Measuring Social Connection and Children's Well-Being using Multiple Data Sources

描述（由申请人提供）：该研究将通过对南非农村地区相同人口的密集民族志数据和纵向人口统计数据的协调分析，开发改进的社会联系措施。在各种情况下进行的大量研究表明，社会联系是福祉的一个重要决定因素，其衡量指标包括教育、营养状况、就业前景、获得医疗保健的机会以及对老年人和体弱者的支持。在人口和公共卫生研究中，最常见的社会联系衡量标准是同居，这有严重的局限性。如果不能全面关注社会关系，就会限制我们理解健康和幸福的社会背景。为了纠正这一失败，我们将使用现有的民族志数据和来自南非农村的纵向人口统计数据来开发可用于社会调查的社会联系的新措施。人种学数据来自我们在2002年至2004年期间进行的儿童福利和社会联系项目（CWSC）中对儿童支持网络的深入实地调查。定量数据是阿金库尔健康和人口监测系统（AHDSS）对一个7万人的分区人口进行的14轮人口普查的结果。该项目有三个具体和协调的目标。首先，我们通过使用来自CWSC的所有可用数据来确定有意义和有效的社会联系指标。通过识别直接影响儿童福祉的资源转移和行为实例，分析这些实例以确定相关的社会关系、个人、家庭和社区特征以及所涉及的行动者和资源的空间分布，并对编码实例进行分类，通过选择最频繁和最重要的模式来减少列表。其次，我们通过将新的数据文件链接到AHDSS数据库，添加现有文件之间的链接以及导出新的变量来操纵AHDSS中的数据，从而确定在目标1中确定的社会联系指标可以测量哪些，哪些不能测量。第三，我们通过比较模型的解释力来评估目标2中添加到AHDSS数据库中的社会联系新指标的价值，这些模型在预测儿童福利措施（如教育和死亡率）时包含和不包含这些变量。这项研究将增加AHDSS的效用，并可能增加其他人口普查和调查在解释儿童福祉结果方面的效用。通过整合民族志、空间和纵向人口数据，它将有助于发展研究人口和公共卫生的跨学科方法。公共卫生相关性：资金、食物、保护、机会、关怀和情感支持等直接在人与人之间流动的资源对于没有强大市场或政府机构的贫穷国家儿童的福祉至关重要。要理解为什么有些人能茁壮成长，而另一些人却不能，并有效地指导政策干预，我们必须了解围绕和支持他们的社会联系网络。该项目将通过综合南非贫穷农村地区同一人口的人种学数据和纵向人口统计数据，改进社会联系的衡量标准。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The research will develop improved measures of social connection through coordinated analyses of intensive ethnographic data and a longitudinal demographic data about the same population in a rural area of South Africa. A great volume of research conducted in various contexts demonstrates that social connection is an important determinant of well-being measured by outcomes such as education, nutritional status, employment prospects, access to health care, and support of the aged and infirm. The most common measure of social connection in population and public health research is co-residence, which has critical limitations. Failure to attend to the full range of social relationships limits our ability to understand the social context of health and well-being. To redress this failure, we will use existing ethnographic data and longitudinal demographic data from rural South Africa to develop new measures of social connection that can be used in social surveys. The ethnographic data is from an intensive fieldwork investigation of children's networks of support in the Children's Well Being and Social Connection project (CWSC) which we conducted between 2002 and 2004. The quantitative data is the result of fourteen rounds of a population-wide census in a sub-district population of 70,000 people conducted by the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (AHDSS). The project has three specific and coordinated aims. First, we identify meaningful and efficient indicators of social connection by using all the available data from the CWSC. This is done by identifying instances of resource transfer and behavior that directly impact children's well-being, analyzing these instances to determine the relevant social relationships, individual, household and community characteristics, and spatial distribution of the actors and resources involved, and classifying the coded instances and reduce the list by selecting the most frequent and important patterns. Second, we determine which indicators of social connection identified in Aim 1 can, and which cannot, be measured by manipulating the data from the AHDSS by linking new data files to the AHDSS database, adding links between existing files, and deriving new variables. Third, we assess the value of the new indicators of social connection added to the AHDSS database in Aim 2 by comparing the explanatory power of models that do and do not include these variables in predicting measures of child well-being such as education and mortality. This research will increase the utility of the AHDSS, and potentially, of other censuses and surveys, in explaining child well-being outcomes. By integrating ethnographic, spatial, and longitudinal population data it will contribute to the development of interdisciplinary methods for studying population and public health. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Resources, such as money, food, protection, opportunities, care, and emotional support that flow directly from person to person are vital for the well-being of children in poor countries that do not have strong market or government institutions. To understand why some people thrive and others do not, and to direct policy interventions effectively, we must understand the web of social connections that surrounds and supports them. This project will produce improved measures of social connection by integrating ethnographic data and longitudinal demographic data about the same population in a poor, rural area of South Africa.