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同一人口的密集人种学数据和纵向人口统计数据的协调分析，制定更好的社会联系措施。在各种情况下进行的大量研究表明，社会联系是衡量福祉的一个重要决定因素，衡量福祉的标准是教育、营养状况、就业前景、获得保健的机会以及对老年人和体弱者的支助。在人口和公共卫生研究中，衡量社会联系的最常见方法是共同居住，但这种方法有严重的局限性。不注意到所有的社会关系限制了我们理解健康和福祉的社会背景的能力。为了弥补这一缺陷，我们将利用现有的人种学数据和南非农村的纵向人口统计数据，制定可用于社会调查的社会联系的新措施。民族志的数据是从一个密集的实地调查的儿童的支持网络中的儿童的福祉和社会联系项目（CWSC），我们在2002年和2004年之间进行。定量数据是阿金库尔卫生和人口监测系统在一个分区70 000人中进行的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CWSC的所有可用数据来确定有意义和有效的社会联系指标。这是通过确定直接影响儿童福祉的资源转移和行为的实例，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，以及所涉及的行为者和资源的空间分布，并对编码实例进行分类，并通过选择最常见和最重要的模式来减少列表。第二，我们确定哪些指标的社会联系中确定的目标1可以，哪些不能，通过操纵数据从AHDSS连接到AHDSS数据库的新数据文件，添加现有文件之间的链接，并推导出新的变量。第三，我们通过比较模型的解释力来评估AHDSS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祉（如教育和死亡率）方面包括和不包括这些变量。这项研究将提高AHDSS的效用，并可能提高其他人口普查和调查在解释儿童福祉结果方面的效用。通过整合人种学、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、照顾和情感支持等资源直接从一个人流向另一个人，对于缺乏强大市场或政府机构的贫穷国家儿童的福祉至关重要。为了理解为什么有些人会成功，而有些人却没有，为了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关系网。该项目将通过综合关于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.