REU Site: Social Network Analysis for Solving Minority Health Disparities

该项目由SBE理事会的本科生研究经验（REU）站点计划资助。它具有科学和社会效益，并将研究和教育相结合。该网站激发了大学生对社会网络分析（SNA）和行为健康的兴趣，重点关注少数群体的健康差异。参与者接受项目PI在SNA方面的广泛方法培训，同时接触一系列研究课题和潜在的科学研究领域。与研究，评估和分析社区卫生（REACH）实验室和少数民族健康差距倡议（MHDI）一起，他们加入了跨学科研究人员的协作社区，解决内布拉斯加州的少数民族健康差距。将现有的REU扩展到少数民族健康差异，对于在夏季为学生提供多样化的体验，并通过社会网络分析等创新方法和基于社区的参与式研究（CBPR）等文化敏感范式，扩大对少数民族健康研究感兴趣的学生人数至关重要。夏季项目包括专业培训，提供个人职业指导和群组活动。在UNL的Ronald E. McNair博士后成就项目现有的招聘策略的基础上，该项目从广泛的背景、家庭院校、年龄、性别和种族中招募本科生，重点是中西部地区代表性不足的少数民族学生。鼓励参与者从事社会和行为健康科学方面的职业，并有机会在研究生院主办的年度夏季研究研讨会上向其他REU参与者和更广泛的教职员工展示他们的研究成果。自20世纪90年代末以来，对社会网络和健康的综合关注对健康研究和社会科学都产生了重大影响。SNA已成为社会学家的关键分析镜头，在过去二十年中推动关系社会学快速发展。它也作为一套通用的工具和方法出现，这些工具和方法跨越了一系列科学。毫不夸张地说，从事网络研究的研究人员可以自由地选择从计算机安全、病毒学、灵长类动物学和万维网研究等遥远领域发展起来的技术和措施。社会科学和社会网络分析在这样一个跨学科领域有很大的贡献。SNA是最古老和最严格的网络分析方法之一，并且具有丰富的经验基础。虽然物理学家将人类网络建模为更基本的物理物质的隐喻，但SNA研究人员传统上试图从人类的实际互动中提取他们的抽象。这种方法影响公共卫生和相关领域的潜力已经很明显。现在需要的是减少借用，并在新的相互交织的领域培养更多的研究人员。在这个项目中，REU参与者学习SNA网络的基本方法，然后将这些技能应用于一系列由NIH和nsf资助的研究项目中，这些研究项目的重点是少数民族的健康和健康差异。网络培训将在为期两周的密集网络科学实习中进行，然后参加为期8周的REACH/ mhdi附属研究项目。这些项目的共同重点是与少数群体健康和扩大少数群体健康参与有关的基本问题，目前由一系列联邦和州来源提供资金。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the SBE Directorate. It has both scientific and societal benefits, and integrates research and education. This site stimulates undergraduate students' interest in social network analysis (SNA) and behavioral health with a focus on minority health disparities. Participants undergo an extensive methodological training in SNA by the project PI while gaining exposure to a range of research topics and potential science research fields. In conjunction with the Research, Evaluation, and Analysis for Community Health (REACH) Lab and the Minority Health Disparities Initiative (MHDI), they join a collaborative community of transdisciplinary researchers tackling minority health disparities in Nebraska. The expansion the existing REU to Minority Health Disparities is critical for providing students diverse experiences during the summer and expanding the number of students interested in minority health research through innovative methods like social network analysis and culturally sensitive paradigms, such as Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The summer program includes training in professionalism and provides individual career mentoring and cohort activities. Building off of existing recruitment strategies employed by UNL's Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, the project recruits undergraduates from a wide-range of backgrounds, home institutions, ages, genders, and ethnicities, with emphasis on under-represented minority students in the Midwest. Participants are encouraged to pursue careers in social and behavioral health sciences and have opportunities to present the results of their research to both other REU participants and to a wider audience of faculty and staff at the annual Summer Research Symposium that is hosted by Graduate Studies.Since the late 1990s, a combined focus on social networks and health has had a significant impact on both health research and social science. SNA has emerged as a key analytical lens for sociologists, pushing relational sociology forward at a rapid pace in the last two decades. It has also emerged as a set of general purpose tools and approaches which cross-cut a range of sciences. Without exaggeration, researchers working on networks choose freely among techniques and measures developed from fields as distant as computer security, virology, primatology, and studies of the world-wide-web. Social science and social network analysis have much to contribute in such a transdiciplinary realm. SNA is among the oldest and most rigorous approaches to network analysis, and one with a rich empirical base. While physicists model human networks as metaphors of more basic physical material, SNA researchers have traditionally sought to draw their abstractions from the actual interaction of human beings. The potential of this approach to influence public health and related fields is already apparent. What is needed now is less borrowing, and more researchers trained across newly interwoven fields. In this program, REU participants learn basic approaches to network SNA and then employ these skills in a range of sponsoring NIH- and NSF-funded research projects that focus on minority health and health disparities. Network training takes place in a 2-week intensive network science practicum, followed by 8 weeks of participation in a REACH/MHDI-affiliated research project. These projects are united by a collective focus on fundamental questions related both to minority health and to broadening participation in minority health, and are currently funded by a range of federal and state sources.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.