Examining the Sources and Implications of Genetic Homophily in Social Networks

描述（由申请人提供）：尽管社交网络分析已经形成了跨多个学科的许多文献，但仍有许多社交网络的核心元素未被完全理解。社会联系形成的关键决定因素和社交网络对健康的影响是目前对社交网络的科学理解不完整的两个主要例子，需要进一步的研究关注。特别是，对于遗传因素如何与社会结构（如学校，职业，社区等）相互作用以影响社会关系的形成以及影响健康的理解非常有限。此外，目前还不清楚现有的社会政策，如在学校内跟踪学生，可能会形成和限制社会网络的形成机会，从而影响健康。该提案的总体目标是探索遗传变异，社会结构，社会关系形成和个人健康结果之间的相互作用。这项建议是 创新之处在于，我们所有的目标都将在文献中为这些问题提供一些第一批可用的证据。我们的跨学科研究团队将能够通过收集新收集的独特数据来实现这一目标，这些数据包含最近才在国家青少年健康纵向研究（Add Health）和威斯康星州纵向研究（WLS）中提供的几个关键成分：社交网络关系，健康信息，遗传信息和高度地理聚集的样本。使用多个互补数据集还可以将核心重点放在复制研究结果和扩展符合每个数据集独特结构的经验方法上。利用这些数据，我们将通过追求以下目标来解决目前研究知识基础中的空白：（1）增加对社交网络内遗传同质性水平的理解，并了解其来源;（2）增加对学校政策和遗传变异在决定健康行为方面的相互作用的理解。我们的第一个目标将记录遗传同质性的水平在青少年友谊网络从两个数据集收集了近40年，但也将测试特定的假设，遗传同质性的潜在来源。我们的第一个目标将集中于从行为同质性中分离遗传同质性，并将遗传相似的社会关系偏好的影响与社会结构（即学校）的影响分开，这些社会结构塑造并限制了形成社会关系的机会。总之，这些目标将为社交网络、社会结构和政策、遗传学和健康之间的相互作用提供新的证据。我们的建议有可能有助于社交网络的理论文献，以及经验文献的后果社交网络。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although social network analysis has shaped many literatures across several disciplines, there remain many core elements of social networks that are incompletely understood. The critical determinants of social tie formation and the effects of social networks on health are two primary examples of current incomplete scientific understanding of social networks in need of further research attention. In particular, there is ver limited understanding of how genetic factors may interact with social structures, such as schools, occupations, neighborhoods, etc. to both influence social tie formation as well as impact health. In addition, it is unclear how existing social policies, such as the tracking of students within schools, may shape and constrain social network formation opportunities, and thus impact health. The overall aim of this proposal is to explore the interplay between genetic variation, social structure, social tie formation, and individual health outcomes. This proposal is innovative in that all our aims will provide some of the first available evidence of these question in the literature. Our interdisciplinary research team will be able to accomplish this by leveragin newly collected and unique data that contain several key ingredients only recently made available in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS): information on social network ties, health information, genetic information, and highly geographically clustered samples. The use of multiple complementary datasets also allows a core focus on replicating findings and extending empirical approaches consistent with the unique structure of each dataset. Using these data, we will address current gaps in the research knowledge base by pursuing the following aims: (1) Increase understanding of the level of genetic homophily within social networks and understand its sources and (2) Increase understanding of the interplay between school policies and genetic variation in determining health behaviors. Our first aim will both document the level of genetic homophily in adolescent friendship networks from two datasets collected nearly 40 years apart but will also test specific hypotheses regarding the potential sources of genetic homophily. Our first aim will focus on separating genetic homophily from behavioral homophily and separating the influences of preferences for social ties who are genetically similar with the influence of social structures (i.e. schools) that shape and constrain the opportunities to form social ties. Together, these aims will provide new evidence of the interplay between social networks, social structure and policies, genetics, and health. Our proposal has the potential to contribute to the theoretical literature on social networks as well as the empirical literature on consequences of social networks.