Tied Together: Adolescent Friendship Networks, Immigrant Status, and Health Outcomes

The Role of Infant Health Problems in Constraining Interneighborhood Mobility: Implications for Citywide Employment Networks

Infant health problems are a persistent concern across the United States, disproportionally affecting socioeconomically vulnerable communities. We investigate how inequalities in infant health contribute to differences in interneighborhood commuting mobility and shape neighborhoods' embeddedness in the citywide structure of employment networks in Chicago over a 14-year period. We use the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics' Origin-Destination Employment Statistics to analyze commuting networks between 2002 and 2015. Results from longitudinal network analyses indicate two main patterns. First, after the Great Recession, a community's infant health problems began to significantly predict isolation from the citywide employment network. Second, pairwise dissimilarity in infant health problems predicts a lower likelihood of mobility ties between communities throughout the entire study period. The findings suggest that infant health problems present a fundamental barrier for communities in equally accessing the full range of jobs and opportunities across the city-compounding existing inequalities.

Children of immigrants: Racial assortative mating and the transition to adulthood

Few studies have followed immigrant-origin individuals from adolescence to adulthood or examined their spousal choices. Using longitudinal data from Add Health, we present a life-course model that examines the differences in racial assortative mating between children of immigrants and non-immigrants. The results reveal substantial variation in racial endogamy from generation to generation. Racial endogamy was highest in the third generation, but this is due entirely to high racial endogamy among whites. Out-marriage was most pronounced among first- and second-generation immigrants. Our life-course approach shows that the effects of race and generation on intermarriage were mediated by family background (e.g. language proficiency and residence) and educational attainment (at time of marriage), a finding largely indicative of processes of marital assimilation that unfold over time and generation. Evidence of acculturation and structural assimilation, however, could not fully account for the large, persistent, and uneven effects of race and generation on interracial marriage.

Social integration and mental health of Somali refugees in the Netherlands: the role of perceived discrimination

BACKGROUND

We assess whether social integration is associated with mental health among Somali refugees in the Netherlands, and how this association is shaped by perceived discrimination.

METHODS

We performed linear regression and formal mediation analyses on Survey Integration Minorities data (n = 417) to assess whether the effects of two facets of social integration - Dutch language proficiency and informal contacts with natives - on mental health were mediated or suppressed by perceived discrimination.

RESULTS

Dutch language proficiency was positively associated with mental health, but also with perceived discrimination. Informal contact with natives was not significantly associated with mental health or perceived discrimination. There was marginally significant evidence (p < .1) that perceived discrimination suppressed the positive association between Dutch language proficiency and mental health.

DISCUSSION

Greater Dutch language proficiency appears to be beneficial for Somali refugees' mental health, but this effect may partly be cancelled by the associated stronger experiences of discrimination.

Strong and weak tie homophily in adolescent friendship networks: An analysis of same-race and same-gender ties

While we know that adolescents tend to befriend peers who share their race and gender, it is unclear whether patterns of homophily vary according to the strength, intimacy, or connectedness of these relationships. By applying valued exponential random graph models to a sample of 153 adolescent friendship networks, I test whether tendencies towards same-race and same-gender friendships differ for strong versus weak relational ties. In nondiverse, primarily white networks, weak ties are more likely to connect same-race peers, while racial homophily is not associated with the formation of stronger friendships. As racial diversity increases, however, strong ties become more likely to connect same-race peers, while weaker bonds are less apt to be defined by racial homophily. Gender homophily defines the patterns of all friendship ties, but these tendencies are more pronounced for weaker connections. My results highlight the empirical value of considering tie strength when examining social processes in adolescent networks.

A compelling demonstration of why traditional statistical regression models cannot be used to identify risk factors from case data on infectious diseases: a simulation study

BACKGROUND

Regression models are often used to explain the relative risk of infectious diseases among groups. For example, overrepresentation of immigrants among COVID-19 cases has been found in multiple countries. Several studies apply regression models to investigate whether different risk factors can explain this overrepresentation among immigrants without considering dependence between the cases.

METHODS

We study the appropriateness of traditional statistical regression methods for identifying risk factors for infectious diseases, by a simulation study. We model infectious disease spread by a simple, population-structured version of an SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered)-model, which is one of the most famous and well-established models for infectious disease spread. The population is thus divided into different sub-groups. We vary the contact structure between the sub-groups of the population. We analyse the relation between individual-level risk of infection and group-level relative risk. We analyse whether Poisson regression estimators can capture the true, underlying parameters of transmission. We assess both the quantitative and qualitative accuracy of the estimated regression coefficients.

RESULTS

We illustrate that there is no clear relationship between differences in individual characteristics and group-level overrepresentation -small differences on the individual level can result in arbitrarily high overrepresentation. We demonstrate that individual risk of infection cannot be properly defined without simultaneous specification of the infection level of the population. We argue that the estimated regression coefficients are not interpretable and show that it is not possible to adjust for other variables by standard regression methods. Finally, we illustrate that regression models can result in the significance of variables unrelated to infection risk in the constructed simulation example (e.g. ethnicity), particularly when a large proportion of contacts is within the same group.

CONCLUSIONS

Traditional regression models which are valid for modelling risk between groups for non-communicable diseases are not valid for infectious diseases. By applying such methods to identify risk factors of infectious diseases, one risks ending up with wrong conclusions. Output from such analyses should therefore be treated with great caution.

Immigrant Status and the Social Returns to Academic Achievement in Adolescence

Social scientists have long debated whether high-achieving students of color are socially sanctioned. This discussion has rarely focused on immigrant students, who are exceptionally diverse in their educational performance and face challenges in social integration at school. This article assesses whether the effect of academic achievement on U.S. adolescents' popularity among peers varies by immigrant status. Further, we investigate whether the same pattern holds for immigrant students across racial/ethnic groups. While theoretical frameworks led us to expect that some immigrant groups would be socially punished for their school achievement, we did not find evidence for a negative effect of achievement (GPA) on popularity (number of alters nominating ego as a friend) for any group. Instead, the effect of achievement on popularity is positive but smaller among second-generation and foreign-born students than among white students from native-born families. This social penalty is observed across Black and most Hispanic immigrant subgroups, applies to some Asian immigrant subgroups, and does not apply to white immigrant students.

Worth the Weight: Conceptualizing and Measuring Strong Versus Weak Tie Homophily

Homophily, or the tendency for social contact to occur among those who are similar, plays a crucial role in structuring our social networks. Most previous work considers whether homophily shapes the patterns of all social ties, regardless of their frequency of interaction or level of intimacy. As complex network data become increasingly available, however, researchers need to evaluate whether homophily operates differently for ties defined by strong versus weak measures of strength. Here, I take this approach by first defining two variants of homophily: (1) strong tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with high measures of strength to cluster together similar peers, and (2) weak tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with low edge weights to connect same-attribute actors. Then, I apply valued ERGMs to demonstrate the utility of differentiating between the two variants across simulated and observed networks. In most networks, I find that there are observable differences in the magnitude of strong versus weak tie homophily. Additionally, when there are low levels of clustering on the attribute of interest, distinguishing between strong and weak tie homophily can reveal that these processes operate in opposite directions. Since strong and weak ties carry substantively different implications, I argue that differentiating between the two homophily variants has the potential to uncover novel insights on a variety of social phenomena.

Aging into disadvantage: Disability crossover among Mexican immigrants in America

The "Hispanic paradox" refers to the accepted finding that Mexican immigrants have lower mortality compared to the US-born population, despite having lower levels of income, educational attainment, and health insurance coverage. However, Mexican immigrants' mortality advantage is not matched by lower disability rates, particularly later in the life course. Past studies have identified a crossover in disability rates for Mexican immigrants using age-specific disability rates but confound the effects of aging and duration of residence. By using the synthetic cohort method, I extend prior work on the disability crossover by tracing immigrant cohorts across the life course and disentangling newly arrived immigrants from those already established in the U.S. I use American Community Survey (ACS) 2015-2019 data to test whether the acculturation or cumulative disadvantage hypotheses account for the disability crossover. I find that, contrary to the expected finding of a socioeconomic health gradient in disability rates, Mexican immigrants' high disability rates converge regardless of education level or immigrant cohort. In addition, Mexican female immigrants are doubly disadvantaged, living in a protracted period of disability compared to males of the same education level. My findings support the negative health acculturation hypothesis as the dominant pathway for Mexican immigrants' later-life disability trajectories and consequently the explanation behind the disability crossover.

Comparing targeting strategies for network-based adolescent drinking interventions: A simulation approach

Public health researchers and social scientists highlight the promise of network-based strategies to inform and enhance interventions that curb risky adolescent health behaviors. However, we currently lack an understanding of how different variants of network-based interventions shape the distribution of targeted behaviors. The current project considers the effectiveness of five targeting strategies that are designed to have differential impacts on the health of program participants versus non-participants. Using simulations that are empirically-grounded in 28 observed school-based networks from the PROSPER study, we evaluate how these approaches shape long-term alcohol use for intervention participants and non-participants, separately, and consider whether contextual factors moderate their success. Findings suggest that enrolling well-connected adolescents results in the lowest drinking levels for non-participants, while strategies that target groups of friends excel at protecting participants from harmful influences. These trends become increasingly pronounced in contexts characterized by higher levels of peer influence.

Parental migrant status and health inequalities at birth: The role of immigrant educational selectivity

Immigrants tend to exhibit better health than natives despite immigrants' more disadvantaged socioeconomic status. This paradox has often been attributed to immigrants' pre-migration selectivity. However, most empirical studies investigating the role of selectivity have focused on adult health; less attention has been paid to children's birth outcomes outside the U.S. context. Using data from the Etude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance (ELFE), a nationally representative sample of over 18000 births in France in 2011, we investigate the role of immigrant parents' educational selectivity in shaping four birth outcomes: birthweight, low birthweight, prematurity, and being born small for gestational age. Results from linear and logistic regressions confirm a health advantage for children of immigrants compared to natives despite lower parental socioeconomic status, mainly among children of Middle Eastern and North African parents. Immigrant parents' positive pre-migration educational selectivity explains most of this health advantage, predominantly among children with two immigrant parents. Further, mediation analyses indicate that the effect of educational selectivity is partially mediated by parental health behaviors, particularly smoking during pregnancy. Furthermore, analyses suggest that selectivity improves birth outcomes only for children of recent arrivals, with less than five years of residence in France. The beneficial effect of selectivity declines with length of residence, suggesting that a process of "unhealthy assimilation," coupled with the cumulative exposure to health risks and disadvantaged living conditions, may lead to the erosion of the protective effect of immigrant selectivity.

Psychosocial Well-Being, Mental Health, and Available Supports in an Arab Enclave: Exploring Outcomes for Foreign-Born and U.S.-Born Adolescents

Introduction: Few studies have assessed the impact of displacement, resettlement, and discrimination on well-being outcomes for adolescent refugees resettled within the U.S. Conducted in three charter schools in the intergenerational Arab enclave of the Detroit Metropolitan Area, this mixed-methods study assessed the mental health and psychosocial support for both U.S.- and foreign-born adolescents from the Middle East and North Africa region. Methods: A quantitative survey was used to collect data on 176 students. Key outcomes included hope, prosocial behaviors, resilience, depressive, anxiety, externalizing symptoms, stressful life events, perceived social support, and sense of school belonging. Differences in outcomes between U.S.- and foreign-born students were compared using T-tests. Regression analysis explored whether outcomes were gendered and correlated with years in the U.S. for foreign-born students. Qualitative data collection included key informant interviews with school staff and community service providers, student focus group discussions, and caregiver interviews. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis and the constant comparative method. Results: No statistically significant differences between the foreign-born and U.S.-born groups were observed. However, analysis revealed that resilience decreased for male students with time spent in the U.S. Qualitative themes illuminated these results; shared cultural heritage allowed newcomer students to access relevant language and psychosocial support, while inter- and intra-group peer relationships strengthened students' dual language skills and identity formation. However, shifting gender expectations and role hierarchies for newcomer students revealed boys' increased stressors in the family domain and girls' better accessed support in the school context. Conclusion: The existence of an immigrant paradox in this enclave setting was not supported. Instead, findings highlight the reciprocal value of peer-based mentorships and friendships between U.S.- and foreign-born students with similar cultural backgrounds, the importance of social and emotional curricula and cultural competency training within schools, and the gendered effects of acculturation.

Beyond Dyads and Triads: A Comparison of Tetrads in Twenty Social Networks

Social psychologists focus on the microlevel features that define interaction, often attending to dyads and triads. We argue that there also is utility in studying how configurations of four actors, or tetrads, pattern our social world. The current project considers the prevalence of directed tetrads across twenty social networks representing five relationship types (friendship, legislative co-sponsorship, Twitter, advice seeking, and email). By comparing these observed networks to randomly generated conditional networks, we identify tetrads that occur more frequently than expected, or network motifs. In all twenty networks, we find evidence for six tetrad motifs that collectively highlight tendencies toward hierarchy, clustering, and bridging in social interaction. Variations across network genres also emerge, suggesting that unique tetrad structural signatures could define different types of interaction.