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Bipartite projections (e.g., event co-attendance) are often used to measure unipartite networks of interest (e.g., social interaction). Backbone extraction models can be useful for reducing the noise inherent in bipartite projections. However, these models typically assume that the bipartite edges (e.g., who attended which event) are unconstrained, which may not be true in practice (e.g., a person cannot attend an event held prior to their birth). We illustrate the importance of correctly modeling such edge constraints when extracting backbones, using both synthetic data that varies the number and type of constraints, and empirical data on children's play groups. We find that failing to impose relevant constraints when the data contain constrained edges can result in the extraction of an inaccurate backbone. Therefore, we recommend that when bipartite data contain constrained edges, backbones be extracted using a model such as the Stochastic Degree Sequence Model with Edge Constraints (SDSM-EC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree adults neither have nor want children, but estimates of their prevalence vary widely, leading to ambiguity about how common this family status actually is. The goal of this study is to examine the effects of sample composition, time, and question wording on estimates of the prevalence of childfree adults. We pool 83 nationally representative estimates of the prevalence of childfree adults in Japan since 2000 using meta-regression to identify the influence of sex, marital status, year, and survey question. Prevalence estimates are higher when computed from samples of women than men, from samples of singles than married people, from samples collected more recently, and from surveys asking questions about expectations than wants. Most of the variation in estimates of the prevalence of childfree adults can be attributed to differences in sample composition, time, and question wording. Taking these factors into account, we estimate that over 2.5 million Japanese adults age 18-50, or 5.64% of this population, were childfree in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distinctiveness centrality, which was proposed in 2020 to identify nodes that are connected to poorly-connected neighbors, is simply a minor variation on two existing centrality measures: beta centrality proposed in 1987, and gamma centrality proposed in 2011. In toy, empirical, and generated networks, I show that these three centrality measures yield identical node rankings under nearly all circumstances. Researchers seeking to identify nodes that are connected to poorly-connected others should not use distinctiveness centrality, and instead should use either beta or gamma centrality because they are more widely-known in the literature, are more flexible, and are computationally simpler. Additionally, researchers should be cautious when proposing new centrality measures, taking care to avoid duplicating measures that already exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities develop more and longer‐range external relations, some have challenged the long‐standing notion that population size indicates a city's power in its urban system. But are population size and network centrality really independent properties in practice, or do larger cities tend to be more central in urban networks? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature search and meta‐analysed 41 reported correlations between city size and degree centrality. The results show that population size and degree centrality are significantly and positively correlated for cities across various urban systems (r = 0.77), but the correlation varies by network scale and type. The size‐centrality association is weaker for global economic and transportation networks (r = 0.43), and stronger for non‐global social and communication networks (r = 0.91). This clarifies seemingly contradictory predictions in the literature regarding the association betweensize and centrality for cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree adults are the most common type of non-parent in the United States and are distinguished by their lack of desire to have children. Although there are many reasons one may choose not to have children, recent restrictions on reproductive health care may also contribute to this decision. For example, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson eliminated a long-standing constitutional protection for abortion access, which reduced patients' medical autonomy and increased the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore may have led adults to decide not to have children. In this study, we use representative data on Michigan adults immediately before and after the Dobbs decision to examine changes in the prevalence of childfree adults in this population. We find that 21% of Michigan adults were childfree before the Dobbs decision, but this number rose to nearly 26% after the decision. Controlling for demographic characteristics, a Michigan adult was 32.8% more likely to be childfree after the Dobbs decision than before. We conclude that when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The population of adults who neither have nor want children is large and growing. However, it remains poorly understood because its members can be difficult to identify in traditional demographic surveys, and existing research on the population uses a range of methods and terms. In this paper, we review current practices, then to bring a level of consistency and comparability to this literature, we propose a common framework for studying this population. First, we recommend that researchers use the term "childfree" to describe adults who neither have nor want children, because the term is short, widely used, and preferred by members of this population. Second, we recommend that researchers define childfree adults by neither having nor wanting biological or nonbiological children, recognizing that one's childfree status may change over time. Third, we recommend that researchers identify childfree adults in surveys using "want" questions (e.g., do you want children?), in combination with other questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree individuals, who are also described as 'childless by choice' or 'voluntarily childless', have decided they do not want biological or adopted children. This is an important population to understand because its members have unique reproductive health and end-of-life needs, and they encounter challenges managing work-life balance and with stereotypes. Prior estimates of childfree adults' prevalence in the United States, their age of decision, and interpersonal warmth judgements have varied widely over time and by study design. To clarify these characteristics of the contemporary childfree population, we conduct a pre-registered direct replication of a recent population-representative study. All estimates concerning childfree adults replicate, boosting confidence in earlier conclusions that childfree people are numerous and decide early in life, and that parents exhibit strong in-group favoritism while childfree adults do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanists have long been interested in understanding what makes people satisfied with their neighborhoods. However, relatively little is known about how residents' personality traits may affect their neighborhood satisfaction. In this paper, we explore the direct and indirect associations of personality traits with neighborhood satisfaction in a representative sample of adults in Michigan (USA). We find that each of the personality traits in the five factor model are associated with neighborhood satisfaction in the same way that they are known to be associated with subjective well-being. However, we fail to observe evidence that personality traits moderate the association between perceptions of neighborhoods and neighborhood satisfaction, or that personality's association with neighborhood satisfaction is mediated by neighborhood perceptions. We conclude that there is potential for drawing on theoretical and empirical developments in positive psychology for understanding neighborhood satisfaction, but observe that the underlying mechanisms for the association between personality and neighborhood satisfaction remain unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on how social relationships are radically transformed in contexts of globalization and how human agency plays a central role in shaping global networks and connections. Topics include network' and ‘information' society and about the political-economic drivers and impacts of global networks; and role that digital media are playing in defining transnationalism that undertake transnational forms of mobility.

Both urban planners and urban scholars have been keenly interested in identifying the characteristics associated with neighborhood satisfaction. One robust but surprising pattern is that the presence or number of children in a household has no effect on neighborhood satisfaction. To clarify this pattern, we measured the neighborhood satisfaction of a representative sample of 1,000 Michigan adults, whom we divided into six distinct reproductive statuses: co-parents, single-parents, empty nesters, not-yet-parents, childless individuals, and childfree individuals. We found that a simple parent vs. non-parent dichotomy hides significant heterogeneity among these groups. Specifically, we found that single parents and childfree individuals experience significantly less neighborhood satisfaction than other groups. We conclude by reflecting on the methodological and practical implications of differences in neighborhood satisfaction when more nuanced reproductive statuses are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree adults do not want to have children, making them distinct from parents and other adults without children. However, they are difficult to study because they cannot be identified using conventional data on fertility. We use data from a representative sample in the United States to examine the prevalence, age of decision, and interpersonal warmth judgments by and about childfree adults. Our prevalence estimates suggest that childfree adults are quite common, comprising over one-fifth (21.64%) of the population. Our analysis of age-to-decision suggests that most childfree adults reported that they decided they did not want children early in life. Finally, our analysis of interpersonal warmth suggests asymmetric affective polarization among parents and childfree adults driven primarily by parent's ingroup favoritism. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of childfree adults and for future research on this historically overlooked segment of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bipartite projections have become a common way to measure spatial networks. They are now used in many subfields of geography, and are among the most common ways to measure the world city network, where intercity links are inferred from firm co‐location patterns. Bipartite projections are attractive because a network can be indirectly inferred from readily available data. However, spatial bipartite projections are difficult to analyze because the links in these networks are weighted, and larger weights do not necessarily indicate stronger or more important connections. Methods for extracting the backbone of bipartite projections offer a solution by using statistical models for identifying the links that have statistically significant weights. In this article, we introduce the open‐source backboneR package, which implements several backbone models, and demonstrate its key features by using it to measure a world city network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks are useful for representing phenomena in a broad range of domains. Although their ability to represent complexity can be a virtue, it is sometimes useful to focus on a simplified network that contains only the most important edges: the backbone. This paper introduces and demonstrates a substantially expanded version of the backbone package for R, which now provides methods for extracting backbones from weighted networks, weighted bipartite projections, and unweighted networks. For each type of network, fully replicable code is presented first for small toy examples, then for complete empirical examples using transportation, political, and social networks. The paper also demonstrates the implications of several issues of statistical inference that arise in backbone extraction. It concludes by briefly reviewing existing applications of backbone extraction using the backbone package, and future directions for research on network backbone extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projections of bipartite or two-mode networks capture co-occurrences, and are used in diverse fields (e.g., ecology, economics, bibliometrics, politics) to represent unipartite networks. A key challenge in analyzing such networks is determining whether an observed number of co-occurrences between two nodes is significant, and therefore whether an edge exists between them. One approach, the fixed degree sequence model (FDSM), evaluates the significance of an edge's weight by comparison to a null model in which the degree sequences of the original bipartite network are fixed. Although the FDSM is an intuitive null model, it is computationally expensive because it requires Monte Carlo simulation to estimate each edge's p value, and therefore is impractical for large projections. In this paper, we explore four potential alternatives to FDSM: fixed fill model, fixed row model, fixed column model, and stochastic degree sequence model (SDSM). We compare these models to FDSM in terms of accuracy, speed, statistical power, similarity, and ability to recover known communities. We find that the computationally-fast SDSM offers a statistically conservative but close approximation of the computationally-impractical FDSM under a wide range of conditions, and that it correctly recovers a known community structure even when the signal is weak. Therefore, although each backbone model may have particular applications, we recommend SDSM for extracting the backbone of bipartite projections when FDSM is impractical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In network science, identifying optimal partitions of a signed network into internally cohesive and mutually divisive clusters based on generalized balance theory is computationally challenging. We reformulate and generalize two binary linear programming models that tackle this challenge, demonstrating their practicality by applying them to partition signed networks of collaboration and opposition in the US House of Representatives. These models guarantee a globally optimal network partition and can be practically applied to signed networks containing up to 30,000 edges. In the US House context, we find that a three-cluster partition is better than a conventional two-cluster partition, where the otherwise hidden third coalition is composed of highly effective legislators who are ideologically aligned with the majority party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childfree individuals choose not to have children, which makes them a distinctive group from parents who have had children, not-yet-parents who plan to have children, and childless indivduals who would have liked to have children. Most research on parental status and psychosocial characteristics has not effectively distinguished childfree individuals from other non-parents or has relied on non-representative samples. In this study, we use a representative sample of 981 Michigan adults to estimate the prevalence of childfree individuals, to examine how childfree individuals differ from parents and other types of non-parents in life satisfaction, political ideology, and personality, and to examine whether childfree individuals are viewed as an outgroup. We find that over a quarter of Michigan adults identified as childfree. After controlling for demographic characteristics, we find no differences in life satisfaction and limited differences in personality traits between childfree individuals and parents, not-yet-parents, or childless individuals. However, childfree individuals were more liberal than parents, and those who have or want(ed) children felt substantially less warm toward childfree individuals than childfree individuals felt toward each other. Given the prevalence of childfree individuals, the risks of their outgroup status, and their potential role in politics as a uniquely liberal group, it is important for demographic research to distinguish the childfree from others and to better understand these individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2020 Geographical Analysis paper, Pazitka, Wójcik, and Knight aimed to examine and challenge the validity of office‐location approaches for modeling intercity business flows. Their argument proceeded in three steps: (1) critique the office location approach and specifically the interlocking world city network model (IWCNM), (2) introduce their own inter‐organizational project approach (IOPA) as an alternative, then (3) assert the validity of the IOPA and invalidity of the IWCNM. In this commentary, I discuss how they fail to achieve their aim because each step of this argument involves a logical fallacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bipartite projections are used in a wide range of network contexts including politics (bill co-sponsorship), genetics (gene co-expression), economics (executive board co-membership), and innovation (patent co-authorship). However, because bipartite projections are always weighted graphs, which are inherently challenging to analyze and visualize, it is often useful to examine the 'backbone,' an unweighted subgraph containing only the most significant edges. In this paper, we introduce the R package backbone for extracting the backbone of weighted bipartite projections, and use bill sponsorship data from the 114th session of the United States Senate to demonstrate its functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how two distinct scholarly disciplines both concerned with place-based human behavior have independently developed an ecological framework: urban sociology's human ecology, and community psychology's ecological metaphor. A comparison of these two frameworks shows they are similar in many ways, including their foundations, processes, and legacies. These frameworks emerged independently in similar social and intellectual milieus separated by 50 years, suggesting that their similarities could be the product of convergent evolution. These similarities highlight opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration, while the differences identified by this comparison highlight opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on firm location selection allows us to retrospectively explain why firms did locate in particular places. However, it remains challenging to prospectively predict where they will locate. In this article, we propose a simple conceptual model of firm location decisions, then operationalize it using the ordinal stochastic degree sequence model (oSDSM). We use this model to predict whether 104 advanced producer service firms will expand, contract, or maintain their presence in each of 525 cities, and find that these predictions are accurate in more than 86 percent of cases. We conclude with suggestions for further refinement of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explored the extent to which educators discuss and prioritize Rogers’ (Diffusion of innovations, The Free Press: New York, 1995) five attributes of innovations—relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability, and trialability—in the context of research use. Using a directed content analysis of 54 semi-structured interviews and exemplar quotes, we describe how educators mentioned compatibility most frequently, but also commonly invoked observability and complexity in their discussions of research use. Our results also revealed key differences between educators in executive and non-executive roles. We discuss the implications of our findings for closing the research-practice gap in school-based mental health services and psychosocial interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the negative externalities of air transport suggest it is important to consider the sustainability of growth in demand for air transport. However, there is little agreement on how the sustainability of demand should be evaluated. In this paper, I draw on the extensive literature on allometric scaling in biology, which examines animals’ demand for calories, to provide a novel framework for evaluating the sustainability of cities’ demand for air transport service. Viewing cities as analogous to organisms and airline passengers as analogous to life-sustaining resources, I focus on two questions. First, at what rate do cities metabolise passengers, that is, how many airline passengers does it take to fuel a city of a given size? Second, does this metabolic rate differ for business and leisure passengers, which represent different kinds of urban resources? Using data on airline passenger movement between 103 US metropolitan areas in each year from 1993 through 2011, I find that cities demand airline passengers in proportion to their population size, but when viewed separately, demand for business passengers as a function of city size is much lower than for leisure passengers. Moreover, I find that these patterns have remained relatively stable over the last two decades. The findings suggest that considering passenger type is important in evaluating the sustainability of air transport and the capacity of the air transport system to support cities’ continued growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims about the strength of cities’ global connections have become commonplace in the world cities literature. Although such claims are inherently comparative, authors often do not specify the reference. London is well connected compared to what? In this paper, I adapt the stochastic degree sequence model from network analysis as a tool to derive a frame of reference that can be used to inform and substantiate such claims. Beyond providing a formal statistical method for deciding when the claim that “X is well connected” is justified, it also addresses a number of other challenges in this literature, including more explicitly casting firms as key agents in world city formation, providing insight into when and where global firms might be expected to locate their branch offices, and helping identify cases that warrant more detailed investigation. To illustrate, I apply the method to data on cities and firms from 2013, examining the results at five different scales, from the individual city and firm to the entire world city network. I conclude by considering how this approach allows researchers to ask different kinds of questions about the nature of world city status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the March 2014 issue of American Journal of Community Psychology, we published an article that examined the tension between two core values in the field of community psychology: promoting contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity and promoting contextual conditions that foster sense of community. We concluded that processes of social network formation could help explain why diversity and sense of community are seemingly incompatible goals. The study's findings initially disseminated through the usual academic channels, and later through mainstream media outlets. However, they also eventually appeared on blogs and discussion forums devoted to white nationalism. The findings were viewed there as having demonstrated the evils of diversity, and thus having vindicated the white nationalist agenda. As a result, we were forced to consider whether and how to set the record straight. In this first-person narrative, we describe our study's journey from AJCP to white nationalist blogs, discussing how we ultimately responded to the situation, and concluding with some lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network analysis holds promise for community psychology given the field's aim to understand the interplay between individuals and their social contexts. Indeed, because network analysis focuses explicitly on patterns of relationships between actors, its theories and methods are inherently extra-individual in nature and particularly well suited to characterizing social contexts. But, to what extent has community psychology taken advantage of this network analysis as a tool for capturing context? To answer these questions, this study provides a review of the use network analysis in articles published in American Journal of Community Psychology. Looking back, we describe and summarize the ways that network analysis has been employed in community psychology research to understand the range of ways community psychologists have found the technique helpful. Looking forward and paying particular attention to analytic issues identified in past applications, we provide some recommendations drawn from the network analysis literature to facilitate future applications of network analysis in community psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between perceptions of social cohesion and informal social control within U.S. urban neighborhoods and adds neighborhood racial homogeneity to investigate the ways in which racial homogeneity may contribute to effects on informal social control, as theorized by social disorganization researchers. Data from the Annie E. Casey’sMaking Connectionsinitiative (level 1) and the 2010 decennial census (level 2) were used. In total, 3,868 household responses were nested within 75 different census tracts. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was conducted to model level 1 and level 2 effects on informal social control. Results indicate a positive relationship between perceived social cohesion and informal social control. The relationship between social cohesion and informal social control was moderated by neighborhood racial homogeneity, indicating that homogeneity positively influenced the relationship. We conclude by providing recommendations for future researchers and community builders with a particular emphasis on attending to neighborhood-level effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past couple of years, a debate has played out in the pages of the American Journal of Community Psychology concerning the relationship between two of Community Psychology's core values: promoting diversity and promoting a sense of community. This special section is to continue a discussion about diversity and community, both among the debate's initial contributors (Alex Stivala, Greg Townley, and Zachary Neal), as well as among others whose own work has touched on these issues (Anne Brodsky, Richard Florida, Jean Hill, and Roderick Watts). In this essay, I address some broad questions that have emerged through this discussion. First, because much has been written on the relationship between diversity and community, both in community psychology and in other disciplines, what do we know, or at least think we know? Second, since the constructs of diversity and sense of community are complex and multi-faceted, how can definitions get in the way and how can we avoid talking past one another in this discussion? Finally, looking across the original papers that initiated this discussion, as well as the contributions in this special section, what path(s) forward do we have? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing complex problems in communities has become a key area of focus in recent years (Kania & Kramer, 2013, Stanford Social Innovation Review). Building on existing approaches to understanding and addressing problems, such as action research, several new approaches have emerged that shift the way communities solve problems (e.g., Burns, 2007, Systemic Action Research; Foth, 2006, Action Research, 4, 205; Kania & Kramer, 2011, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1, 36). Seeking to bring clarity to the emerging literature on community change strategies, this article identifies the common features of the most widespread community change strategies and explores the conditions under which such strategies have the potential to be effective. We identify and describe five common features among the approaches to change. Then, using an agent-based model, we simulate network-building behavior among stakeholders participating in community change efforts using these approaches. We find that the emergent stakeholder networks are efficient when the processes are implemented under ideal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread recognition of a research-practice gap in multiple service sectors, less is known about how pre-existing communication channels facilitate the flow of information between researchers and practitioners. In the current study, we applied an existing typology of brokerage developed by Gould and Fernandez (Sociol Methodol 19:89-126, ) to examine what types of brokerage facilitate information spread between researchers and educational practitioners. Specifically, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 school administrators and staff in two public school districts regarding their experiences searching for information about instructional, health, and social skills programs. Using deductive content analysis, we found evidence of all five types of brokerage identified by Gould and Fernandez (). However, only three types of brokerage-gatekeepers, representatives, and liaisons-were involved in the flow of information between school administrators and researchers. Moreover, information transfer often occurred in longer chains that involved multiple, distinct types of brokerage. We conclude with the broad implications of our findings for narrowing the research-practice gap by improving researchers' dissemination efforts and practitioners' search for information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of effective community interventions can be challenging for many reasons, including financial and time costs, lack of infrastructure, local contextual variations, and barriers to fidelity. But, prior to all of these is the challenge of limited information exchange between the researchers developing interventions and the practitioners implementing them, or the so-called research-practice gap. In this paper, we use network theory and review a dozen small world experiments to understand the research-practice gap, identifying three key lessons: (1) spatial and social distances are related to the severity of the gap, (2) social boundaries may lead to echo chambers and closed loops, and (3) wider gaps reduce the likelihood of successful information exchange. From these lessons, we recommend that researchers and practitioners should rely on the assistances of information brokers who know people they do not know and who are different from themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators’ needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and assessment methods by proposing procedures that evaluators can use to expedite the coding and analysis of qualitative data and comparing these procedures to other possible methods. Specifically, we outline procedures for the rapid identification of themes from audio recordings, which allow evaluators to code and analyze qualitative data without time-consuming transcription. We illustrate the use and assess the reliability of these procedures using qualitative semi-structured interview data from 18 public school administrators on how they locate information about and decide to use instructional, health, and social skills programming in their districts. Finally, we end with advantages and trade-offs of these procedures as well as recommendations for how to apply them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using social network data, this study examines which features of social and spatial proximity predict self-reported, or 'real,' and peer-reported, or 'inferred,' relationships among 2,695 pairwise combinations of African American second- through fourth-grade students (aged 7-11). Relationships were more likely to exist, and more likely to be inferred to exist by peers, between pairs of children who were the same sex, sat near one another, shared a positive academic orientation, or shared athletic ability. Sex similarity had a dramatically larger effect on peers' inferences about relationships than on self-reported real relationships, suggesting that children overestimate the importance of gender in their inferences about relationships. Results were stable across different grade levels in middle childhood and for boys and girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational empowerment is a multi-faceted concept that involves processes occurring both within and between organizations that facilitate achievement of their goals. This paper takes a closer look at three interorganizational processes that lead to empowered organizations: building alliances, getting the word out, and capturing others' attention. These processes are located within the broader nomological network of empowerment and organizational empowerment, and are linked to particular patterns of interorganizational relationships that facilitate organizations' ability to engage in them. A new network-based measure, γ-centrality, is introduced to capture the particular network structure associated with each process to be assessed. It is demonstrated first in a hypothetical organizational network, then applied to take a closer look at organizational empowerment in the context of a coordinating council composed of human service agencies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of relationships between these processes, and the potential for unintended consequences in the empowerment of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community psychologists are interested in creating contexts that promote both respect for diversity and sense of community. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has uncovered a community-diversity dialectic wherein the contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity often run in opposition to those that foster sense of community. More specifically, within neighborhoods, residential integration provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community. Using agent-based modeling to simulate neighborhoods and neighborhood social network formation, we explore whether the community-diversity dialectic emerges from two principles of relationship formation: homophily and proximity. The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community. Based on these results, we conclude with a discussion of whether it is possible to create neighborhoods that simultaneously foster respect for diversity and sense of community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory ( EST) is among the most widely adopted theoretical frameworks for studying individuals in ecological contexts. In its traditional formulation, different levels of ecological systems are viewed as nested within one another. In this article, we use Simmel's notion of intersecting social circles and Bronfenbrenner's earlier writing on social networks to develop an alternative 'networked' model that instead views ecological systems as an overlapping arrangement of structures, each directly or indirectly connected to the others by the direct and indirect social interactions of their participants. We redefine each of the systems discussed by EST-micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono-based on patterns of social interaction, and then illustrate how this alternative model might be applied in the classic context of the developing child. We conclude by discussing future directions for how the networked model of EST can be applied as a conceptual framework, arguing that this approach offers developmental researchers with a more precise and flexible way to think about ecological contexts. We also offer some initial suggestions for moving a networked EST model from theory to method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social cognitive mapping (SCM) is a common approach to identifying peer groups in developmental research. However, this approach involves three stages that each implies a unique conception of peer group. This article aims to bring conceptual clarity to the identification of peer groups using SCM by demonstrating how the meaning of peer groups differs at each stage of SCM. First, in the data collecting stage, interaction groups identify sets of children that hang out together. Second, in the data aggregating stage, co-membership groups identify sets of children who are members of many of the same interaction groups. Third, in the data analyzing stage, similarity groups identify sets of children with similar patterns of relationships with their peers. After reviewing these three conceptions of peer groups, we briefly discuss some potential problems with using SCM as a tool to measure children's social networks and peer groups. Finally, we conclude by arguing that despite these issues, SCM remains a valuable methodology, and indeed one with untapped potential. Thus, we offer suggestions for the appropriate application of these theoretically and empirically distinct conceptions of peer group, noting that developmental researchers using SCM must identify which conception of peer group is used and justify why this conception is the appropriate one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors respond to a commentary by T. W. Farmer and H. Xie about their article "The Multiple Meanings of Peer Groups in Social Cognitive Mapping" which discusses the use of social cognitive mapping (SCM) as a black box method. They make clarifications about their original claims and correct misstatements in the commentary. They assert that Farmer and Xie overstate the ability of SCM to deal with errors of omission and co-omission and deny the claim that they assumed that individual nominations reflect real groups that are completely accurate. The authors conclude by introducing a new SCM program that runs within the Strata software.

ABSTRACT: Individuals' satisfaction with their community can play an important role in urban politics, and the quality of public schools is a key predictor of community satisfaction. However, most discussions of public schools focus only on their educational and social benefits for children, although others expand the scope to consider benefits to their parents as well. In this paper, we take a broader view, arguing that local public schools are providers of public goods that potentially benefit all members of a community, including those without school-aged children. Using data from the Soul of the Community survey, we examine the relationship between public school quality and community satisfaction in 26 U.S. communities, and find no differences between individuals with and without school-aged children at home. Furthermore, for those without children, we find that the effect of schools on community satisfaction is partially mediated by community-based social capital, suggesting that public schools provide both direct and indirect pathways to community satisfaction. We conclude with a discussion of these findings, focusing on their implications for the maintenance and structure of public schools in American cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to inform empowerment theory and research, this paper provides a structural conception of power. First, we examine the essential features present in three dominant conceptions of power in community psychology: social power, psychopolitical power, and relational power. Next, commonalities in the key features of power identified by these conceptions are explored and pared down to yield a more parsimonious conception of power that is grounded only in the structural pattern of relationships through which resources are exchanged. Drawing on social exchange theory, we offer a method for measuring this streamlined, structural conception of power that allows for its more precise examination. Finally, we discuss the implications of a structural conception and measurement of power for targeting and facilitating empowering processes and evaluating empowered outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study informs community science, and seeks to narrow the research-to-practice gap, by examining how the interpersonal networks within a setting influence individuals' use of interventions. More specifically, it explores the role of two network mechanisms-cohesion and structural similarity-in urban elementary school teachers' use of interventions designed to improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Lagged regression models examine how position in advice giving networks influenced weekly use of the daily report card and peer assisted learning by kindergarten through fourth grade teachers in three schools. Results indicate that intervention use spreads among teachers with similar patterns of advice-giving relationships (i.e., via structural similarity), rather than from teachers who are sources of advice (i.e., via cohesion). These results are consistent with findings in other settings, and suggest that researchers wishing to increase the use of an intervention should select change agents based on their patterns of their relationships, rather than on their direct connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars from a range of disciplines have long recognized that a city's economic fortunes are closely tied to its position in networks of interurban exchanges. However, it remains unclear whether cities occupy a central position in the network because they are sites of significant economic activity (i.e., a flow generation hypothesis), or whether they experience greater economic growth because they occupy a central position in the network (i.e., a structural advantage hypothesis). This article tests these complementary hypotheses by examining the total nonfarm employment in, and air travel patterns of business passengers among, 128 U.S. metropolitan areas from 1993 to 2008 using a series of lagged regression models. Results lend support to the structural advantage hypothesis, but not for the flow generation hypothesis: centrality drives employment, but not vice versa. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for infrastructure-focused approaches to economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of a hierarchy among cities has long been part of the theoretical tool kit of urban sociologists, geographers, and economists. Reviewing the evolution of the urban hierarchy concept, this paper empirically demonstrates a hypothesized transition in the U.S. urban hierarchy during the twentieth century, from size based to network based. Three urban types, following distinct trajectories during this shift, are explored: the primate city, the offline metropolis, and the wired town. Data on the economic structure, population size, and airline passenger traffic of 64 U.S. metropolitan areas from 1900 to 2000 are used to test the hypothesis of a hierarchical transition. Results suggest that a size-based hierarchy dominated in the early twentieth century but was replaced or augmented in the mid-1940s with a network-based hierarchy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study's limitations and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on globalization conceives of the global economy as structured by networks among places, while separately organizational research has examined the role of networks among firms in structuring competition, collaboration, and cooperation. In both cases, position and centrality within the network confers certain advantages and disadvantages, the distribution of which defines a hierarchy. In this article, I explore the idea of dual networks of world cities and firms, then use Breiger's approach to define two such networks: one among 313 world cities, another among 100 advanced producer service firms. Comparison of the degree of inequality in the hierarchies implied by these networks suggest that world city hierarchies are steeper than firm hierarchies (that is there is greater inequality among cities). Thus, even under conditions of footloose global capitalism, place still matters: where a producer is located has more impact than who provides support services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades, the concept of the niche has enriched sociological theory. The niche represents the position or function of an entity, such as an organization or population of organizations, within a larger community environment. Using the concept of the niche allows researchers to go beyond classifying entities to understanding (a) their life chances under different and changing environmental conditions and (b) how they interact under the competitive conditions induced by a finite environment. We briefly review the intellectual history of the niche concept as it came from bioecology to sociology. The bulk of the article reviews the two major streams of sociological research that use the niche concept: the population ecology of organizations and McPherson's ecology of affiliation. Finally, we survey commonalities between these approaches and highlight new directions, including applications that take the niche concept well beyond its origins in organizational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although there is growing recognition that the implementation of evidence-based practices is a social process, the conceptualization of social capital in implementation frameworks often conflates bonding and bridging social capital. This conflation makes it difficult to concretely operationalize social capital and limits the concept's utility for explaining implementation outcomes.Discussion: We propose a new framework of implementation capital that merges an existing conceptual framework of implementation outcomes with an existing operational framework of social capital. First, we review a conceptual framework of implementation outcomes, which includes the acceptability, appropriateness, adoption, feasibility, fidelity, cost, penetration, and sustainability of evidence-based practices. Second, we describe an operational framework of social capital that grounds bonding and bridging social capital in the structure of implementers' social networks. Third, we bring these two frameworks together to create a merged framework of implementation capital that shows how specific aspects of social capital can support specific implementation outcomes. Implementation outcomes of acceptability, appropriateness, and adoption are linked to bonding social capital through mechanisms of trust and norm enforcement, while outcomes of feasibility and fidelity are linked to bridging social capital through mechanisms of increased access to information and resources. Additionally, setting-level implementation outcomes of cost, penetration, and sustainability are associated with small worldliness at the setting level, which simultaneously optimizes both bonding and bridging social capital in a setting.Conclusion: The implementation capital framework is helpful because it separates two distinct forms of social capital-bonding and bridging-that are often conflated in the implementation literature, and offers concrete ways to operationalize them by examining the structure of implementers' social networks and the networks of their settings. This framework offers specific guidance about how individual and setting networks might be shifted to support implementation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The overall goal of this work is to produce a set of recommendations (SoNHR–Social Networks in Health Research) that will improve the reporting and dissemination of social network concepts, methods, data, and analytic results within health sciences research. Methods: This study used a modified-Delphi approach for recommendation development consistent with best practices suggested by the EQUATOR health sciences reporting guidelines network. An initial set of 28 reporting recommendations was developed by the author team. A group of 67 (of 147 surveyed) experienced network and health scientists participated in an online feedback survey. They rated the clarity and importance of the individual recommendations, and provided qualitative feedback on the coverage, usability, and dissemination opportunities of the full set of recommendations. After examining the feedback, a final set of 18 recommendations was produced. Results: The final SoNHR reporting guidelines are comprised of 18 recommendations organized within five domains: conceptualization (how study research questions are linked to network conceptions or theories), operationalization (how network science portions of the study are defined and operationalized), data collection & management (how network data are collected and managed), analyses & results (how network results are analyzed, visualized, and reported), and ethics & equity (how network-specific human subjects, equity, and social justice concerns are reported). We also present a set of exemplar published network studies which can be helpful for seeing how to apply the SoNHR recommendations in research papers. Finally, we discuss how different audiences can use these reporting guidelines. Conclusions: These are the first set of formal reporting recommendations of network methods in the health sciences. Consistent with EQUATOR goals, these network reporting recommendations may in time improve the quality, consistency, and replicability of network science across a wide variety of important health research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in data visualization and graphically aided reporting, the evaluation literature could benefit from additional guidance on systematically integrating visual communication design and marketing into comprehensive communication strategies to improve data dissemination. This article describes the role of targeted communication strategies—based on visual communications, design, and marketing theory—in producing more effective reports. In evaluation practice, well-synthesized and translated reports often require the integration of data from multiple sources, methods, and/or time points to communicate complex findings in ways that elicit productive responses. Visual communication strategies, such as project branding or designing actionable tools with marketing principles in mind, can be applied to optimize effective reporting of complex evaluation findings. This article references a longitudinal, mixed-method evaluation of public school administrators in Michigan to illustrate the application of a systematic communication design framework to produce several graphically aided project materials and subsequent findings reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective efficacy is defined as residents' perceived collective capacity to take coordinated and interdependent action on issues that affect their lives. This study explored factors associated with neighborhood collective efficacy among residents. Utilizing a national sample of 4,120 urban households provided by Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connection Initiative, we investigated the mediating role of residents' perceptions of bonding social capital (i.e. reciprocity, trust, and shared norms) in the association between civic engagement and collective efficacy. Multiple regression analyses revealed that civic engagement and bonding social capital were both directly related to collective efficacy. Additionally, bonding social capital partially mediated the relationship between civic engagement and collective efficacy. Specifically, residents who reported greater levels of civic engagement also reported higher levels of bonding social capital. In turn, residents who reported higher levels of bonding social capital also reported higher levels of neighborhood collective efficacy. We discuss implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners interested in associations of neighborhood collective efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]