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Relationships and the pattern of relationships have a large and varied influence on both individual and group action. The fundamental distinction of social network analysis research is that relationships are of paramount importance in explaining behavior. Because of this, social network analysis offers many exciting tools and techniques for research and practice in a wide variety of medical and public health situations including organizational improvements, understanding risk behaviors, coordinating coalitions, and the delivery of health care services. This book provides an introduction to the major theories, methods, models, and findings of social network analysis research and application. In three sections, it presents a comprehensive overview of the topic; first in a survey of its historical and theoretical foundations, then in practical descriptions of the variety of methods currently in use, and finally in a discussion of its specific applications for behavior change in a public health context. Throughout, the text has been kept clear, concise, and comprehensible, with short mathematical formulas for some key indicators or concepts. Researchers and students alike will find it an invaluable resource for understanding and implementing social network analysis in their own practice.
While insights sometimes are slow in coming, they often seem obvious when they finally arrive. This handbook is an outcome of the insight that the topics of social support and the family are very closely linked. Obvious as this might seem, the fact remains that the literatures dealing with social support and the family have been deceptively separate and distinct. For example, work on social support began in the 1970s with the accumulation of evidence that social ties and social integration play important roles in health and personal adjustment. Even though family members are often the key social supporters of individuals, relatively little re search of social support was targeted on family interactions as a path to specifying supporter processes. It is now recognized that one of the most important features of the family is its role in providing the individual with a source of support and acceptance. Fortunately, in recen t years, the distinctness and separateness of the fields of social support and the family have blurred. This handbook provides the first collation and integration of social support and family research. This integration calls for specifying processes (such as the cognitions associated with poor support availability and unrewarding faIllily constellations) and factors (such as cultural differences in family life and support provision) that are pertinent to integration.
Most studies of Black families have had a `problem focus', offering a narrow view of important issues such as out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families and childhood poverty. Family Life in Black America moves away from this negative perspective and instead deals with a wide range of issues including sexuality, procreation, infancy, adulthood, adolescence, cohabitation, parenting, grandparenting and ageing. A fresh aspect of this book is the amount of diversity it reveals within black families and the forces that shape, limit and enhance them.
African American women have commonly been portrayed as "pillars" of their communities—resilient mothers, sisters, wives, and grandmothers who remain steadfast in the face of all adversities. While these portrayals imply that African American women have few psychological problems, the scientific literature and demographic data present a different picture. They reveal that African American women are at increased risk for psychological distress because of factors that disproportionately affect them, including lower incomes, greater poverty and unemployment, unmarried motherhood, racism, and poor physical health. Yet at the same time, rates of mental illness are low. This invaluable book is the first comprehensive examination of the contradictions between the strengths and vulnerabilities of this population. Using the contexts of race, gender, and social class, In and Out of Our Right Minds challenges the traditional notions of mental health and mental illness as they apply to African American women.