Doctoral Dissertation: African Women's Support Networks Health

该项目涉及马萨诸塞大学人类学学生的论文研究，研究非洲妇女的支持网络如何影响其子女和自己的健康。利用从马里的一个长期项目中收集的数据，学生将分析社会支持的衡量标准，如妇女对危机事件的描述、对她们实际支持流的24小时回忆、焦点小组和深入的生命周期访谈。该网络数据将与过去五年的营养状况、报告的发病率和儿童死亡等保健措施有关。学生将测试一个假设，即女性支持网络的性质，它的大小和强度，会影响健康。这项研究有助于我们了解发展中国家的社会网络和健康状况，并提出了一种基于对第三世界人口的跨文化和比较观察的理论。此外，它有助于培养年轻的社会科学家，并提高我们对世界这一重要地区的认识。

This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropology student from the University of Massachusetts, studying how African women's support networks affect the health of their children and themselves. Using data collected from a long-term project in Mali, the student will analyze measures of social support such as women's accounts of crisis events, 24-hour recalls of their actual support flows, focus groups and in-depth life-cycle interviews. The network data will be related to health measures such as nutritional status, reported morbidity and child deaths over the past five years. The student will test the hypothesis that the nature of a women's support network, its size as well as its strength, affect health. The study contributes to our knowledge of social networks and health in the developing world, and advances a theory grounded in cross-cultural and comparative observations of third-world populations. In addition it contributes to the training of a young social scientist, and improves our knowledge about this important region of the world.