Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Networks and Social Capital: New Techniques for Studying Marginalized Populations at Risk

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In China, HIV infections have reportedly risen by 30 percent a year since 1994 and tremendous concern has grown over the burgeoning epidemic. In this research, graduate student Yeon Yu, supervised by Dr. James Holland Jones, will undertake research on the social networks of a marginalized population thought to be involved in HIV transmission. Identifying these networks is critical to providing a new lens to examine disease transmission. Equally important, the research will contribute to developing new methodologies for studying marginalized populations.In addition to the network data, the researcher will collect information about the marginalized population's histories, the forces influencing their decisions to engage in dangerous work, and how these forces have been influenced by the massive transformations stemming from China's neoliberalism since the late 1970s. Among these forces are socioeconomic environments, the political economy, personal networks, as well as state policies. The project's methodological contribution comes from deploying new techniques for identifying the properties of cluster boundaries and illustrating the social space of hidden populations. This ethnographic application of Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) in China may ultimately become the prototype for applying RDS in studying other hidden or sensitive populations. The research data will be used as empirically grounded parameters to drive mathematical models for epidemiological purposes. These research results will ultimately benefit marginalized people at risk as well as populations at large.