Tag Archives | Social Network Analysis

The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Co- and Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks

Georg Lorenz, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, Miles Hewstone

Sociological Science November 22, 2021
10.15195/v8.a19


Assimilation theories argue that social ties with majority-group members enhance the structural integration of ethnic minority members, whereas under certain conditions, coethnic social ties can also benefit minority members’ socioeconomic outcomes. We examine these propositions through a social network perspective, focusing on friendship networks and educational expectations in adolescence, during which peer socialization is crucial. Longitudinal data from 1,992 adolescents in 91 classrooms allow us to investigate co- and interethnic social selection and social influence processes as well as their aggregated outcomes. In terms of friendship selection, we find that Turkishorigin minority adolescents in Germany have distinct preferences for friends with high educational expectations, among both co- and interethnic peers. In contrast, social influence on Turkish-minority adolescents’ educational expectations is not uniform: only majority-group friends exert a significant (positive) influence. Our results emphasize that bridging social capital gained from social ties with majority-group members enhances ethnic minority adolescents’ educational integration.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Georg Lorenz: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Georg.Lorenz@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Zerrin Salikutluk: Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Zerrin.Salikutluk@hu-berlin.de

Zsófia Boda: Department of Sociology and Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex
E-mail: zsofia.boda@essex.ac.uk

Malte Jansen: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB)
E-mail: Malte.Jansen@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Miles Hewstone: University of Oxford
E-mail: Miles.Hewstone@new.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation (project ISONET, funding number 93 489). The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors.

  • Citation: Lorenz, Georg, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, and Miles Hewstone. 2021. “The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Coand Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks.” Sociological Science 8: 371-396.
  • Received: March 3, 2021
  • Accepted: May 19, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Arnout van de Rijt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a19


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

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell

Sociological Science May 27, 2020
10.15195/v7.a9


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.

Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kw74@cornell.edu

Benjamin Cornwell: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: btc49@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: Dr. Weeden and Dr. Cornwell contributed equally to this project. The authors thank the Cornell University administration, and in particular Dr. Lisa Nishii, for facilitating access to the data; Lauren Griffin and Alec McGail for research assistance; and Jake Burchard, Scott Feld, John Schneider, Demival Vasques Filho, Barry Wellman, Erin York Cornwell, and two anonymous reviewers for comments and advice. Cornell University had no role in the study design, data analysis, or preparation of the report.

  • Citation: Weeden, Kim A., and Benjamin Cornwell. 2020. “The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus.” Sociological Science 7: 222-241.
  • Received: April 17, 2020
  • Accepted: May 7, 2020
  • Editors: Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a9


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Robust Science: Passive Smoking and Scientific Collaboration with the Tobacco Industry in the 1970s

Uri Shwed

Sociological Science, April 1, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a9

The first lesson from the history of research on smoking hazards is that scientists should be wary of collaboration with interested industries. This lesson, which is influential in the literature on science–industry relationships, comes from a historiography focused on the carcinogenicity debate of the 1950s and 1960s and the passive smoking debate of the 1980s and 1990s. Few studies have examined research in the 1970s. This article fills this lacuna using novel bibliometrical methods augmented with a qualitative analysis of the associations between periods and literary camps, as expressed in scientific texts. The mixed-methods approach identifies the temporal dynamics of the literature on smoking hazards to reveal that the well-documented attempts of the tobacco industry to stall and hamper science had unanticipated consequences. Specifically, an industry–science collaboration to develop a less hazardous cigarette put scholars on the path to discovering the hazards of passive smoking. The analyses supply a narrative that has room for actors’ complex interests and actions and demonstrates that such complexity may only be revealed in research whose outcomes are never known in advance.
Uri Shwed: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.  Email: shwed@bgu.ac.il

  • Citation: Shwed, Uri. 2015. “Robust Science: Passive Smoking and Scientific Collaboration with the Tobacco Industry in the 1970s.” Sociological Science 2:158-185.
  • Received: August 17, 2014
  • Accepted: November 2, 2014
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen,  Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a9

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