Building an Inter-Disciplinary Network on Culture and HIV Risk Perception

描述(由申请人提供)：这项建议是一项为期两年的研究，旨在建立一个跨学科网络，研究文化对风险感知和行为的作用--特别是健康风险感知、社会网络和文化之间的关系。个体通过认知和情绪过程感知健康风险，但个体在风险认知上的差异受到社会经验和文化参照系的影响。例如，亚人群对艾滋病毒风险的医学知识水平不同，一些群体可能支持关于艾滋病毒的来源、性质和风险的俗套理论。此外，个人可能会受到其社交网络中其他人的经历的严重影响，例如感染艾滋病毒的朋友或家人。目前，不同的研究路线讨论了个人经历、社会网络和文化过程在确定个人如何感知各种健康结果的风险以及这反过来如何影响参与危险行为的过程中所起的作用。这个项目将把人类学家、心理学家、经济学家和数学家聚集在一起，建立综合风险感知的个人、社会和文化元素的跨学科理论和方法。我们将分多个阶段建设这一协作网络。首先，我们将举行团队建设会议，介绍我们之前的研究，并确定重叠或互补的理论、方法和研究问题。我们建议的研究人员网络已经产生了大量已发表的论文和原始数据，涉及个体差异和个人经历、社会网络和文化动态在确定风险感知和风险行为(关于艾滋病毒和其他结果)中的作用。我们将重点讨论如何将文化纳入目前缺乏充分衡量文化过程的研究，以及如何将非文化因素纳入文化研究。接下来，我们将从现有研究中建立一个数据集的存储库，并重新分析这些数据，以便：1)熟悉跨学科的理论、方法和研究问题，2)为未来的研究产生新的假设。然后，我们将合作设计并进行一项小型混合方法试点研究，研究居住在贫民窟的无家可归者的艾滋病毒风险信念和行为。试点项目将通过跨学科团队对话和二次数据分析产生的见解，以及我们团队之前对洛杉矶无家可归的男性、女性和青年中的艾滋病毒风险行为、风险认知和社交网络的研究来提供信息。最后，这项研究的结果以及开发的方法和理论将传播给更广泛的学术界，项目团队将根据他们合作工作中开发的洞察力和工具制定全面的研究提案。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is for a 2-year study to build an interdisciplinary network for research on the role of culture on risk perception and behavior - in particular the relationships among perceptions of health risks, social networks, and culture. Individuals perceive health risks through cognitive and emotional processes, but individual differences in risk perception are influenced by social experiences and cultural frames of reference. For example, sub-populations have differing levels of medical knowledge about HIV risk, and some groups may espouse lay theories about the origin, nature, and risk of HIV. Furthermore, individuals can be heavily influenced by the experiences of others in their social network, such as a friend or family member contracting HIV. Currently, separate lines of research address the role of individual experiences, social networks, and cultural processes in determining how individuals perceive the risk of various health outcomes and how this in turn conditions engagement in risky behaviors. This project will bring together anthropologists, psychologists, economists, and mathematicians to build interdisciplinary theory and methods that synthesize the individual, social, and cultural elements of risk perception. We will build thi collaborative network in multiple phases. First, we will conduct team-building meetings to introduce our previous research and to identify overlapping or complementary theory, methods and research questions. Our proposed network of researchers has produced a large body of published papers and primary data concerning the role of individual differences and individual experiences, social networks, and cultural dynamics in the determination of risk perception and risk behaviors (both with respect to HIV and other outcomes). We will focus on how to incorporate culture into studies that currently lack an adequate measure of cultural process as well as how to incorporate non-cultural elements into studies of culture. Next, we will build a repository of data sets from our existing studies and re-analyze these data in order to: 1) build familiarity of theories, methods and research questions across disciplines, and 2) generate novel hypotheses for future research. Then, we will collaboratively design and conduct a small mixed-method pilot study of the HIV risk beliefs and practices of homeless people living in Skid Row. The pilot project will be informed by insights generated through cross-disciplinary team conversations and secondary data analyses as well as our team's previous research on HIV risk behaviors, risk perceptions, and social networks among homeless men, women, and youth in Los Angeles. Finally, findings from this study as well as methods and theory developed will be disseminated to the wider academic community, and the project team will develop full research proposals building on the insights and tools developed from their collaborative work.