Kenneth Ferraro Markus Schafer Purdue University
The research studies social relations among independent living residents in a retirement community to determine the dynamics that foster systems of stratification within an institutional context. The study of social relations and social stratified is central to sociological investigations. It is a well researched finding that hierarchy of one kind or another is manifested in all known social groups, and this stratification has implications for a wide-ranging set of outcomes from the access and diffusion of information to gradients in health and well-being. Housing facilities for older adults is an environment in which health likely becomes a more salient feature in differentiating people. This dissertation uses a social networks approach to test whether health emerges as a differentiating factor for evaluation and hierarchy within an institutional setting, in particular, how is status constructed and what are the contextual effects. Social network analysis involves studying the structure of social relationships, for example who is connected via ties, who reciprocates friendship, and who bridges disconnected clusters. Data come from interviews of all independent living residents in a retirement community (n = ~ 160). The interviews include time estimates of social interaction, perceptions about interactions (obligatory vs. enjoyable), evaluations of liking others, and health information.
Broader Impacts
Beyond testing whether health influences levels of cohesion, friendship choice and reciprocation, and the evaluation of social ties, this project has potential for directly improving community life for people living in institutions. If health divides people in retirement communities, then steps can be taken to structure an institution so that it maximizes people?s social connectedness (e.g., the distribution of health within a geographical cluster as a consideration). In another setting, other valued traits may similarly emerge as key differentiators, depending upon the context. Therefore, better understanding of how endogenous characteristics influence important social concerns such as alienation, marginalization, or cohesion in group settings will be potentially fruitful and applicable in other real-world contexts.
The NSF Award 1003772 eventuated in three empirical studies which investigated the nature of health-related inequality among a network of older adults in a retirement community. Health, as a valued trait among older individuals, was expected to form an important basis of social stratification. The first empirical study examined whether healthier people report more social interaction with their peers and whether they receive more social ties from others in the community. The results indicate some support for the hypothesis that healthier people are more popular, though these findings are contingent upon what type of social relation is being considered. For confidant relations, healthier people report the fewest number of ties. The second empirical study built on the finding that people receiving reports of social ties tend to have better health than those who report the ties. Incorporating data about physical proximity, this study revealed that the tendency to report interactions with people who live nearby enhances the patterns of health inequality within reported social ties. The final study examined whether higher-order properties of a network, such as clustering, explain people’s apparent preference for interacting with healthier people. The findings reveal that clustering does account for why healthier people receive more ties, but it does not reduce the tendency for the healthiest people to disproportionately associate with other healthier people. Less healthy people tend also to be less discriminating in who they select as a social tie. Together, the studies underscore that continuing care retirement communities and other older-age living facilities should be mindful of how residents’ heath problems can limit their social integration
