Navigation

You are here: Home › COVID-19

Tag Archives | COVID-19

Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments

By on August 30, 2024 in Articles

Yao Lu, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, Ariela Schachter

Sociological Science August 30, 2024
10.15195/v11.a28

Abstract

PDF (699 views)
0 Citation


This study examines how COVID-induced and general attitudes toward Asians have changed over the course of the pandemic using nationally representative survey experiments in 2020 and 2022. First, we measured COVID-induced anti-Asian attitudes as the effect of a treatment reminding respondents of the pandemic on whether respondents would be willing to live or work with someone who is East or South Asian. The results suggest that the COVID-19 treatment worsened attitudes toward East and South Asians in the social domain and toward East Asians in the economic domain in 2020, but not in 2022. Second, we measured change in general attitudes toward Asians by comparing the control group responses in 2020 and 2022. The results demonstrate that, over the same period, general attitudes toward Asians have not improved despite growing attention toward anti-Asian biases. This finding underscores the persistence of general negative attitudes toward Asians beyond the immediate context of the pandemic and the ongoing imperative to actively address deeply ingrained biases against Asians.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0

Classed Burdens: Habitus and Administrative Burden during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By on March 7, 2024 in Articles

Taylor Laemmli

Sociological Science March 7, 2024
10.15195/v11.a5

Abstract

PDF (657 views)
0 Citation


This paper shows how class shaped service workers’ experiences of administrative burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use the pandemic and pandemic-related shutdowns as a pseudo natural experiment in which job loss was applied to a set of workers from different class backgrounds and with different class locations, workers who then turned to the state for assistance. Drawing on 46 interviews I conducted with service workers across the United States from May to October of 2020, I use Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus to show how class background shaped the administrative burdens workers encountered. Workers’ class origins left them with distinct approaches to bureaucracy that translated into disparate experiences of administrative burdens when workers sought unemployment insurance benefits. As a result, compared to workers from middle-class backgrounds, workers from working-class backgrounds more often experienced housing difficulties, dangerous work, and challenges to their sense of integrity.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0

Neighborhood Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By on June 14, 2021 in Articles

Thomas Marlow, Kinga Makovi, Bruno Abrahao

Sociological Science June 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a9

Abstract

PDF (3389 views)
0 Citation

Article has an altmetric score of 5


The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted Americans’ daily mobility, which could contribute to greater social stratification. Relying on SafeGraph cell phone movement data from 2019 and 2020, we use two indices proposed by Phillips and colleagues (2019) to measure mobility inequality between census tracts in the 25 largest U.S. cities. These measures capture the importance of hubs and neighborhood isolation in a network. In the earliest phases of the pandemic, neighborhood isolation rapidly increased, and the importance of downtown central business districts declined. Mobility hubs generally regained their importance, whereas neighborhood isolation remained elevated and increased again during the latter half of 2020. Linear regression models with city and week fixed effects find that new COVID-19 cases are positively associated with neighborhood isolation changes a week later. Additionally, places with larger populations, more public transportation use, and greater racial and ethnic segregation had larger increases in neighborhood isolation during 2020.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0

Still a Small World? University Course Enrollment Networks before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By on January 21, 2021 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell, Barum Park

Sociological Science January 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a4

Abstract

PDF (2688 views)
0 Citation

Article has an altmetric score of 21


In normal times, the network ties that connect students on a college campus are an asset; during a pandemic, they can become a liability. Using prepandemic data from Cornell University, Weeden and Cornwell (2020) showed how co-enrollment in classes creates a “small world” network with high clustering, short path lengths, and multiple independent pathways connecting students. Using data from the fall of 2020, we assess how the structure of the co-enrollment network changed as Cornell, like many other institutions of higher education, adapted to the pandemic by adopting a hybrid instructional model. We find that under hybrid instruction, not only is a much smaller share of students in the face-to-face network, but the paths connecting student pairs in the network lengthened, the share of student pairs connected by three or fewer degrees of separation declined, clustering increased, and a greater share of co-enrollment ties occurred between students in the same field of study. The small world became both less connected and more fragmented.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0

The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus

By on May 27, 2020 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell

Sociological Science May 27, 2020
10.15195/v7.a9

Abstract
PDF (10353 views)
0 Citation

Article has an altmetric score of 89


To slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, many universities shifted to online instruction and now face the question of whether and how to resume in-person instruction. This article uses transcript data from a medium-sized American university to describe three enrollment networks that connect students through classes and in the process create social conditions for the spread of infectious disease: a university-wide network, an undergraduate-only network, and a liberal arts college network. All three networks are “small worlds” characterized by high clustering, short average path lengths, and multiple independent paths connecting students. Students from different majors cluster together, but gateway courses and distributional requirements create cross-major integration. Connectivity declines when large courses of 100 students or more are removed from the network, as might be the case if some courses are taught online, but moderately sized courses must also be removed before less than half of student-pairs are connected in three steps and less than two-thirds in four steps. In all simulations, most students are connected through multiple independent paths. Hybrid models of instruction can reduce but not eliminate the potential for epidemic spread through the small worlds of course enrollments.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


0
SiteLock