Social Networks and Health:
Evidence and New Directions

Join us on Tue, Apr 09 2024 at 11:00 AM to 12:30 AM for an exciting event exploring the relationship between social networks and health. Discover the latest evidence and innovative approaches in this field.

About the speaker:

Mario L. Small, Ph.D., is Quetelet Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. A University of Bremen Excellence Chair, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the Sociological Research Association, Small has published award-winning articles and books on urban inequality, personal networks, and the relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods. His books include Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life -- both of which received the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book -- and Someone To Talk To: How Networks Matter in Practice, which received the James Coleman Best Book Award among other honors. His most recent books are the co-edited, Personal Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis, whose 50 contributors provide a compendium of person-centered social network research, and the co-authored Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research, which provides strategies for assessing qualitative research from an empirical perspective. Small is currently studying the relationship between networks and decision-making, the ability of large-scale data to answer critical questions about urban inequality, and the relation between qualitative and quantitative methods

Current Projects:

Personal Networks in Practice
I am developing an approach to social networks in which context, not just structure, is central. In quantitative and qualitative studies across multiple settings---from parents in daycare centers to children in violent neighborhoods to students in Ph.D. programs---I am examining how networks are shaped by their organizational embeddedness, by people's decisions, or both. I am studying what we can learn from shifting attention from the structure of the network to the decisions of the individual. Recent works include a decision-process theory of how people mobilize their networks, included in a Cambridge University Press collection on ego network analysis with more than 50 contributors. Forthcoming is a new book series on the mechanisms behind network processes. [NETWORKS]

The Data and Racial Inequality Project
I am using large-scale administrative data from Twitter, Google Maps, and other sources to answer important new questions in racial inequality and urban poverty. We are testing hypotheses derived from ethnographic and interview studies about how depopulation and other neighborhood conditions affect people’s capacities and wellbeing. In collaborations with engineers, spatial analysts, and other social scientists, I hope to build on the interdisciplinary promise of “big data” for the study of inequality. Recent works include studies on racial segregation and everyday mobility based on millions of geotagged tweets, and an analysis of racial inequality in neighborhood access to financial institutions based on millions of travel queries. See DRIP. [URBAN]

Qualitative Literacy

I am working to raise the standards of qualitative research and improve both researchers’ and the public’s “qualitative literacy”—the ability to read and interpret qualitative evidence. The central challenge is to develop standards for ethnographic and interview research that is scientifically cumulative but leans into its strengths, rather than emulating quantitative methods. I believe that elevating scientists', journalists', and policy makers' qualitative literacy is important to a democratic society, and essential to countering polarization. New works include a study of how to assess interview data, a case for why the big data revolution will need qualitative research, and a new book on how to evaluate ethnographic and interview research. [METHODS]

Dont miss out!