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多个学科的许多文献，但仍有许多社交网络的核心元素尚未完全理解。社会纽带形成的关键决定因素和社会网络对健康的影响是目前对社会网络的不完全科学理解的两个主要例子，需要进一步研究。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，从而影响社会关系的形成以及影响健康，人们的理解非常有限。此外，尚不清楚现有的社会政策，如在学校内跟踪学生，可能如何塑造和限制社交网络的形成机会，从而影响健康。这项建议的总体目标是探索遗传变异、社会结构、社会纽带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，我们的所有目标都将在文献中提供这些问题的一些首批可用证据。我们的跨学科研究团队将能够通过利用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：关于社交网络关系的信息、健康信息、遗传信息和高度地理聚类的样本。多个互补数据集的使用还使核心重点放在复制调查结果和推广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库中的空白：(1)增加对社会网络中遗传同源性水平的理解，并了解其来源；(2)在确定健康行为方面，增加对学校政策和遗传变异之间的相互作用的理解。我们的第一个目标是从两个相隔近40年的数据集中记录青少年友谊网络中的基因同质性水平，但也将测试关于基因同质性的潜在来源的具体假设。我们的第一个目标将专注于分离基因同质性和行为同质性，并分离对社会联系的偏好的影响，这些社会联系在基因上与塑造和限制形成社会联系的机会的社会结构(即学校)的影响相似。总而言之，这些目标将为社会网络、社会结构和政策、遗传和健康之间的相互作用提供新的证据。我们的建议有可能对关于社会网络的理论文献以及关于社会网络后果的经验文献做出贡献。 公共卫生相关性：这项建议包括一系列项目，这些项目使用互补的数据集和多种方法，利用社会网络分析来检查遗传学、社会结构和健康之间的相互作用。该项目将首先探索水平 对美国青少年友谊网络中的遗传同质性进行两个时间段的研究，然后测试旨在了解遗传同质性来源的特定假设，重点是分离遗传和行为同质性，并评估学校在确定遗传同质性方面的相关性。然后，该项目将探索学校政策和遗传因素在通过社交网络塑造健康方面的相互作用。

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. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This proposal includes a series of projects that use complementary datasets and multiple methods to examine the interplay between genetics, social structure and health using social network analysis. The project will first explore the level of genetic homophily in adolescent friendship networks in two time periods in the US and then test specific hypotheses aimed at understanding the sources of the genetic homophily, with key foci on separating genetic and behavioral homophily and assessing the relevance of schools in determining genetic homophily. The project will then explore the interplay of school polices and genetic in shaping health through social networks.