Socio-spatial health disparities in Covid-19 cases and deaths in United States skilled nursing facilities over 30 months.

Background: This study investigated whether socio-spatial factors surrounding United States skilled nursing facilities related to Covid-19 case counts among residents, staff, and facility personnel and deaths among residents.

Methods: With data on 12,403 United States skilled nursing facilities and Census data we estimated multilevel models to assess relationships between facility and surrounding area characteristics from June 2020 to September 2022 for cumulative resident and facility personnel case counts and resident deaths.

Results: Facilities with more Black or Latino residents experienced more cases incident rate ratios (IRR = 1.

Geographical patterns of social cohesion drive disparities in early COVID infection hazard.

The uneven spread of COVID-19 has resulted in disparate experiences for marginalized populations in urban centers. Using computational models, we examine the effects of local cohesion on COVID-19 spread in social contact networks for the city of San Francisco, finding that more early COVID-19 infections occur in areas with strong local cohesion. This spatially correlated process tends to affect Black and Hispanic communities more than their non-Hispanic White counterparts.

The Moderating Role of Context: Relationships between Individual Behaviors and Social Networks.

A social context can be viewed as an entity or unit around which a group of individuals organize their activities and interactions. Social contexts take such diverse forms as families, dwelling places, neighborhoods, classrooms, schools, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and sociocultural events or milieus. Understanding social contexts is essential for the study of individual behaviors, social networks, and the relationships between the two.

Insight into Selecting Adolescents for Drinking Intervention Programs: a Simulation Based on Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models.

Adolescent drinking remains a prominent public health and socioeconomic issue in the USA with costly consequences. While numerous drinking intervention programs have been developed, there is little guidance whether certain strategies of participant recruitment are more effective than others. The current study aims at addressing this gap in the literature using a computer simulation approach, a more cost-effective method than employing actual interventions.

A multi-contextual examination of non-school friendships and their impact on adolescent deviance and alcohol use.

Despite decades of research on adolescent friendships, little is known about adolescents who are more likely to form ties outside of school. We examine multiple social and ecological contexts including parents, the school, social networks, and the neighborhood to understand the origins and health significance of out of school ties using survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 81,674). Findings indicate that out of school (more than in-school) friendships drive adolescent deviance and alcohol use, and youth with such friends tend to be involved in school activities and are central among their peer group.

Spatial heterogeneity can lead to substantial local variations in COVID-19 timing and severity.

Standard epidemiological models for COVID-19 employ variants of compartment (SIR or susceptible-infectious-recovered) models at local scales, implicitly assuming spatially uniform local mixing. Here, we examine the effect of employing more geographically detailed diffusion models based on known spatial features of interpersonal networks, most particularly the presence of a long-tailed but monotone decline in the probability of interaction with distance, on disease diffusion. Based on simulations of unrestricted COVID-19 diffusion in 19 US cities, we conclude that heterogeneity in population distribution can have large impacts on local pandemic timing and severity, even when aggregate behavior at larger scales mirrors a classic SIR-like pattern.

Neighborhood change from the bottom Up: What are the determinants of social distance between new and prior residents?

An important source of neighborhood change occurs when there is a turnover in the housing unit due to residential mobility and the new residents differ from the prior residents based on socio-demographic characteristics (what we term social distance). Nonetheless, research has typically not asked which characteristics explain transitions with higher social distance based on a number of demographic dimensions. We explore this question using American Housing Survey data from 1985 to 2007, and focus on instances in which the prior household moved out and is replaced by a new household.

Fight or flight? Crime as a driving force in business failure and business mobility.

A growing body of research has documented the consequences of neighborhood crime for a myriad of individual, household, and community outcomes. Given that neighborhood businesses figure into the link between neighborhood structure and crime as sources of employment or sites for neighbor interaction, the present study examines the extent to which neighborhood crime is associated with the survival, mobility, and destination locations of businesses in the subsequent year. Using business data from Reference USA (Infogroup, 2015) and crime data from the Southern California Crime Study (SCCS) we assess this question for neighborhoods across cities in the Southern California region.

How great and how good?: Third places, neighbor interaction, and cohesion in the neighborhood context.

Though Ray Oldenburg's (1989) notion of "third places", or places conducive to sociality outside of the realms of home and work, has received both scholarly and popular attention over the past several decades, many of the author's central claims remain empirically untested. The present study considers the association between neighborhood third places, cohesion and neighbor interaction. Drawing on various literatures regarding interaction in public space and neighborhood use-value, we consider how the role of third places might vary according to neighborhood socioeconomic context.

Growing pains or appreciable gains? Latent classes of neighborhood change, and consequences for crime in Southern California neighborhoods.

This study explored the dynamic nature of neighborhoods using a relatively novel approach and data source. By using a nonparametric holistic approach of neighborhood change based on latent class analysis (LCA), we have explored how changes in the socio-demographic characteristics of residents, as well as home improvement and refinance activity by residents, are related to changes in neighborhood crime over a decade. Utilizing annual home mortgage loan data in the city of Los Angeles from the years 2000-2010, we 1) conducted principle components factor analyses using measures of residential in-migration and home investment activities; 2) estimated LCA models to identify classes of neighborhoods that shared common patterns of change over the decade; 3) described these 11 classes; 4) estimated change-score regression models to assess the relationship of these classes with changing crime rates.

Parks as crime inhibitors or generators: Examining parks and the role of their nearby context.

Although neighborhood studies often focus on the presence of some particular entity and its consequences for a variety of local processes, a frequent limitation is the failure to account more broadly for the local context. This paper therefore examines the role of parks for community crime, but contributes to the literature by testing whether the context of land uses and demographics nearby parks moderate the parks and crime relationship. A key feature of our approach is that we also test how these characteristics explain crime in the park, nearby the park, and in other neighborhoods in the city with data from nine cities across the United States (N = 109,808 blocks).

The interdependence of cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use in the context of school-based social networks.

The concurrent or sequential usage of multiple substances during adolescence is a serious public health problem. Given the importance of understanding interdependence in substance use during adolescence, the purpose of this study is to examine the co-evolution of cigarette smoking, alcohol, and marijuana use within the ever-changing landscape of adolescent friendship networks, which are a primary socialization context for adolescent substance use. Utilizing Stochastic Actor-Based models, we examine how multiple simultaneous social processes co-evolve with adolescent smoking, drinking, and marijuana use within adolescent friendship networks using two school samples from early waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health).

Problems, perceptions and actions: An interdependent process for generating informal social control.

Using two waves of survey data for residents in neighborhoods in Brisbane, this study explores the interdependent relationship between residents' perceptions of neighboring, cohesion, collective efficacy, neighborhood disorder, and the actions they take to address these problems. Our longitudinal results show that residents' perceived severity of a problem helps explain engaging in activity to address the problem. People loitering appeared to be the most galvanizing problem for residents, but had particularly deleterious effects on perceptions of cohesion and collective efficacy.

Perceptions as the crucial link? The mediating role of neighborhood perceptions in the relationship between the neighborhood context and neighborhood cohesion.

This study examines the effects of neighborhood racial in-group size, economic deprivation and the prevalence of crime on neighborhood cohesion among U.S. whites.

Studying neighborhood crime across different macro spatial scales: The case of robbery in 4 cities.

Whereas there is a burgeoning literature focusing on the spatial distribution of crime events across neighborhoods or micro-geographic units in a specific city, the present study expands this line of research by selecting four cities that vary across two macro-spatial dimensions: population in the micro-environment, and population in the broader macro-environment. We assess the relationship between measures constructed at different spatial scales and robbery rates in blocks in four cities: 1) San Francisco (high in micro- and macro-environment population); 2) Honolulu (high in micro- but low in macro-environment population); 3) Los Angeles (low in micro- but high in macro-environment population); 4) Sacramento (low in micro- and macro-environment population). Whereas the socio-demographic characteristics of residents further than ½ mile away do not impact robbery rates, the number of people up to 2.

Cascades of emotional support in friendship networks and adolescent smoking.

Social support from peers and parents provides a key socialization function during adolescence. We examine adolescent friendship networks using a Stochastic Actor-Based modeling approach to observe the flow of emotional support provision to peers and the effect of support from parents, while simultaneously modeling smoking behavior. We utilized one school (n = 976) from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth) Study.

Peer Influence, Peer Selection and Adolescent Alcohol Use: a Simulation Study Using a Dynamic Network Model of Friendship Ties and Alcohol Use.

While studies suggest that peer influence can in some cases encourage adolescent substance use, recent work demonstrates that peer influence may be on average protective for cigarette smoking, raising questions about whether this effect occurs for other substance use behaviors. Herein, we focus on adolescent drinking, which may follow different social dynamics than smoking. We use a data-calibrated Stochastic Actor-Based (SAB) Model of adolescent friendship tie choice and drinking behavior to explore the impact of manipulating the size of peer influence and selection effects on drinking in two school-based networks.

Collective efficacy: How is it conceptualized, how is it measured, and does it really matter for understanding perceived neighborhood crime and disorder?

Building on the insights of the self-efficacy literature, this study highlights that collective efficacy is a collective perception that comes from a process. This study emphasizes that 1) there is , as there are feedback effects from success or failure by the group to the perception of collective efficacy, and 2) this updating raises the importance of accounting for members' degree of regarding neighborhood collective efficacy. Using a sample of 113 block groups in three rural North Carolina counties, this study finds evidence of updating as neighborhoods perceiving more crime or disorder reported less collective efficacy at the next time point.

Coevolution of adolescent friendship networks and smoking and drinking behaviors with consideration of parental influence.

Friendship tie choices in adolescent social networks coevolve simultaneously with youths' cigarette smoking and drinking. We estimate direct and multiplicative relationships between both peer influence and peer selection with salient parental factors affecting both friendship tie choice and the use of these 2 substances. We utilize 1 sample of 12 small schools and a single large school extracted from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.

Multiple Imputation for Missing Edge Data: A Predictive Evaluation Method with Application to Add Health.

Recent developments have made model-based imputation of network data feasible in principle, but the extant literature provides few practical examples of its use. In this paper we consider 14 schools from the widely used In-School Survey of Add Health (Harris et al., 2009), applying an ERGM-based estimation and simulation approach to impute the network missing data for each school.

Simulating Dynamic Network Models and Adolescent Smoking: The Impact of Varying Peer Influence and Peer Selection.

We used a stochastic actor-based approach to examine the effect of peer influence and peer selection--the propensity to choose friends who are similar--on smoking among adolescents. Data were collected from 1994 to 1996 from 2 schools involved in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, with respectively 2178 and 976 students, and different levels of smoking. Our experimental manipulations of the peer influence and selection parameters in a simulation strategy indicated that stronger peer influence decreased school-level smoking.

Foreclosures and crime: a city-level analysis in Southern California of a dynamic process.

Although a growing body of research has examined and found a positive relationship between neighborhood crime and home foreclosures, some research suggests this relationship may not hold in all cities. This study uses city-level data to assess the relationship between foreclosures and crime by estimating longitudinal models with lags for monthly foreclosure and crime data in 128 cities from 1996 to 2011 in Southern California. We test whether these effects are stronger in cities with a combination of high economic inequality and high economic segregation; and whether they are stronger in cities with high racial/ethnic heterogeneity and high racial segregation.

Alcohol use among adolescent youth: the role of friendship networks and family factors in multiple school studies.

To explore the co-evolution of friendship tie choice and alcohol use behavior among 1,284 adolescents from 12 small schools and 976 adolescents from one big school sampled in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth), we apply a Stochastic Actor-Based (SAB) approach implemented in the R-based Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis (RSiena) package. Our results indicate the salience of both peer selection and peer influence effects for friendship tie choice and adolescent drinking behavior. Concurrently, the main effect models indicate that parental monitoring and the parental home drinking environment affected adolescent alcohol use in the small school sample, and that parental home drinking environment affected adolescent drinking in the large school sample.

Research Note: The consequences of different methods for handling missing network data in Stochastic Actor Based Models.

Although stochastic actor based models (e.g., as implemented in the SIENA software program) are growing in popularity as a technique for estimating longitudinal network data, a relatively understudied issue is the consequence of missing network data for longitudinal analysis.

On social and cognitive influences: relating adolescent networks, generalized expectancies, and adolescent smoking.

We examine the moderating role of friendship and school network characteristics in relationships between 1) youths' friends smoking behavior and youths' own generalized expectancies regarding risk and future orientation and 2) generalized expectancies of youths' friends and youths' own generalized expectancies. We then relate these constructs to smoking. Using a longitudinal sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 15,142), the relationship between friends' generalized expectancies and youths' expectancies is stronger for those more central in the network, with more reachability, or stronger network ties, and weaker for those with denser friendship networks.