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Social capital-the strength of an individual's social network and community-has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health 1-8 . However, efforts to understand what types of social capital matter for these outcomes have been hindered by a lack of social network data. Here, in the first of a pair of papers 9 , we use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital. We measure and analyse three types of social capital by ZIP (postal) code in the United States: (1) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low versus high socioeconomic status (SES); (2) social cohesion, such as the extent of cliques in friendship networks; and (3) civic engagement, such as rates of volunteering. These measures vary substantially across areas, but are not highly correlated with each other. We demonstrate the importance of distinguishing these forms of social capital by analysing their associations with economic mobility across areas. The share of high-SES friends among individuals with low SES-which we term economic connectedness-is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date 10,11 . Other social capital measures are not strongly associated with economic mobility. If children with low-SES parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectedness comparable to that of the average child with high-SES parents, their incomes in adulthood would increase by 20% on average. Differences in economic connectedness can explain well-known relationships between upward income mobility and racial segregation, poverty rates, and inequality 12-14 . To support further research and policy interventions, we publicly release privacy-protected statistics on social capital by ZIP code at https://www.socialcapital.org ., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern 1-4 and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility 4-7 . Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper 7 . We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines-measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES-is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias-the tendency for people with low SES to befriend people with high SES at lower rates even conditional on exposure. Friending bias is shaped by the structure of the groups in which people interact. For example, friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces. Distinguishing exposure from friending bias is helpful for identifying interventions to increase cross-SES friendships (economic connectedness). Using fluctuations in the share of students with high SES across high school cohorts, we show that increases in high-SES exposure lead low-SES people to form more friendships with high-SES people in schools that exhibit low levels of friending bias. Thus, socioeconomic integration can increase economic connectedness in communities in which friending bias is low. By contrast, when friending bias is high, increasing cross-SES interactions among existing members may be necessary to increase economic connectedness. To support such efforts, we release privacy-protected statistics on economic connectedness, exposure and friending bias for each ZIP (postal) code, high school and college in the United States at https://www.socialcapital.org ., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Short-term faculty-led study abroad programs have been offered in various institutions across the United States. Despite the many program offerings, students who are interested in the niche marketplace have been experiencing limited program participation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the use of online communication platforms in delivering a multi-institutional Paralympic study abroad experience among students from nine different universities across the United States and Canada. Specifically, this document intends to guide instructors in implementing a multi-institutional study abroad program. In addition, the paper shares thoughts on the beneficial opportunities study abroad trips can create for students who have a passion in the field of disability sport.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

Study abroad host families and communities in the Global South frequently provide learning experiences to study abroad programs in search of 'intercultural experiences' and 'global competency' to students from the Global North. This paper shares findings from a multi-sited ethnographic research project exploring cultural and economic impacts on host communities in Thailand who hosted U.S. study abroad programs and students. The study found that rather than participating solely for economic gain, host families participated in the global study abroad economy to preserve local knowledge, learn about cultural others, and leverage this knowledge and affiliations in negotiations with local government over land use and the right of communities remain in place. It also found that creation of systems of distributive benefit (systems that ensured transparency and equal sharing of economic benefits received from hosting students) by local government helped to mitigate unwanted impacts from outside visitors while allowing host communities opportunities to engage with the global study abroad economy.

This paper discusses the complexity of developing a powerful international learning environment. As a case study, it examines an "American-style" English-language university department in Japan and the challenges it faces from demographics and internationalization. It analyzes the institution at a local level by identifying issues related to social capital and social equity, and at a broader national cultural level, using Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory to identify contrasting elements between American and Japanese approaches to higher education. Finally, it offers suggestions that may help increase: the appeal of the university; its ability to develop strong relationships with stakeholders; and ultimately, its chances of long-term success.

The focus of this paper is the design of technology products and services for disabled students in higher education. It analyses the perspectives of disabled students studying in the US, the UK, Germany, Israel and Canada, regarding their experiences of using technologies to support their learning. The students shared how the functionality of the technologies supported them to study and enabled them to achieve their academic potential. Despite these positive outcomes, the students also reported difficulties associated with: (1) the design of the technologies; (2) a lack of technology know-how; and (3) a lack of social capital. When identifying potential solutions to these difficulties the disabled students imagined both preferable and possible futures where faculty, higher education institutions, researchers and technology companies are challenged to push the boundaries of their current design practices.

Social capital has recently emerged as an effective approach to rethink schools as wider learning ecosystems where students, teachers and families have greater access to learning resources through social interaction. Literature has not provided research-based assessment tools that document school leaders' abilities to weave social relationships between actors within the school and across the community. This paper presents an international experts' validation of the SchoolWeavers Tool, an online resource that supports school leaders to assess the health and potential of their school ecosystem and provides meaningful feedback to weave social and professional capital and lift learning opportunities and educational goals. Theoretical validation was conducted in the first round by 15 experts from 8 countries with prior experience in network leadership in education, and in the second round, with 54 school actors from the same 8 countries. The final model provides an internationally validated tool that supports school leaders' capacities to improve collective effectiveness, internal and external collaboration, innovation and equity. Furthermore, the Tool creates research opportunities by allowing school leaders and researchers to collaborate and support systemic impact and sustainable improvement.

The expansion process of Latin American higher education systems experienced in recent decades has drawn the attention of many scholars. Its impact has been assessed in relation to the broadening of access to education for the low-income sectors and the reduction of social inequality; likewise, the market's capacity to absorb a greater number of qualified workers has also been analysed. Therefore, it has been suggested that the consolidation of a process of 'credentialism' may be gaining momentum whereby: despite a moderate success rate in the expansion of access to higher education, inequalities would not have been reduced; rather, only a deterioration in the value of degrees would have taken place. This paper centres around the expansion process in the Argentine public university system and addresses these topics. We will argue that, despite taking a distinct course of its own, this expansion process falls within the phenomenon of institutional diversification which swept Latin America in the 1960s. The diversification of the Argentine higher education system developed with particular intensity within the university system, where the characteristics and performance of the different universities vary greatly. This, in turn, facilitated the advancement of labour-power differentiation.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of development of cultural knowledge and cosmopolitan identities among international management students in multicultural learning environments and to investigate how international business students develop global mindset during their studies. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative analysis was conducted within four undergraduate management and business administration programs in international higher educational institutions, based on constructivist grounded theory methodology. The empirical study is grounded in data that were collected from triangulated multiple sources: qualitative semi-structured interviews with students, faculty and student services professional (n = 95) from 23 countries, participant observation in four programs and document reviews, and were analyzed using the dimensional analysis. Findings: The study presents a global mindset development process model, which takes into the account social capital of the learners, as well as the existing and emergent social ties. Practical implications: The paper provides tentative recommendations for the steps that management educational programs and multinational companies can take to promote an environment conductive for cultural knowledge exchange. Originality/value: The paper presents the development of global mindset as a social learning process; in particular, it addresses the role social capital plays in knowledge generation and sharing in multicultural learning environment. It contributes to the understanding of cultural knowledge development in social networks. Additionally, the paper examines the feasibility of development of global mindset in international higher educational.

Objectives: This paper aims to examine the psychometric properties of social capital indicators, comparing Black and White respondents to identify the extent of measurement invariance in social capital by race., Study Design: We used data from the longitudinal study Midlife in the United States (MIDUS), waves 1 through 3 (1995-2016)., Methods: Data were from 6513 respondents (5604 White and 909 Black respondents). Social capital indicators were social cohesion, contributions to community, and community involvement. We used Structural Equation Modeling and Item Response Theory methods to test for measurement invariance in social capital by race., Results: We observed violations of longitudinal and multi-group measurement invariance (MI) at configural and metric levels on two scales. Factor structures and indicator loadings were inconsistent over time. In IRT analysis, 'Many people come for advice' exhibited Differential Item Functioning (DIF), indicating a consistent advantage for White respondents on the contributions to community scale. Despite similar social capital levels (P(χ2,2) = 0.00), DIF was found in all contributions to community items and some community involvement items when examining race and education interaction., Conclusions: Invariance issues in social capital items suggest potential biases in comparing Black and White respondents. Recognizing these biases is essential. Future social capital research should assess existing data assumptions and involve stakeholders from diverse communities in creating new items., (Copyright © 2024 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

As American colleges and universities become more diverse, expanding our vision and working around what it means to be a legacy, especially at Predominately White Institutions, will be essential. This paper examines Black families' experiences at Churchill, a small liberal arts PWI in the Northeast. With the aid of Yosso's community cultural wealth and Bourdieu's notions of cultural and social capital, it examines how parents' experiences at Churchill and exposing their child to Churchill shaped and informed their child's decision to attend their parent's alma mater and the passing of social and cultural capital between the generations. Findings suggest that while navigational and familial capital passes between generations, Black cultural capital does not pass smoothly and impacts their child's experience at Churchill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a flexible identity and citizenship framework to explore how return migrants, "haigui," have readapted and re-established themselves back into Shanghai society, and how they have used their talents, knowledge and "guanxi" networks to optimise their chances of success. It argues that these return migrants, as talent circulators in their circulatory migration process, have adopted a flexible identity and citizenship, to confront their conflicting emotions and negotiated sacrifices for the well-being of their individual self and family as they expand their socio-economic and territorial space.

This paper studies how the strength of social ties is affected by the geographical location of other individuals and their social capital. We characterize the equilibrium in terms of both social interactions and social capital. We show that lower travel costs increase not only the interaction frequency but also the social capital for all agents. We also show that the equilibrium frequency of interactions is lower than the efficient one. Using a unique geocoded data set of friendship networks among adolescents in the United States, we structurally estimate the model and show that indeed agents socially interact less than that at the first best optimum. Our policy analysis suggests that, at the same cost, subsidizing social interactions yield a higher total welfare than subsidizing transportation costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a life‐course measure of the legal pattern that accounts for the overall legal pattern over the lifetime of migration and explores the two main pathways to labour market outcomes: selecting into legal patterns associated with different levels of labour market outcomes and realising different labour market outcomes within each pattern. Results suggest that labour market outcomes depend on which legal patterns migrants end up with instead of what they realise within each pattern. Particularly, migrants with more human capital and better social capital select into legal patterns associated with better labour market outcomes, but they do not realise better labour market outcomes given the legal patterns they experienced. From the dynamic perspective, the economic integration of migrants depends on legal patterns. Migrants in legal patterns that initiate with temporary resident status experience economic integration over time. The growth rate is larger for the patterns that involve a transition in legal status. This paper makes important contributions to the literature. First, it identifies holistic legal patterns that account for the legal status over migrants' entire migration history. Second, it sheds light on the selection into different legal patterns and highlights selection as the major process in explaining migrants' labour market outcomes. Third, it shows how legal patterns, jointly shaped by initial legal status and legal transition, determine migrants' economic integration. Finally, the inclusion of temporary resident status, beyond the illegal–legal dichotomy, enriches our understanding of how liminal legality over the lifetime of migration shapes labour market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore resources or capabilities that enable medium-sized firms to be resilient, namely, to avoid and recover from supply chain disruptions. Design/methodology/approach: A case-study method is employed with four medium-sized manufacturing firms headquartered in the USA that have global supply chains. Data are collected from semi-structured interviews with key informants from diverse functions and managerial levels, archival documents, observation and a resilience assessment. Findings: Internal social capital emerged as a resilience-enhancing resource, comprising: structural capital grounded in small network size, geographical proximity among decision makers and low hierarchy; relational capital grounded in close relationships, commitment and respect; and cognitive capital grounded in long employee tenure. Originality/value: This is the first paper in the supply chain management literature to examine the resilience of medium-sized firms, an under-researched context. It is also the first paper to introduce internal social capital as a resilience-enhancing resource. Hence, this is among the few papers to propose a resilience-enhancing resource rooted not in a firm's supply chain operations but its human resources. This paper, moreover, identifies several facets of internal social capital within medium-sized firms. Finally, the paper makes several managerial contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates dynamic changes in instrumental (i.e., work‐related) tie‐seeking patterns and the structure of a communication network following a downsizing event—whereby many employees are simultaneously eliminated from a network. Our analysis spans a two‐year period and applies a resource‐ and network‐change approach to examine how survivors develop revised resource‐acquisition strategies while repositioning themselves after a downsizing. Our results demonstrate that two temporary logics of tie formation—a suspension of within‐unit homophily and a preference for seeking ties with long‐tenured employees—help employees acquire betweenness centrality during the disruption period. Specifically, we find that disruption initiates a transitional period after downsizing in which new tie‐making logics are employed, including seeking out ties with long‐tenured employees and employees outside of one's department. We observed post‐disruption, during the stabilization period after downsizing, where logics used for tie‐making in the disruption period were abandoned, pre‐disruption tie‐making logics were resumed, and betweenness centrality remained relatively constant. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these results and suggest future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the neoliberal consensus about education finance has broken down due to growing economic inequality. First, I use a comparative historical analysis of political alliances to examine patterns of world trade and nations' policies for economic and educational development since World War II. The United States emphasized STEM-collegiate preparation for all students, while most countries continued the dual emphasis on technical-tertiary and higher education. Educational policy in the US and Pacific region also shifted towards a reliance on markets and student loans resulting in worsening economic inequality in access. Nations with dual technical and academic pathways in secondary and postsecondary education systems expand college enrollment rates more rapidly than the US. They also experience class conflict between the working–middle class and the new technological elite. Next, I examine how education policy shifted from national planning aligned with public funding to market-based incentives for institutional development, further exposing gaps in opportunity within nations. Finally, recognizing the variations in systemic causes of inequality, I argue that governments, education agencies, and civic activists can best promote equity by organizing to address barriers to opportunity for groups left behind in the wake of withering neoliberal education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the rising numbers of refugees worldwide, many aid organizations suggest entrepreneurship as a preferred route to refugee economic self-reliance in a new country. Incubators have long provided assistance to nascent entrepreneurs and are utilized worldwide to offer support to entrepreneurial businesses. Yet, little research examines refugee-focused incubators or considers refugee-specific constraints. Herein, we argue that refugee status has specific implications for how refugee entrepreneurs accumulate and deploy human, social and financial capital. Thus, refugee status affects the types of services transitioning refugees require from incubators. This paper considers refugee-specific resources and uses a case study approach to investigate resource provision in a refugee-focused incubator in the United States. We find that even when an incubator follows best practices in terms of service provision, it may still miss the mark in terms of meeting key resource needs of refugees. Specifically, this paper illuminates how refugee entrepreneurs need (more) incubator support in terms of (1) addressing mental health in service provision, (2) building community within the incubator and (3) balancing financial tradeoffs associated with culturally-based businesses. Findings are novel when tied to a resource-based lens and help build theory regarding entrepreneurship among less-served populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 vaccine rates provide a unique opportunity to explore vaccine hesitancy and potential interactions between social capital and individual, normative values, namely for public health and/or personal freedom. While economists and public health scholars realize the independent effects social capital and stringent public health rules have on prevalence and mortality rates, few recognize how these factors influence vaccination rates. We advance this literature with a novel framework to analyze these interactions. With county-level data on COVID-19 vaccinations, social capital, and measures of the values people have for personal freedom and public health, we find that vaccination rates depend on individual values, the level of social capital, and the interaction between the two. Social capital mediates the values people hold dear, which can influence vaccination rates in positive and negative ways. Our results are robust to the inclusion of relevant controls and under multiple specifications. These results suggest that individuals and the communities people enter into and exit out of play an important role in decisions to vaccinate, which are independent of formal, governmental public health measures., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This study enriches the literature on social networks and social capital by investigating how parental status potentially impacts social network diversity in adulthood. Using the 2018 iteration of the General Social Survey (GSS, n = 2348), a high quality nationally representative survey of the United States, we utilize latent class and regression analyses, finding that parental status, especially medium and cross-status occupational connections contribute to social capital in the form of network diversity. Yet, personal socio-economic factors, notably income and race, largely offset parental effects. This underscores the complexity of network composition, emphasizing the influential role of individual resources, attributes, and mobility in shaping social networks and forming bridging social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the kind of data used, to the creativity of approaches aimed at exploring social networks in the past, applications of social network analysis (SNA) in archaeology are characterized by exceptional diversity. In recent years, applications of SNA by historians and history-adjacent scholars have also increased dramatically, partly as a product of the growing field of digital humanities. In the North American sense of the term, the utility of social network analysis has yet to be substantively realized by historical archaeologists. In this paper, we use two case studies from the southeastern United States to illustrate the potential that social network analyses could offer historical archaeologists. In particular, we highlight how social network analysis can be employed as a framework for the integrated consideration of both archaeological and documentary evidence to explore the distribution, accumulation, control, and production of social capital in the past. In our first case study we leverage archaeological networks as a proxy for social capital to explore the contradictions and complementarity of archaeological data and the ethnohistorical record on the Indigenous politics of sixteenth-century Southern Appalachia. In our second example we examine networks of tasks and spaces across a nineteenth-century enslaved community on the Georgia Coast to understand how social capital can be differentially accumulated and accessed within particular spaces and practices. Through these examples, we demonstrate the potential for social network analysis to enrich the research programs and support the goals of North American historical archaeologists and to link such research into broader themes across the social and humanistic sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of volunteerism in three different case countries, namely, that of USA, UK and China while highlighting the role of the state, society and social capital. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the extant literature on the volunteering traditions in the chosen case study countries highlighting the idiosyncrasies while analysing implications for future research. Findings – The paper highlights the role of the state, society and social capital in the chosen countries, each deriving its origins from the specific traditions in those countries. Research limitations/implications – This paper provides a conceptual review focusing on the key literature in the field. The authors have examined various academic texts and published materials. Practical implications – This paper provided an update critically discussion on the concept of volunteerism in three different case countries. Social implications – This paper is highly relevant to academics and social policy makers. Moreover, this paper has been written from an international context. Originality/value – The paper makes an original contribution by comparing and contrasting three important countries with different histories and traditions of volunteerism highlighting diversity of type and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research sporadically leverages information science scholarship. Our qualitative study employs the "information grounds" (IG) lens to investigate the consequences of information exchanges by pregnant women on Facebook, who are vulnerable in the doctor‐centric birth culture in rural America. The thematic analysis of in‐depth interviews with members and administrators of the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) group shows that positive consequences outweigh negative consequences of information exchanges and lead to the following progression of outcomes: (a) VBAC group as an information ground, (b) social capital (e.g., cognitive, structural, and relational capital) built on the information ground, (c) seven emergent properties of the information ground, and (d) value co‐created (e.g., local, affordable, timely, enduring, and reliable support) by VBAC group members. The IG lens reveals the following roles of Facebook, an ICT, in development: (a) a linker that lets people with similar needs and interests convene and shapes their interactions, (b) a prerequisite to building an online, "third place" for social interactions, and (c) an apparatus for ubiquitously seeking, searching, sharing, and storing information in multiple formats and controlling its flow on the VBAC group. This paper fills in six gaps in the ICT4D research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of civil society in shaping content moderation governance arrangements in the United States. Drawing on prior research that recognizes the importance of civil society in shaping policy, this article analyzes the experiences of civil society practitioners engaged in content moderation activism. Based on in-depth original interviews with civil society practitioners, I demonstrate how civil society's activity in this space aligns with known regulatory standard-setting process competencies and suggest advocacy work benefits from the power of coalition lobbying and social capital. Moreover, I highlight the sense of frustration from some practitioners that they are not compensated by firms for their monitoring and reporting work that improves platforms' products, and I offer preliminary reasons for why practitioners contest moderation norms. The paper's insights contribute to the study of platform governance by illuminating informal mechanisms utilized by civil society, which holds broader implications for understanding the dynamics of non-state actors in shaping online platforms and their policies. • New empirical evidence contributes insight into the experiences of U.S. civil society actors involved in platform governance. • U.S. civil society practitioners engage in content moderation activism via known regulatory competencies. • Informal mechanisms such as networks, coalitions, and knowledge sharing are used to contest digital governance arrangements. • The power of coalition lobbying, dynamics of civil society-platform interactions, and motives for contestation are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite global shifts toward prevention of school corporal punishment, the practice remains widespread. This systematic review focused on (a) prevalence, (b) associated mental health and behavioral factors, and (c) correlates that may be risk or protective factors. Studies included in this review were peer-reviewed, published in English between 1980 and July 2017, and quantitative in design. Fifty-three papers met the inclusion criteria. All were cross-sectional surveys, predominantly of moderate quality and conducted in the United States (US) and on the African continent. Results indicated that school corporal punishment is prevalent across the globe (including where bans are in place) and does not appear to be decreasing over time, although measurement differences preclude firm conclusions. It is associated with physical, academic, mental health, and behavioral problems for children. Boys, Black students (in the US), and students exposed to violence at home were most at risk of corporal punishment. It is unclear whether disability puts a student at risk. Schools with high rates of other disciplinary practices were more likely to use corporal punishment, while those who employed a mental health professional and trained staff in safety procedures were less likely to use corporal punishment. Teacher attitudes favoring corporal punishment, and their use of violence in other contexts, increased risk. Low socioeconomic status (of the student or the school environment) increased risk, while high levels of state social capital reduced risk. Future research must include areas where corporal punishment is banned and focus on developing effective interventions to prevent school corporal punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late twentieth century, researchers began calling attention to declining social capital in America and the potential consequences of this trend for a healthy society. While researchers empirically assessed the decline in social capital from the mid-1900s onward, this line of research diminished when the major source of data, the General Social Survey, stopped fielding critical questions in 2004. We do not know, therefore, whether social capital, especially associational social capital, has declined, stabilized, or even increased in a twentyfirst century America. In this paper, we develop a new measure of associational social capital using a confirmatory factor analysis of six indicators from the Civic Engagement Supplement to the Current Population Survey for 2008–2011 and 2013. Our findings support previous research suggesting that associational social capital does not seem to be declining over time. However, we do find evidence of a nonlinear decrease in associating during the Great Recession years. Across the entire time period, though, membership in groups has not declined and there has been little practical change in the amount of time that individuals spend with neighbors. Our analysis of the variance of social capital also shows no general change in the national dispersion of social capital from 2008 to 2013. The paper advances the measurement of social capital and updates our understanding of its possible decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of adoption and child welfare, there is ongoing debate and discussion about how white adoptive parents in transracial families construct personal and social relationships and networks to promote cultural belonging and identity development in their children. In spite of this however, there is, to date, no research study that has sought to apply the notion of social capital to understand transracial adoptive families. With its exploration of how white American adoptive mothers construct social capital in raising their transracially adopted children, this paper seeks to contribute to the literature on social capital and families in general, and social capital and transracial families in particular. By drawing upon a qualitative study involving white adoptive mothers’ discursive practices, and multiplex constructions of intersectionality, the paper seeks to offer rich theoretical and empirical insights into social capital and transracial adoption to contribute to the literature in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States spends more on health care than any other OECD country, yet the nation's health is declining. Recent research has identified multiple sources for this decline, including one's position in social and economic structures, environmental quality, and individual and collective social capital. This paper assesses the primary hypotheses that the health effects of household energy burden, social capital and environmental quality on aggregated community health levels remain while controlling for other determinants. The analysis moves beyond prior research by integrating multiple secondary data sources to assess those effects across US counties. Three indicators of public health are analyzed (premature mortality, self-reported health, and life expectancy). The county-level energy burden is measured by the percent of household income spent on housing energy bills for low- and moderate-income households. In addition to energy burden, social capital, environmental quality and other determinants are included in the analysis. The results produced by multivariate regression models support the primary hypotheses, even while a number of control variables also have a significant effect on health. The paper concludes that public health is associated with a complex nexus of factors, including environmental quality and social capital, and that energy burden needs to be among the considerations.

This paper examines the pathways through which Lebanese immigrants come to own small businesses in the Detroit metropolitan area. It utilizes case study analysis as a methodological tool and the literatures on immigrant entrepreneurship and social capital theory as frameworks. Lebanese immigrants initially undergo a process of downward mobility on account of their inability to utilize their human capital in the host context. However, a number of factors interact to facilitate their move into small business enterprise. First, in the face of exclusions in the mainstream primary economy, Lebanese immigrants who have access to fungible social capital resources forsake expectations of return on their human capital and settle for opening a business. Second, the urban conditions in Detroit and the growth of the Arab immigrant community in Dearborn have opened a viable economic niche to Lebanese immigrants who could become small business owners. This paper suggests that an understanding of the delicate interactions between capital resources immigrants bring with them and structural conditions in the host context is crucial to describing the pathways through which Lebanese immigrants become owners of small businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of activism in determining the identity of the "green" median voter and the influence of the green voter on environmental regulatory stringency in the US states. Design/methodology/approach -- Regulatory stringency is measured using output weighted abatement spending and an industry concentration adjusted index of state environmental compliance costs for the period 1989-1994. Activism measures include environmental initiatives, median support for pollution standards and voter ideology. Fixed-effects panel methodology is used in empirical estimation. Findings -- The authors find that activism increases stringency in regulating overall as well as media-specific pollution. The results particularly highlight the nuances of different approaches to activism and their varied impact across pollution media. Research limitations/implications -- A drawback of the empirical estimation is the lack of continuous historical abatement spending data. A longer panel with alternative stringency measure(s) would add explanatory power to activism, especially since some activism measures capture slow-changing institutional factors. Social implications -- The study identifies the conditions under which activism can have the most impact on a society's environmental outcomes since pollution varies in damages, hence abatement costs, across pollution media. Originality/value -- The paper adds to the existing literature by incorporating three alternative measures of environmental activism to systematically investigate its impact on environmental stringency within a fixed-effects regression design. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the efficacy of the activism process by deconstructing policy stringency across pollution media to show that activism and its impacts are more nuanced than previously studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: Depression affects 1 in 20 Americans, and people living with HIV experience depression at 2-3 times the rate of the general population. Recent research has shown that a person's level of social connectedness (e.g., social networks) is important to understanding their health and ability to get help when they need it. The scientific rationale of this work is to determine whether there is a direct relationship between levels of depression and a measure of social connectedness in people with HIV who are at higher than normal risk of depression and depressive symptoms. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: We examined the relationship between levels of depression and social capital in people living with HIV to determine whether depression may influence their beliefs about their social connectedness and available resources. We found that as depression increases, self-reported social capital decreases, suggesting that people living with HIV who are depressed may feel less socially connected and/or not be confident they can access resources when they need them. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Mental health nurses are particularly well-positioned to help people living with HIV who are living with depression by helping them build skills for building and maintaining relationships, adhering to co-administered HIV and mental health medical treatments, and helping these individuals to identify and address barriers to social connectedness. Helping people living with HIV to address depression and promoting social connectedness can not only improve quality of life, but have major long-term health benefits. Abstract Introduction People living with HIV (PLWH) are disproportionately burdened by depression, with estimates as high as 80% of PLWH reporting depressive symptoms. Depression in PLWH is complex, and has been linked with biological and psychosocial causes, including low social capital. Few studies have examined the relationship between social capital and depression in PLWH. Aim/Question We conducted a secondary analysis of the relationship between social capital (Social Capital Scale score) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II scores) to determine whether depression predicted levels of social capital in a sample of 108 PLWH. Results Depression was significantly associated with lower social capital r(105) = -.465 p < .001. Depression remained a significant predictor of social capital in the linear regression model, F(5,101) = 8.508, p < .000, R 2  = 0.296, when controlling for age and education level. Discussion Our results suggest that depression may be a significant predictor of low social capital, and these factors may have cyclical relationships that explain persistent depression in this population. Implications for practice Mental health nurses are particularly well-positioned to help PLWH who are living with depression by helping them build skills for building and maintaining relationships, adhering to co-administered HIV and mental health medical treatments, and helping these individuals to identify and address barriers to social connectedness., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

In this paper, we test two mechanisms through which cultural capital might affect educational performance: (a) teachers misinterpreting cultural capital as signals of academic brilliance and (b) cultural capital fostering skills in children that enhance educational performance. We analyse data from the ECLS-K and ECLS-K:2011 from the United States and focus on three aspects of children's cultural capital: participation in performing arts, reading interest and participation in athletics and clubs. We find that (1) none of the three aspects of cultural capital that we consider affects teachers' evaluations of children's academic skills; (2) reading interest has a direct positive effect on educational performance; and (3) the direct effect of reading interest on educational performance does not depend on schooling context. Our results provide little support for the hypothesis that cultural capital operates via signals about academic brilliance. Instead, they suggest that cultural capital fosters skills in children that enhance educational performance. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings., (© 2019 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. Because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community resilience has been recognized and promoted as both a vision and a strategy for disaster management. This paper establishes the importance of community resilience in disaster management, describes disaster management phases and the disaster system of care, reviews definitions and dimensions of community resilience and related foundational concepts (social groups, social networks, and social capital), and endorses a conceptual framework for enhancing community resilience through social capital. Resilience, both personal and community resilience, is increased by the social capital that emerges from improved social connections and social networks. Effective disaster management, which requires an informed and engaged public, relies on social networks to connect and support individuals, families, groups, and organizations within the community and to link the community with the disaster system of care. Community disaster teams can identify and engage in activities that promote personal and community resilience, and the team process itself can create social capital that also advances personal and community resilience. The enhancement framework advocated in this paper focuses on the role of social capital in augmenting community resilience derived from people's interactions in groups, social networks, and teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public officials use mini-bonds, small denomination municipal bonds, as a mechanism to broaden citizen access to tax-exempt investments that finance public infrastructure. Marketing debt securities to smaller investors comes with costs, but a popular expectation is that such offerings strengthen local social capital. This paper provides a historical overview o f the use of mini-bonds, including the rationale and challenges. It then uses a series of mini-bond issuances by the City and County of Denver from 1990 to 2014 to illustrate the differences in issuance and interest costs compared to traditional municipal bonds, as well as investor access outcomes. A series of considerations for public officials contemplating the issuance of mini-bonds is included. Mini-bonds present a conscious financing decision where the additional and substantial costs can be quantified, but the anticipated benefits of increased publicity about public projects and more equitable investor access are more difficult to value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ubiquity of "social capital" in sociological research, this measure has broadly been conceptualized as both an individual and collective level measure. We explore the link between these two levels within the United States using recently constructed scales of state- and county-level social capital linked to the geocoded 2000–2018 General Social Survey. Collective social capital is associated with greater individual-level trust and voting. However, heterogeneity analysis reveals substantial differences by race/ethnicity, education, sex, and marital status. Moreover, there is heterogeneity for individual-level confidence in institutions and social interaction frequency, despite no overall relationship between those outcomes and collective social capital. Only some of our results align with existing dimensions of stratification, showing the importance of being clear about the operationalization and level of social capital being studied and highlighting how the "advantages" of collective social capital may not extend broadly to all the members of the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary : Does embeddedness in global social networks elevate or diminish individuals' propensity to found new ventures? I analyze entrepreneurial entry among a large, cross‐country sample of skilled return migrants, all of whom had worked abroad in the United States before returning to 98 different home countries. My findings reveal that maintaining stronger cross‐border social ties—that is, relationships to former colleagues abroad—leads returnees to be more likely to found new ventures in their homelands. However, the positive effects of cross‐border social ties diminish with greater institutional distance between the returnee's home country and the United States. The findings have implications for research at the intersection of social networks, international migration, and entrepreneurship. Managerial Summary When it comes to founding a venture, social networks are often critical in helping prospective entrepreneurs identify new market opportunities and resources. Which types of networks are most beneficial in helping people become entrepreneurs, however, still remains a question. This paper asks whether having social connections to individuals across countries makes one more likely to become an entrepreneur, and if so why? Studying skilled return migrants, I find that returnees who maintain stronger social ties to those they met while working abroad are more likely to start companies, but only if there is sufficient similarity between the market environments of the returnee's home country and the country where the returnee worked abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Health impact assessment (HIA) is a systematic research and public engagement tool used to elevate health and equity in public policies. However, HIA practitioners often overlook potential mental health impacts. The purpose of this paper is to review the degree to which mental health is included in HIAs in the USA.Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a systematic review of 156 HIAs that were completed between 1993 and 2013 for their inclusion of mental health. HIAs were subdivided to assess if mental health conditions or their determinants were measured, and if predictions or mitigation strategies were made in the scoping, assessment, or recommendations phases.Findings Overall, 73.1 percent of HIAs included mental health. Of the HIAs that included mental health (n=114), 85.1 percent also included the determinants of mental health and 67.6 percent included mental health outcomes. 37.7 percent of HIAs measured baseline mental health conditions and 64.0 percent predicted changes in mental health as the result of implementing the proposed policy, plan, or program. Among the HIAs that made predictions about mental health, 79.5 percent included recommendations for potential changes in mental health, while only 46.6 percent had measured mental health at baseline.Research limitations/implications Although many HIAs included mental health in some capacity, this paper quantifies that mental health is not included in a robust way in HIAs in the USA. This presents a difficulty for efforts to address the growing issues of mental health and mental health inequities in the populations.Originality/value This paper represents the first academic endeavor to systematically assess the state of the field of HIA for its inclusion of mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinxs are the second largest racial-ethnic group in the United States, yet they make up only 7% of all doctoral degree recipients. Latinx undergraduates are predominantly first-generation college students, who often have limited professional networks to guide their pathways into graduate school. Drawing on interviews with 25 first-generation Latinx college students, this study examines the ways they narrate professors' influence in their pathways towards enrolling in doctoral programs. We find that first-generation Latinx students' pathways into doctoral programs are heavily shaped by professors in the following ways: 1) institutional support; 2) disrupting or perpetuating the doctoral student archetype and; 3) social location congruence. Our analysis underscores that professors' of any social location can provide networks and instrumental support, but Latinx doctoral students' narrate their social capital, is tied to, and strengthened by, their Latinx co-ethnic professors' possession of instrumental support, social networks, and relevant experiential knowledge and a critical consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the influence of role stressors on service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) mediated by depersonalization, with a moderator of social capital. Design/methodology/approach: A self-administered online survey was completed by 265 current hotel frontline employees in the USA. Findings: The study reveals that role ambiguity has a detrimental impact on service-oriented OCB. The results show that depersonalization is found to be a critical mediator that modifies the implications of both role ambiguity and role conflict for service-oriented OCB. Furthermore, the negative effect of role conflict on depersonalization is buffered by social capital. Practical implications: Hotel firms that would like to encourage employees to exert proactive behaviors in their jobs might benefit from developing an effective way to reduce role stressors in their jobs. However, given that such role stressors are inevitable in the workplace, hotel firms should place more emphasis on enhancing social capital as an effective way to manage role stressors in the workplace. Originality/value: This study advances previous studies on role stressors and service-oriented OCB by addressing how and why role stressors influence employees' service-oriented OCB. This study incorporates advanced job demand-resource theory by identifying social capital as a critical job resource to buffer the detrimental impact of role conflict on depersonalization in the hotel context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Using social capital theory (SCT), the purpose of this research is to determine the success of social networking in societies that may be lower in social capital, for example in Poland, versus those which are higher in social capital, such as the USA. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses a partial least squares approach with a cross-cultural sample. The complete sample consists of 556 participants for this study across the USA (n = 258) and Poland (n = 298). Findings: Results indicate that social media success is lower in Poland and that this result is related to lower social networking capital in Polish society. However, the proposed model shows that social media functionality can overcome some of the barriers. Research limitations/implications: Limitations include a very specific set of countries rather than a larger set of countries and sample, survey methodology which could be augmented with a mixed methods approach and convenience sampling which ensured homogeneity and matching. Practical implications: Based on this research, media designers should attempt to keep information quality high but even more importantly, they should increase interactivity. For Poland in particular, well-designed interactivity can mitigate societal barriers to success of social media, as it can enhance trust in such platforms. Social implications: Because of Poland's history of more than 40 years of communism, the newer generations may eventually become more adaptive to social networking tools and such acceptance could lead to greater social capital, which is important for Polish society from a business perspective as well. Originality/value: The most important contribution of this research is that it theoretically and empirically establishes the importance of SCT in relation to social networking across two different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative case study examines how students in a high school newcomer program experience the development of social and cultural capital. Newcomer programs are created by K-12 schools with large influxes of refugees and immigrants. This case study data stems from a larger ethnographic study of a newcomer program at Georgetown High, an urban secondary school in the Northeast region of the United States. Using Bourdieu's (1986) social and cultural capital theory as a framework for the study we provide an overview of the literature on the importance of helping newcomers build social and cultural capital. Themes arising from the data as representations of the experiences of newcomers building capital and the role of the teacher in that development is explored further. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the case for research, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Most schools struggle to get busy and stressed parents to come repeatedly to the school building for events. At primary schools, especially those with pupils living in low-income communities or with many immigrants, involving parents to come at all is seen as a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to present a social ecological strategy of using the school building as a site for families to gather and for community networks to grow by building relationships between parents who have same-aged children attending that school. When families know other families, they feel more comfortable coming into the school building, and probably will return frequently. Design/methodology/approach – A large randomised controlled trial of 52 urban schools with an average of 73 per cent Latino students situated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the USA has data to examine the impact of this strategy on parent involvement. Parents of all first-grade students (age 6 or 7) at schools assigned either to Families and Schools Together (FAST) or services-as-usual were invited to participate. At schools with the social ecological strategy universal invites were made to those in the study to attend any one of eight weekly multi-family group sessions offered after-school at the building. Trained teams were culturally representative of the families (language, ethnicity) and made up of local parents and professionals; each team hosted up to ten families in a hub for two and a half hours (83 families attended at one session). Parents were socially included, treated with respect, coached by the team to lead a family meal, singing, family crafts and games at a family table. Parent time (respite) was provided with chat-time in pairs, followed by parent-led discussion groups. Parents were coached in one to one time, “child-led” responsive play for 15 minutes. Findings – Parent involvement data showed that on average, 43.6 per cent of all first-graders’ families (an average of 44 families per school) attended at least one session; of those, who attended at least one session, 69 per cent returned for another. On average, of those families who attended at least once, the average family went four times; an average of 22 families per school attended six or more sessions. Parent graduates led monthly booster sessions open to all families. In half of the families, both fathers and mothers attended; immigrant parents attended statistically significantly more than native-born ones. In surveys, more parents in schools with FAST vs control reported attending three or more events at school. Practical implications – The FAST programme encourages the involvement of reluctant parents in school events. This benefits both children’s general well-being and academic attainment and so contributes to preventative public health strategies. Originality/value – This paper brings new perspectives to the challenges faced by educators in involving parents at school by a sociologist-led research team introducing a social worker-developed social ecological, systemic strategy to schools in low-income communities using a randomised controlled design. This novel social ecological approach has consistently and effectively engaged whole families into increased involvement in schools in 20 countries, especially in low-income communities. Headteachers consistently report increased school engagement of FAST parent graduates for years, suggesting that the early intensity builds ongoing relationships of trust and reciprocity across home, school and community. Policy makers should note that building social capital in disadvantaged communities through partnerships with parents and schools can result in decreased disparities in health, social care and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication technologies are playing an increasingly prominent role in facilitating immigrants' social networks across countries and the transnational positioning of immigrant youth in their online language and literacy practices. Drawing from a comparative case study of the digital literacy practices of immigrant youth of Chinese descent, this paper examines the cross-border social relationships that are fostered between the youth and their peers in their natal country through the use of instant messaging and other online media. Using Pierre Bourdieu's capital and field theory, and the concept of social capital, this paper considers how literacy development in transnational contexts constitutes the production of social and cultural capital. It argues that the youths' online literacy practices need to be understood within the particular social fields in which they are situated and how they allow the youth to navigate and take up position within social fields that cross national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study provides an empirical test of two mechanisms (social capital and exposure to air pollution) that are theorized to mediate the effect of neighborhood on health and contribute to racial disparities in health outcomes. To this end, we utilize the Social Capital Benchmark Study, a national survey of individuals nested within communities in the United States, to estimate how multiple dimensions of social capital and exposure to air pollution, explain racial disparities in self-rated health. Our main findings show that when controlling for individual-confounders, and nesting within communities, our indicator of cognitive bridging, generalized trust, decreases the gap in self-rated health between African Americans and Whites by 84%, and the gap between Hispanics and Whites by 54%. Our other indicator of cognitive social capital, cognitive linking as represented by engagement in politics, decreases the gap in health between Hispanics and Whites by 32%, but has little impact on African Americans. We also assessed whether the gap in health was explained by respondents' estimated exposure to toxicity-weighted air pollutants from large industrial facilities over the previous year. Our results show that accounting for exposure to these toxins has no effect on the racial gap in self-rated health in these data. This paper contributes to the neighborhood effects literature by examining the impact that estimated annual industrial air pollution, and multiple measures of social capital, have on explaining the racial gap in health in a sample of individuals nested within communities across the United States., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

In this paper, we document development of administrator networks around teacher evaluation and Common Core in an urban district over four years. Using social network analysis, we look at the extent to which networks focused on instructional initiatives spanned formal roles. Findings highlight influences of role and grade level as well as the nature of different initiatives in the ways that networks developed. As interactions increase, administrators share their knowledge and expertise--and district leadership has the potential to develop structures that support this. We conclude with implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]