collected in October-November 2011, from 550 mothers and 127 of their opinion leaders living across 22 paired villages in one local government area in Zamfara State, northern Nigeria. Validity tests were conducted to assess the accuracy of the injunctive norms measures and a latent variable model was utilized to generate more valid indicators of them. Mixed effect models, adjusting for clustering at the compound and village levels, were used to test all study hypotheses. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to confirm study results. The results indicate that injunctive and descriptive norms independently predict mothers/caregivers' immunization use in their peer networks, but not in their opinion leader networks. The results also confirm that social control underlies injunctive norms and that social learning underlies descriptive norms. Injunctive norms are more influential than descriptive norms in mothers/caregivers' peer networks, indicating that social control is operating as a stronger force on mothers/caregivers' immunization decisions than reflective observations of their peers' immunization behaviors. The results also show that that the influence of injunctive norms in opinion leader networks on mothers/caregivers' immunization use partly depends on whether or not they have a close relationship with their opinion leaders. Frequency of communication between mothers/caregivers and their opinion leaders and peers strengthens the influence of descriptive norms on immunization use. This indicates that both communication and observed immunization practices are necessary conditions for normative influences to operate. This study provides additional evidence to support the claim that health outcomes depend not just on individuals' own beliefs and actions, but also on the normative beliefs and actions of the people around them. To improve the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving immunization acceptance, researchers and programmers alike should treat mothers/caregivers not only as individuals, but as members of meaningful and influential interpersonal networks. By embracing this approach, we will improve our understanding of the determinants of routine immunization use in developing countries, while accelerating the impact of immunization programs on child survival outcomes in contexts, like northern Nigeria, with some of the worst immunization coverage rates in the world

Entrepreneurship within Urban and Rural Areas. Individual Creativity and Social Network

The entrepreneurial dynamics of urban and rural areas are different, and this paper explores ’individual creativity’ and social network factors in both places. The probabilities of becoming an entrepreneur and of surviving are analyzed. The results are based on longitudinal data combined with a questionnaire, utilizing responses from 1,108 entrepreneurs and 420 non-entrepreneurs. Creativity is only found to be relevant for start-up in urban areas, but it does not influence survival in any of the two areas. The social network matters, in particular in rural areas. By combining the person and the environment, common entrepreneurship beliefs can be questioned and entrepreneurship theory benefited.Entrepreneurship; Urban; Rural

The Boston Girls Sports & Physical Activity Project: Final Report to the Barr Foundation

The main goal of the three-year Boston Girls' Sports & Physical Activity Project (BGSPAP) was to create an integrated and sustainable network of community-based programs that use sports and physical activity to favorably influence the physical, psychological, and social development of urban girls. The BGSPAP aimed to provide economically disadvantaged urban girls with opportunities to participate in sports and physical activity. The BGSPAP also aspired to upgrade sports and physical activity programming for girls in order to overcome gender biases built into the Boston schools and community programs. The number and quality of sports and exercise programs for Boston girls were not at par with those of Boston boys

Social networks in residential environments: the theoretical concept and its visualization using NodeXL

Social networks can be said to have a supportive role not only in the digital world, but also by the creation of a social mix at a local level in the real world. This supportive role seems to be important in particular for socially disadvantaged persons, becoming apparent in the creating and maintaining of social contacts at the place they live. Illustrating these social relationships spatially is both the aim and the task of visualization, with new opportunities presenting themselves for everyone in this field as a result of free software such as NodeXL being developed and made available. The case study outlined here - "Ackermannbogen", a district of the Bavarian capital of Munich which has an urban character - deals with the issue of social networks and their visualization using NodeXL. One thing which becomes apparent on the basis of the analysis and visualization of social networks is that noticeable differences can be seen in the range they have. These differences are related to the location of the place of residence. Men and women living in the central location of the Ackermannbogen have social networks with a greater supportive function to people living in the same construction phase. In contrast to this finding social networks with a lower supportive function primarily origin from buildings located in the southern location of the Ackermannbogen. These social networks of socially disadvantaged population groups remain for the majority of the people asked in the same apartment block or the same street.Soziale Netzwerke - ihnen kann nicht nur in der digitalen Welt, sondern auch durch die Umsetzung der sozialen Mischung auf lokaler Ebene in der realen Welt eine unterstützende Rolle zugesprochen werden, die vor allem für sozial benachteiligte Personen von Bedeutung erscheint und sich durch die Generierung und den Erhalt sozialer Kontakte am Wohnort erschließt. Jene sozialen Beziehungen im Raum zu veranschaulichen ist zugleich Ziel und Aufgabe der Visualisierung, wobei sich in diesem Bereich insbesondere durch die Entwicklung und Bereitstellung kostenloser Software wie NodeXL neue Möglichkeiten für Jedermann erschließen. Das in dieser Studie skizzierte Fallbeispiel des Ackermannbogens, eines städtisch geprägten Quartiers der Landeshauptstadt München, greift das Thema der sozialen Netzwerke und deren Visualisierung mittels NodeXL auf, wobei sich anhand der durchgeführten sozialen Netzwerkanalyse und -visualisierung zeigt, dass sich merkliche Unterschiede in deren Reichweite ausmachen lassen. Jene stehen dabei in Verbindung mit der Lage des Wohnortes. Männer und Frauen, die in zentraler Wohnlage des Ackermannbogens leben, haben soziale Netzwerke mit einer größeren Unterstützungsfunktion zu Personen, die im selben Bauabschnitt leben. Im Gegensatz zu diesem Ergebnis haben soziale Netzwerke mit einer geringeren Unterstützungsfunktion ihren Ursprung zumeist in der südlichen Wohnlage des Ackermannbogens. Diese sozialen Netzwerke sozial benachteiligter Bevölkerungsgruppen verbleiben für die Mehrheit der Befragten in ihrer Reichweite im selben Baublock oder derselben Straße wie die befragte Person

Social support and network formation in a small-scale horticulturalist population

Evolutionary studies of cooperation in traditional human societies suggest that helping family and responding in kind when helped are the primary mechanisms for informally distributing resources vital to day-to-day survival (e.g., food, knowledge, money, childcare). However, these studies generally rely on forms of regression analysis that disregard complex interdependences between aid, resulting in the implicit assumption that kinship and reciprocity drive the emergence of entire networks of supportive social bonds. Here I evaluate this assumption using individual-oriented simulations of network formation (i.e., Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models). Specifically, I test standard predictions of cooperation derived from the evolutionary theories of kin selection and reciprocal altruism alongside well-established sociological predictions around the self-organisation of asymmetric relationships. Simulations are calibrated to exceptional public data on genetic relatedness and the provision of tangible aid amongst all 108 adult residents of a village of indigenous horticulturalists in Nicaragua (11,556 ordered dyads). Results indicate that relatedness and reciprocity are markedly less important to whom one helps compared to the supra-dyadic arrangement of the tangible aid network itself

SOCIAL NETWORKS, IDENTITY, HEALTH, AND QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG OLDER GAY AND LESBIAN INDIVIDUALS IN RURAL ENVIRONMENTS

The goal of this dissertation was to explore aging lesbian and gay individuals living in rural communities, in terms of their social networks and the relationships between these networks, identity, health, and quality of life. Guiding the study were three overarching questions. Using a multi-method design, the research was grounded within a socio-ecological context and focused on how structural systems create pathways for health and are affected by social position (intersectionality). Participants (n=25) were recruited from Kentucky (n=20), West Virginia (n=3), and Tennessee (n=2). Thirteen participants self-identified as gay and twelve as lesbian. Findings highlight the complexity of the aging experience and the difficulty in parsing out the influence of a rural location, the aging process, and being a lesbian or gay male, on social network development, identity, health, and quality of life. Findings indicate that rural gay and lesbian individuals develop networks based on need with limited consideration for network members’ acceptance of their identity. The findings also indicate that networks are primarily composed of heterosexual members. Social isolation and loneliness remain a pervasive issue in the rural gay and lesbian aging community. Finally, network size does not affect the overall health and quality of life for rural aging lesbian and gay individuals, but identity congruence does. Conclusions point to the greater need for research to understand the factors affecting aging lesbian and gay individuals in rural environments. Opportunities abound for developing further research addressing social isolation among this population and exploring the positive relationship between identity congruence and quality of life. The findings highlight the collective need to continue research into sexual minority aging and rural sexual minority aging

Encoding edge type information in graphlets.

Graph embedding approaches have been attracting increasing attention in recent years mainly due to their universal applicability. They convert network data into a vector space in which the graph structural information and properties are maximumly preserved. Most existing approaches, however, ignore the rich information about interactions between nodes, i.e., edge attribute or edge type. Moreover, the learned embeddings suffer from a lack of explainability, and cannot be used to study the effects of typed structures in edge-attributed networks. In this paper, we introduce a framework to embed edge type information in graphlets and generate a Typed-Edge Graphlets Degree Vector (TyE-GDV). Additionally, we extend two combinatorial approaches, i.e., the colored graphlets and heterogeneous graphlets approaches to edge-attributed networks. Through applying the proposed method to a case study of chronic pain patients, we find that not only the network structure of a patient could indicate his/her perceived pain grade, but also certain social ties, such as those with friends, colleagues, and healthcare professionals, are more crucial in understanding the impact of chronic pain. Further, we demonstrate that in a node classification task, the edge-type encoded graphlets approaches outperform the traditional graphlet degree vector approach by a significant margin, and that TyE-GDV could achieve a competitive performance of the combinatorial approaches while being far more efficient in space requirements

Beginning Teachers’ Workplace Experiences: Perceptions of and Use of Support

This paper illuminates the experiences of beginning teachers using a participatory perspective approach and drawing on some of these teachers’ perceptions. We place the ‘subject’ of workplace learning research centrally in understanding the relatedness between workplaces and novice employees/trainees. This paper builds on previous work by the authors using semi-structured interviews with 17 beginning teachers in 19 schools that aim to better understand issues associated with beginning teacher retention. This study explores an application of a framework for evaluating workplaces as from expansive to restrictive learning environments, whilst examining individuals’ responses to and agency in these environments. In addition, these teachers’ personal networks were explored to idedntify how they shaped the teachers’ engagement with workplaces. This analysis revealed networks both internal and external to their schools, and hence a broader view of workplace than is often proposed. Together these analyses allowed an examination of the relatedness between individual beginning teachers and the schools they experienced. This paper identifies the significance of ontogeny and expectation that individuals bring to the workplace, along with individuals exhibiting different agency. These beginning teachers indicate how individuals can be proactive in creating more expansive learning environments for themselves through the utilisation of personal networks, even when these are not offered. This finding may have implications for beginning teachers to re-evaluate their potential to become empowered as they begin their careers