The Relationship Between Breastfeeding and Child Care for Working Mothers in the United States

Whether or not child care provider characteristics and factors related to the care giving environment impact breastfeeding duration for working mothers has not been systematically studied. In this dissertation, I use Ecological Health Promotion Theory to explore the relationship between child care and breastfeeding through three different analyses. First, I interviewed nine child care providers to assess their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about infant feeding and whether they vary on these factors across individuals and child care licensing types. Second, I conducted a small mail survey of 93 licensed child care providers in order to create a scale measuring attitudes on the importance of breastfeeding, breastfeeding program supports, and confidence in providing breast milk to infants in their care, and also to assess whether their attitudes and beliefs about breastfeeding are related to overall child care quality. Third, I use the National Institutes of Child Health and Development’s Study of Early Child Care to assess whether quality child care is associated with increased breastfeeding duration after controlling for work, demographic, and socioeconomic maternal characteristics. Through these three analyses, I found that child care providers to vary in their attitudes and programmatic supports of breastfeeding. Their personal experience breastfeeding their own infants was correlated with the proportion of infants breastfed in their program, and their attitudes, beliefs, program supports, and confidence in providing breast milk. Overall child care quality, as measured by traditional indicators (education/experience), were not associated with proportion of infants breastfed, personal experience, or breastfeeding attitudes and beliefs. In the third analysis, among working and non-working mothers, the proportion of time an infant spent in relative child care was associated with longer breastfeeding duration. Also, the younger the child when full-time child care first began, the sooner their mother weaned. However, when child care onset preceded work onset, breastfeeding duration increased. Finally, among working mothers, caregiver characteristics associated with quality had no significant association with breastfeeding after controlling for maternal characteristics. Proportion of time in a child care home was negatively associated with breastfeeding, but not for care giving in relative homes, or child care centers

Network Science: Insights for Pandemics

The focus of our current project is on helping members of the public to better understand the role of network science theories and tools for improving public health because often public health is connected to complex systems. We’ll focus today on the relevance of network science for understanding how to contain viruses that cause diseases

Soc 898 Syllabus (Special Topics). Social Psychological Processes in the STEM Classroom: Activating STEM Identities Summer 2017

This class covers a broad range of social psychological topics and processes to help teachers better understand how social context impacts STEM learning. Students will learn about social inequality in STEM fields, and the individual, interactional, and institutional barriers to developing a science identity for youth from a variety of social locations (rural/urban, gender, race/ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, ELL). The class will learn about implicit bias, stereotype threat, and identity theory, and how they impact formal and informal social interactions and learning in the STEM classroom. They will learn and help formulate practical strategies to reduce their negative impact in order to broaden and widen student engagement in STEM. Learning Objectives: • Teachers will understand the utility of social psychological concepts in their efforts to help youth become more interested in STEM. • Teachers will learn to use a sociological lens to identify how social structural forces influence youth identification with STEM. • Teachers will identify ways to use identity theory concepts and principles to activate youth STEM youth. • Teachers will create tools to integrate what they’ve learned about STEM identity into education practices

Expanding Graduate Education and Career Placement through CER

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is an R1 (doctoral granting and high research activity) institution with decades of experience with community-engaged research (CER). The UNL Sociology Department has long emphasized research methods, particularly survey methodology and social network analyses, in academic and practice settings. The department offers many opportunities to conduct CER, as well as general applied sociology, and encourages faculty to publish with students out of those opportunities. In part through insights gained through ASA efforts (e.g., leadership development about careers in practice settings), and in part learning from graduate students who perceived discouragement from considering jobs in applied settings, as department chair coauthor McQuillan encouraged efforts to promote paths to possible careers in multiple kinds of settings (e.g. as professors, in government agencies, nonprofit, and for-profit settings). Our impression is that many faculty in R1 universities are most comfortable mentoring students to careers in academia. Lack of familiarity with applied careers can lead to unfortunate concerns, such as faculty telling students they are “throwing away a career.” However, graduates from the UNL Sociology Department make vital contributions to societal wellbeing through studying and effectively communicating results in settings such as a global religious organization, global hiring consulting firms, government agencies, for-profit companies, and health research. There can also be worries about department reputational prestige if students are not placed in academic positions. UNL department members in 1998 explored the question of what matters most for reputational prestige and found that past prestige was so much more important than student placement and current faculty publishing that many of us decided to focus on supporting our students in their chosen career path rather than trying to mold students to pursue positions that we thought would elevate the department reputation

Decline Is Not Inevitable: Changes in Science Identity during the Progression through a U.S. Middle School among Boys and Girls

In the United States, science capital is important for navigating many aspects of life. Yet during middle school, science interest declines more for girls than boys. It is unclear, however, whether science identity also declines during the middle school years and if there are differences by gender. The authors advance prior research by modeling changes in science identity and associations with changes in identity-relevant characteristics using growth curve analyses on four waves of data from 760 middle school youth. For girls and boys, science identity changes over time; about 40 percent of the variance is within-person change, with the remainder explained by aggregate between-person differences. The associations of all identity-relevant characteristics with science identity are not significantly different for girls and boys, yet declines in average values of identity-relevant characteristics are larger for girls than boys

Discovery Orientation, Cognitive Schemas, and Disparities in Science Identity in Early Adolescence

Why are some youth more likely to think of themselves as a science kind of person than others? In this paper, we use a cognitive social-theoretical framework to assess disparities in science identity among middle school–age youth in the United States. We investigate how discovery orientation is associated with science interest, perceived ability, importance, and reflected appraisal, and how they are related to whether youth see themselves, and perceive that others see them, as a science kind of person. We surveyed 441 students in an ethnically diverse, low-income middle school. Gender and race/ethnicity are associated with science identity but not with discovery orientation. Structural equation model results show that the positive association between discovery orientation and science identity is mediated by science interest, importance, and reflected appraisal. These findings advance understanding of how science attitudes and recognition may contribute to the underrepresentation of girls and/or minorities in science

NebrASKa Voices Survey Methodology Report; Including Missing Data Handling and Creating a Raked Weight Variable Using Iterative Proportional Fitting

To gain a comprehensive picture of the surveys that this methodology report references, see the Bureau of Sociological Research methodology reports for each survey available at this link. In the original survey reports the Bureau of Sociological Research staff provide descriptions of data collection, sampling and questionnaire design, response rate, data processing, and preliminary data cleaning. Introduction This report outlines the process of creating a raked weight variable for the NebrASKa Voices 2020 survey, a second “Wave 2” survey following four different “Wave 1” surveys. The 2020 NebrASKa Voices sample Wave 1 prior Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Surveys (NASIS) come from the NASIS conducted in Summer 2018 (N=116), Summer 2019 (N=162), Winter 2019 (N=55), and Winter 2020 (N=171). Participants in the four Wave 1 surveys were given the option to opt into future research; if they chose to opt in, they became part of the sampling frame for the Wave 2 NebrASKa Voices survey

Informal Science Experiences among Urban and Rural Youth: Exploring Differences at the Intersections of Socioeconomic Status, Gender and Ethnicity

The current study explores patterns of informal science experiences among youth in urban and rural middle schools by gender and socioeconomic status. Data come from surveys in two Midwestern middle schools, one in a mid-sized city, and the other in a rural-remote town. We asked about participation in informal science activities (e.g. visiting zoos or museums, or watching shows about science) and if youth had participated in science-focused clubs in the last 12 months (e.g. after-school science clubs, 4-H, scouts). Rural youth reported lower rates of participation in after-school science clubs and a greater desire to participate in after-school science programming than urban youth. Latino/a youth tend to have fewer informal science experiences than non- Latino/a youth, particularly in urban areas. There were few differences in informal science experiences between boys and girls, but in urban areas, girls report more science experiences than boys. Reported science experiences are overall higher in urban areas, yet youth with fewer resources (i.e. books in the home) have fewer informal science experiences overall. This study sheds new light on how socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and geography interact with one another to shape youth science exposure and interest

Accuracy of COVID-19 Relevant Knowledge among Youth: Number of Information Sources Matters

Can comics effectively convey scientific knowledge about COVID-19 to youth? What types and how many sources of information did youth have about COVID-19 during the pandemic? How are sources of information associated with accurate COVID-19 knowledge? To answer these questions, we surveyed youth in grades 5–9 in a Midwestern United States school district in the winter of 2020–2021. The online survey used measures of COVID-19 knowledge and sources, with an embedded experiment on COVID-19 relevant comics. Guided by an integrated science capital and just-in-time health and science information acquisition model, we also measured level of science capital, science identity, and utility of science for health and society. The school district protocol required parental consent for participation; 264 of ~15,000 youth participated. Youth were randomly assigned one of four comic conditions before receiving an online survey. Results indicate that, similar to knowledge gains in comic studies on other science topics, reading the comics was associated with 7 to 29% higher accuracy about COVID-19. We found that youth reported getting information about COVID-19 from between 0–6 sources including media, family, friends, school, and experts. The bivariate positive association of news versus other sources with accuracy of knowledge did not persist in the full model, yet the positive association of a higher number of sources and accuracy did persist in the multivariate models. The degree of valuing the utility of science for their health moderated the number of sources to accuracy association. Those with less value on science for health had a stronger positive association of number of sources and accuracy in COVID-19 knowledge. We conclude that during a pandemic, even with health and science information ubiquitous in the news media, increasing youth access to a variety of accurate sources of information about science and health can increase youth knowledge

Exploring the Associations of Afterschool Science Participation and Friendships with Science Identities

Building on previous research that demonstrates the association of youth experiences in afterschool science and higher science identities, this paper presents a network study of 421 middle school students that examines afterschool science participation, friendship ties, and science identities. Participation in afterschool science clubs is associated with higher science identity, but the mechanisms and order of causality are unclear. Youth form friendships inside and outside of school, and peers may influence participation in afterschool activities, as empirical research on friendships shows that they are associated with youth interests. These peer interactions also have the potential to shape identity development during adolescence. In this study, we explore associations among youth participation in afterschool science clubs, peer friendship groups, and science identity. We find that youth who participate in afterschool science clubs have higher science identities than those who do not participate. Additionally, having friends in afterschool science clubs is associated with higher science identity, even among students who report not participating in clubs themselves. Results suggest that afterschool science clubs support youth science identities, even beyond those who directly participate