Research

Areas and Opportunities

Although Sociology faculty’s research covers a wide variety of topics, the department has particular strengths in the following five areas:

Trans-Border and Immigration:

Sociology faculty in this area study trans-border cultures and processes, with a particular interest on the consequences of increasing interactions between Latin America and the U.S., and socio-political and economic forces that are forging the identity of San Diego as a border city. (Professors: Choi, Esbenshade, Marcelli, Ojeda, and Zhang)

Minority Health and Healthcare:

Sociology faculty in this area focus on how diseases, risk factors, and healthcare resources are distributed unevenly across different racial and ethnic minority groups.  Special methodological strengths have been developed in gaining access and measuring healthcare issues among minority and other hard-to-reach population segments. (Professors: Finch, Kolody, Marcelli, and Ojeda)

Social Inequality:

Sociology faculty in this area examine how social resources (e.g., wealth, political power, and economic opportunities)  are distributed in various social groups and in different social settings, with an emphasis on how inequality manifests itself across major social strata such as gender, race, class, and nationality. (Professors: Esbenshade, Greene, Kolody, and Sargent)

Culture and Social Movements:

Faculty in this field examine the forces and emerging trends in popular cultures (such as music and sports) and social movements (such as protests and labor practices).  The Department publishes Mobilization: An International Quarterly, a top-ten sociology journals.  It is the premier journal of research in social movements and protest. (Professors: Buck, Esbenshade, Johnston, and Roberts.)

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control:

Faculty in this area study pursue a wide range of research topics, including trans-generational delinquency, deviance in military academies, police misconduct, transnational organized crime, and community corrections.  (Professors: Liu, McCall, Pershing, and Zhang)

Current Faculty Research Projects

Brian Finch

Project title: Birth Outcomes and Health Trajectories
Project description: This project investigates the potential modifiability of birth outcome trajectories and their effect on early child health and development.  In particular, we estimate how parents of varying socio-economic status might be able to stave off the deleterious effects of poor birth outcomes.
Funding agency:  Health Resources and Services Administration/Maternal and Child Health Bureau

Project title:  Neighborhood, Health Behaviors, Allostatic Load and Health
Project description:  This project looks at the effect of neighborhood characteristics on health behaviors, allostatic load, and health outcomes with a particular emphasis on the ways in which neighborhoods contribute to population health disparities between race/ethnic groups and social classes.
Funding agency:  National Institutes of Health

Project title:  Causal Models of Segregation and Health
Project description:  This project investigates the effect of residential segregation over the life-course on the health and mortality of Black and White adults using a sophisticated panel data set, merged with census data at the census-tract and county levels.  This project will estimate unbiased effects of segregation and neighborhood poverty to determine how much any potential observed effects contribute to known racial disparities in health and mortality.
Funding agency:  National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Project title:  Evaluation of Statistical Methods for Data Collection and Analysis on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and other Hard-to-Reach Populations
Project description:  This project explores various design and analytical approaches for improving estimates of health disparities in small race/ethnic groups. 
Funding agency:  Office of Minority Health, Department of Health and Human Services

Project title:  Social Demography of Health Disparities
Project description:  This project focuses on inter-generational processes that lead to health disparities in order to look at specific period and cohort characteristics that are responsible for changes in health, across birth cohorts.  Using multiple data sources and cutting-edge statistical methodologies, we will look at the factors related to the reproduction of health disparities across generations.

Hank Johnston

Currently researching the concept of "deep cutlural text'" as the basis of intractable conflict between ethnic groups by comparing  Chechens and Russians, and Israelis and Paseltinians. He is also editing a collection of research on culture and social movements, entitled Culture, Protest, and Social Movements: Narratives, Framing, and Cultural Texts, to be published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing. Finally, he is currently researching a book proposal for Polity Press series on Political Sociology, entitled, The State and Social Protest.

Dr. Johnston is the executive editor and publisher of Mobilization: An International Journal, published at the Sociology Department of San Diego State University.

Ruth Liu

Currently working on projects that examine 1) the relationships between risk factors and delinquency among Chinese adolescents, 2) exposure to adverse life circumstances and its repercussions on psychological well-being, and 3) adolescent school experiences and adult social involvement.

Enrico Marcelli

Project title: Harvard-UMASS Boston Metro Immigrant Health & Legal Status Survey (BM-IHLSS) (Enrico Marcelli, PI; Gary Bennett and Howard Ko, Co-PIs)
Project description: The Harvard-UMASS BM-IHLSS has several goals. The first is to collect subjective (e.g., self-reported) data from Brazilian and Dominican immigrants concerning the households and neighborhoods in which they reside; and their migration experience, socioeconomic status, social capital, health, political identity, and children’s well-being. A second goal is to collect objectively measured biological (e.g., blood droplets, saliva) and physiological (e.g., height, weight, blood pressure) health data that will permit researchers to asses nicotine exposure and various biomarkers for diabetes and stress. The third goal is to analyze these biodemographic data to investigate biological pathways through which different domains of life (e.g., childhood experience, legal status, family, finances, friendship networks, hobbies, household, neighborhood, work) affect health among two relatively vulnerable immigrant populations in the United States.
Funding agency: National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Project title: Psychological Distress and Legal Status among Mexican Migrants Residing in the United States (with Louisa Holmes)
Project description: Despite concerns about unauthorized migrants’ use of public resources in the United States, little is known about their health care seeking behavior or their health outcomes. We employ the 2001 Los Angeles County Mexican Immigrant Legal Status Survey and 1998-2005 National Health Interview Survey data to estimate the relative health of unauthorized Mexican migrants on 15 metrics. Contrary the so-called Latino health paradox  and the SES-health disparities framework; although foreign-born Mexicans are estimated to have been equally or more healthy on seven health metrics (blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cancer, lower respiratory disease, hepatitis, joint and other chronic pain, annual bed days), they were less healthy on eight (self-rated health, serious psychological distress, obesity, diabetes, live condition, kidney problems, tuberculosis, activities of daily living). On one of the latter – serious psychological distress – unauthorized Mexican migrants were less healthy than their legal compatriots. Controlling for a host of demographic factors, health behaviors, co-morbidities, employment status, and access to health insurance and medical care – we estimate that unauthorized legal status conferred an independent psychological penalty on Mexican migrants.

Project title: Family Socioeconomic Status, Metropolitan Income Inequality, and Height Attainment in the United States  (with Christopher Jencks and Ichiro Kawachi)
Project description: More than two decades have passed since laboratory research first linked height with various stressful environments and associated neuroendocrine functioning, and since income inequality was hypothesized as one possible explanation for the declining height of U.S. residents relative to some European populations. We employ the 1959-2002 National Health Examination Survey (NHES)/National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and 1990 Summary Tape File 3 (STF3), data to estimate the influence of socioeconomic status and income inequality on height attainment in the United States. Controlling for diet, illness, access to medical care, and parental height – we find that parents’ income increased, and metropolitan-level income inequality decreased, height attainment among infants, children, and adolescents. We conclude by discussing the biological plausibility of such effects in a developed nation where the conventional wisdom is that most residents have reached their genetic height potential, and implications for public policy in light of other evidence suggesting height is positively associated with adult health, earnings, and overall well-being.

Project title: An Estimate of the Effects of Income Inequality, Racial Segregation, and Food Prices on Adult Obesity in the United States (with David Cutler and Ichiro Kawachi)
Project description: We link individual-level Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and various area-level data to estimate whether income inequality, residential segregation, and food prices contributed to the rising prevalence of overweight and obesity among U.S. adults during the past decade. Metropolitan-level income, income inequality, and the relative price of fast-food and grocery store prices are estimated to have decreased the probability of having been overweight or obese. Ethno-racial segregation is estimated to have had the opposite effect, and these area-based socioeconomic factors also contributed to the rise in overweight and obesity indirectly through their impact on diet and exercise behaviors. Implications for the social status comparison and social stress hypotheses are discussed in the conclusion.

Project title: The X-Relation: Life Cycle Happiness among Men and Women in the United States (with Richard Easterlin)
Project description: Employing 1972-1994 General Social Survey data we find that women start adult life happier than men, but the difference narrows with age as the happiness of women declines and that of men rises. After midlife, the differential reverses, with men the happier of the two. This reversal is largely due to a corresponding shift in the relative satisfaction of women and men with both family life and finances. Beyond midlife the gender difference in health satisfaction also contributes to the greater happiness of men. It is likely that an important factor underlying the life cycle patterns in gender differences in family life and financial satisfaction, and hence in happiness, is the gender difference in the proportion with partners at each age. Early in adult life women are more likely to be in unions than men, and hence more satisfied with their family life and finances; in late life, the gender differential in partnership status shifts to the benefit of men.

Jana Pershing

Currently researching the status of women and other marginalized populations at the United States Naval Academy. Projects include examining the consequences of hazing and sexual harassment for women and men as well as gender disparities in enforcing the Naval Academy’s systems of self-regulation over a ten-year period. Another research project involves a meta-analysis of research on gender integration at all U.S. Department of Defense Service Academies, including West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy. Dr. Pershing’s secondary area of research focuses on pedagogical issues. She is currently conducting a content analysis of newspaper coverage of crime as it pertains to undergraduate students’ misconceptions about violence and murder.

Paul Sargent

(1) An analysis of interviews with deans, provosts, and college presidents regarding the status of Sociology in the Academy has entered the final stages and I am writing the paper. This will appear in a special spring edition of The American Sociologist.

(2) I am putting the final touches on my article derived from interviews with men who teach in the earliest grades and in pre-schools. The recent spate of recommendations for alleviating "boys' problems" by asking men to act as "male role models" has had a negative impact on the men's lives.

(3) Kenneth Creech and I are analyzing episodes of CSI in terms of the use of gender as an ordering device. Specifically, we are looking for indications of the construction of the "Ideal Type Victim".

Sheldon Zhang

Project title: The Utility of the COMPAS in Assessing Needs and Predicting Recidivism
Project description: working with Professor David Farabee of UCLA to assess the validity and reliability of a risk and needs instrument currently adopted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  The instrument is intended to provide risk profiles and identify service needs for the state prison inmates who are about to be released in to the community.
Funding agency: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Project title: An Evaluation of Four California Parole Programs
Project description: working with Professor Bob Roberts of CSU San Marcos and David Farabee of UCLA to assess the treatment effect of four correctional programs that assist California parolees to reintegrate into the community.
Funding agency:  California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Project title: Sex Trafficking in a Border Community: Field Study of Sex Trafficking in Tijuana, Mexico
Project description: working with Professor Jeffrey McIllwain of SDSU to explore the social organizations and business operations of people involved the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico.
Funding agency: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.