Exploring the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity, intergroup relations and stress

人口统计趋势表明，社会变得更加种族多样化，这一趋势的影响已经得到了很多学术关注，特别是关注经济表现和邻里信任等关键的社会变量。今天日益增长的多样性给人们带来了挑战，因为人们正在接触新的文化、规范和价值观，或者避免这样的接触。一些人认为群体竞争和冲突是不可避免的，现有的研究已经调查了对主观感知（如信任）的影响。然而，我们将探索生活在不同地区是否会对人们的生物标志物（捕捉炎症和慢性压力水平）产生可检测的影响。该项目将分析自我报告的数据以及英国两项主要调查中包含的生物血液数据，这两项调查长期跟踪个人——了解社会和国家儿童发展研究——并使用复杂的统计方法（即纵向、多层次和结构方程建模技术）。研究结果将有助于识别多样性的风险因素和积极方面，为领导人和决策者规划应对广泛的多样性相关挑战提供信息。我们将采用纵向、协作、跨学科和以政策为重点的方法来探讨这些问题，以调查种族多样性如何影响生物应激反应，以及接触和威胁的积极和消极经历如何影响关系。我们的研究团队包括来自伯明翰大学、牛津大学、约克大学、曼彻斯特大学以及社区和地方政府部门的调查人员和顾问，他们在解决以下问题方面拥有丰富的经验：当地的种族多样性是否与较高或较低的压力水平有关？我们感兴趣的是探索地区种族多样性和应激反应之间的联系，以及这些模式是否因种族而异。一些人认为，多样性导致竞争、威胁和更差的群体间关系；我们将分析生物对这些环境的应激反应。我们还将探讨社区的其他特征对压力的影响，包括社会剥夺、社会不平等等。多样性的负面关联（如威胁和犯罪）和正面关联（如群体间接触）起什么作用？我们将探讨影响压力的消极因素（如歧视和犯罪）是否会被积极因素（如接触、信任和安全）所缓解。我们将探讨威胁和群体间接触对应激反应的影响，重点是信任、犯罪、安全、歧视和社会网络构成。我们将明确地关注生物应激结果的途径。我们衡量种族多样性的方式对研究结果有影响吗？我们将结合最新的研究进展，证明不同的多样性措施产生不同的理论预测和实证结果。我们将在对压力标记物的分析中测试这些发现。4. 解决多样性、威胁和接触的影响的最佳方式是什么？它们与社会剥夺和贫困等其他因素的关系是什么？我们将利用我们的调查结果和咨询小组的反馈来建立一个证据基础，以反映和告知决策者和政府官员如何利用这些多样性和与剥夺有关的问题。如果邻里剥夺比多样性的负面影响更大，可以提出建议，改善这些地区的社会经济状况。我们将通过各种传播和影响活动向广大受众传播项目成果，包括：科学出版物、政策简报、新闻稿、传播活动和网页内容。

Demographic trends reveal that societies have become more ethnically diverse, and the implications of this have received much scholarly attention - focusing particularly on critical societal variables such as economic performance and neighbourhood trust. Today's increasing diversity poses challenges as people are having contact with new cultures, norms, and values, or avoiding such encounters. Some argue that group competition and conflict is inevitable, and existing research has investigated the effects on subjective perceptions (e.g. trust). However, we will explore whether living in diverse areas has detectable effects on people's biomarkers capturing levels of inflammation and chronic stress. The project will analyse the self-reported data together with the biological blood data contained in two major British surveys that have tracked individuals over time - Understanding Society and the National Child Development Study - and use sophisticated statistical methods (i.e., longitudinal, multilevel and structural equation modelling techniques). The findings will help identify risk factors as well as positive aspects of diversity that will inform leaders and policy makers in planning responses to the broad range of diversity-related challenges.We will explore these issues using a longitudinal, collaborative, interdisciplinary and policy-focused approach to investigate how ethnic diversity influences biological stress responses, and how positive and negative experiences of contact and threat influence the relationship. Our research team, which includes investigators and advisors from the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, University of York, University of Manchester, and Department for Communities and Local Government, has extensive experience to address the following questions:1. Is the ethnic diversity of local areas associated with higher or lower levels of stress?We are interested in exploring the link between the ethnic diversity of areas and stress responses and whether these patterns vary by ethnicity. Some argue that diversity leads to competition, threat and poorer intergroup relations; and we will analyse biological stress responses to these circumstances. We will also explore the effect that other features of neighbourhoods have on stress, including social deprivation, social inequality, etc. 2. What role do negative (e.g. threat and crime) and positive (e.g. intergroup contact) correlates of diversity play?We will explore if negative factors that affect stress (e.g., discrimination and crime) are mitigated by positive factors (e.g., contact, trust, and safety). We will explore the impact of threat and intergroup contact on stress responses, focusing on trust, crime, safety, discrimination and social network composition. We will explicitly focus on the pathways of biological stress outcomes.3. Does the way we measure ethnic diversity have an impact on the findings?We will incorporate the latest research developments that demonstrate that different measures of diversity yield different theoretical predictions and empirical results. We will test these findings in our analyses of stress markers. 4. What is the best way to address the effects of diversity, threat and contact, and what is their relationship to other factors such as social deprivation and poverty? We will use our findings and feedback from our advisory group to build an evidence base to reflect and inform how these diversity and deprivation-related issues could be utilised by policy makers and government officials. If neighbourhood deprivation has more negative effects than diversity, recommendations can be made to improve socioeconomic circumstances in those areas. We will disseminate the project outputs to a wide audience using diverse dissemination and impact activities, including: scientific publications, policy briefings, press releases, dissemination events and webpage content.