Mission Statement
The study of health, population and life course in the graduate program in Sociology gives students the theoretical and methodological tools to elucidate the links between individual and environmental factors. Through the training curriculum and direct experience working with faculty on major research projects, students in the program develop an nderstanding of the many ways in which macro-level structural and temporal processes, and cultural belief systems affect individual-level behavioral and psychological outcomes. This area combines two traditional fields of strength at Rutgers: health research and life course studies, with a new emphasis on population studies. Medical sociology has been a traditional area of strength at Rutgers University since the late 1970s when David Mechanic established the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. In addition to a strong graduate program, the area also incorporates an NIMH funded postdoctoral program in mental health research. The life course area also has a long tradition, originating at Rutgers during the 1960s. One of the major paradigms in this area, the age stratification model, was developed at Rutgers by Matilda White Riley, Anne Foner, and others. A number of currently funded longitudinal research projects focus on various stages of the life course. Debby Carr and Julie Phillips are demographers, creating expertise in population studies that complements the traditional strengths in medical sociology and the life course. The last external review of the Department of Sociology noted that the Rutgers program is possibly the strongest program in health and aging in the country. A recent history of medical sociology also notes that the Rutgers program has been the most successful medical sociology program in the country.
Affiliated Faculty
Deborah Carr
Steve Hansell
Allan Horwitz
Ellen Idler
Catherine Lee
David Mechanic
Julie Phillips
Sarah Rosenfield
Kristen W. Springer
Helene White
Ben Zablocki
Graduate Courses Taught in the Core Area
Sociology of Health and Illness
Sociology of Mental Health
Sociology of the Life Course
Sociology of Age
Social Structure and Personality
Sociology and the Life Course
Social Psychology
Social Demography
Core Reading List for Health, Population and Aging
Berkman, Lisa F. and S. Leonard Syme. 1979. “Social Networks, Host Resistance, and Mortality: A Nine-Year Follow-Up Study of Alameda County Residents.” American Journal of Epidemiology 109:186-204.
Brown, George and Terrill Harris. 1978. The Social Origins of Depression. London: Tavistock.
Caldwell, John C. 1976. Theory of Fertility Decline. New York: Academic Press.
Christakis, Nicholas. 1999. Death Foretold: Prognosis and Prophecy in Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1951 (1897). Suicide. New York: Free Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1974. Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Evans, Robert G., Morris L. Barer, Theodore R. Marmor. 1994. Why are Some People Healthy and Others Not? New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Fadiman, Anne. 1997. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Fox, Renee. 1979. Essays in Medical Sociology. New York: John Wiley.
Freidson, Eliot. 1975. Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge. New York: Dodd, Mead.
Fuchs, Victor. 1979/1998. Who Shall Live? New York: World Scientific Publishing Company.
Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums. Chicago: Aldine.
Hollingshead, August and Frederick Redlich. 1958. Social Class and Mental Illness. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Horwitz, Allan V. 2002. Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Malthus, Thomas. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population Growth.
Mannheim, Karl. 1952. "The problem of generations". In K. Mannheim (ed.). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (pp. 276-322). London:Routledge & Kegan Paul. Original work published in 1928.
Merton, Robert K. 1938/1968. “Social Structure and Anomie.” Pp. 185-214 in Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Omran, A. R. (1971). "The epidemiologic transition: a theory of the epidemiology of population change." Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 29, 509-38.
Pearlin, Leonard I. 1989. “The Sociological Study of Stress.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 30:241-256.
Phelan, Jo C., Bruce Link, Ana Diez-Roux, Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce Levin. 2004. “’Fundamental Causes’ of Social Inequalities in Mortality: A Test of the Theory”. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 45:265-285
Riley, Matilda White. 1987. "On the significance of age in sociology". American Sociological Review 52: 1-14.
Ryder, Norman. 1965. "The cohort as a concept in the study of social change". American Sociological Review 30: 843-861.
Starr, Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books.
Verbrugge, Lois. 1984. “Longer Life but Worsening Health? Trends in Health and Mortality of Middle-Aged and Older Persons.” Milbank Memorial Fund Health and Society 62:475-519.
Wakefield, Jerome C. 1992.“The Concept of Mental Disorder: On the Boundary between Biological Facts and Social Values.” American Psychologist 47:373-88.
Recent PhDs in Health, Population and the Life Course
John Lang, 2007. "Acceptable Trust? The Public Perception of Organizations Involved in Genetically Modified Food."
Julie McLaughlin. 2004. "It's in the Timing: The Relationship Between the Temporal Composition of Family Transitions and Psychological Well-Being."
Marsha Rosenthal. 2004. "Older Patients' Trust and Disrupted Trust in Doctors and Health Plans: Determinants and Implications.”
Elaine Replogle. 2004. "Intergenerational Conflict, Identity and Mental Health Among Second Generation South Asian Americans."
Tami Videon. 2002. "Parental Marital Dissolution, Parent-Child Interactions, and Adolescent Well-Being."
Ping-Hsin Chen. 2001. "The Role of Alcohol Use in Intimate Partner Violence among Men and Women."
Donna McAlpine. 2001. "Trust in Primary Care Physicians: Does Managed Care Matter?"
Amy Tiedemann. 2001. "Poverty, Culture and Parent: Head Start Mothers' Parental Identities."
Beth Ellyn O'Mullan. 1998. "The Social Mapping of the Body: Identity Issues in Organ Transplantation."
Catherine Tesar. 1996. "Peer Education Intervention and Change in Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior Regarding HIV/AIDS in College Students."
Lorraine Davies. 1994. "The Relationship between Gender and Mental Health: Comparing Never Married and Married Persons."
Sandra Howell-White. 1994. "Birth Alternatives: Definitions of Childbirth and Professional Jurisdiction."
Linda Podhurst. 1993. "Scientism in Non-Medical Healing Systems."
Robert Weyer. 1993. "A Sociological Analysis of Changing Trends in Mental Health Legislation: A Case Study of New Jersey's New Involuntary Commitment Law."
Susan Reinhard. 1991. "Living With Mental Illness: Effects of Professional Contacts and Personal Control on Caretaker Burden."
Peggy DeWolf. 1989. "An Analysis of the Roles of Introspection and Body-Awareness in the Control of Juvenile-Onset Diabetes."
Publications
Carr, Deborah, Randolph Nesse, and Camille B. Wortman (Eds.). Forthcoming. Spousal Bereavement in Late Life . New York : Springer Publishing. (Expected publication date: November 2005).
Carr, Deborah and Michael Friedman. Forthcoming. “Is Obesity Stigmatizing? Body Weight, Perceived Discrimination and Psychological Well-Being in the United States .” Journal of Health and Social Behavior (Expected publication date: September 2005).
Ha, Jung-Hwa and Deborah Carr. Forthcoming. “The Effect of Parent-Child Geographic Proximity on Widowed Parents' Psychological Adjustment and Social Integration.” Research on Aging ( Expected publication date: September 2005).
Ha, Jung-Hwa, Deborah Carr, Rebecca Utz, and Randolph Nesse. Forthcoming. “Older Adults' Perceptions of Intergenerational Support after Widowhood: How Do Men and Women Differ?” Journal of Family Issues (Expected publication date: July 2005).
Byrne, Anne and Deborah Carr. 2005. “Caught in the Cultural Lag: The Stigma of Singlehood.” Psychological Inquiry 16 : 84-90.
Carr, Deborah. 2005. “The Psychological Consequences of Midlife Men's Social Comparisons with their Young Adult Sons.” Journal of Marriage and Family 67: 240-50.
Carr, Deborah. 2004. “Black/White Differences in Psychological Adjustment to Spousal Loss among Older Adults.” Research on Aging 26(6): 591-622.
Carr, Deborah. 2004. “The Desire to Date and Remarry Among Older Widows and Widowers.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66: 1051-68.
Utz, Rebecca, Erin Reidy, Deborah Carr, Randolph M. Nesse, and Camille B. Wortman. 2004. “The Daily Consequences of Widowhood: The Role of Gender and Intergenerational Transfers on Subsequent Housework Performance.” Journal of Family Issues 25(5): 683-712.
Carr, Deborah. 2004. “‘My Daughter Has a Career - I Just Raised Babies': Women's Intergenerational Social Comparisons.” Social Psychology Quarterly 67(2): 132-54.
Carr, Deborah. 2004. “Gender, Pre-Loss Marital Dependence and Older Adults' Adjustment to Widowhood.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 : 220-35.
Carr, Deborah. 2003. “A ‘Good Death' for Whom? Quality of Spouse's Death and Psychological Distress among Older Widowed Persons.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 44(2): 215-32.
Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield. 2006. “Do Surveys Create High Rates of Mental Illness?” Contexts: in press.
Allan V. Horwitz. 2005. “Media Portrayals and Health Inequalities: A Case Study of Characterizations of Gene X Environment Interactions.” Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences: in press.
Jerome C. Wakefield, Allan V. Horwitz, and Mark Schmitz. 2005. “Are We Overpathologizing the Socially Anxious?: Social Phobia from a Harmful Dysfunction Perspective.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry: in press.
Rick Mayes and Allan V. Horwitz. 2005. “DSM-III and the Revolution in the Classification of Mental Illness” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences (Vol. 41): in press.
Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield. 2005. “The Age of Depression.” The Public Interest 158 (Winter): 39-58.
Allan V. Horwitz, Tami Videon, Mark Schmitz, and Diane Davis. 2003. “Rethinking Twins and Environments: Possible Social Sources for Presumed Genetic Influences in Twin Research.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 44: 111-129.
Allan V. Horwitz, Tami Videon, Mark Schmitz, and Diane Davis. 2003. “Double Vision: Reply to Freese and Powell.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 44: 136-141.
Allan V. Horwitz. 2002. Creating Mental Illness . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Allan V. Horwitz. 2002. “Toward a New Science of Society: A Retrospective Examination of The Behavior of Law.” Contemporary Sociology 31: 641-644.
Allan V. Horwitz. 2002. “Outcomes in the Sociology of Mental Health: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43: 43-151.
Idler, Ellen. In press. “Religion and Aging.” In Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences. Robert Binstock and Linda George, (Editors). San Diego: Elsevier.
Goyal, Tanya, Ellen Idler, Tyrone Krause, Richard Contrada. In press. “Quality of Life following Cardiac Surgery: Impact of the Severity and Course of Depressive Symptoms.” Psychosomatic Medicine.
Bjorner, Jakob, Peter Fayers, Ellen Idler. 2005. “Self-rated health.” Assessing Quality of Life in Clinical Trials, 2nd Edition, Peter Fayers, Ron Hays, (Editors), pp.309-324. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Idler, Ellen L. 2005. “Remembrance of Dave Larson” in Faith, Medicine, and Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson, Jeff Levin and Harold G. Koenig (Editors), pp.36-37. New York: Haworth Press.
Idler, Ellen, Howard Leventhal, Julie McLaughlin, Elaine Leventhal. 2004. “In Sickness but Not in Health: Self-ratings, Identity, and Mortality”. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 45:336-356.
Contrada, Richard J., Tanya M. Goyal, Corinne Cather, Luba Rafalson, Ellen L. Idler, Tyrone J. Krause. 2004. “Psychosocial Factors in Outcomes of Heart Surgery: The Impact of Religious Involvement and Depressive Symptoms” Health Psychology 23:227-238.
Contrada, Richard J., Ellen L. Idler, Tanya Goyal, Corinne Cather, Luba Rafalson, Tyrone J. Krause. 2004. “Rejoinder: Why Not Find Out Whether Religious Beliefs Predict Surgical Outcomes? If They Do, Why Not Find Out Why?” Health Psychology 23:243-246.
Idler, Ellen and Stanislav Kasl. 2004. “Response to ‘Idler and Kasl's p values: A Cautionary Lesson'”. Psychosomatic Medicine. 66:376-377.
Idler, Ellen. 2004. “Religious Observance and Health: Theory and Research.” Religious Influences on Health and Well-Being of the Elderly, K.Warner Schaie, Neal Krause, Alan Booth, (Editors), pp. 20-43. New York: Springer.
Idler, Ellen, Christopher Ellison, Linda George, Neal Krause, Marcia Ory, Kenneth Pargament, Lynda Powell, David Williams, and Lynn Underwood. 2003. “Measuring Multiple Dimensions of Religion and Spirituality for Health Research: Conceptual Background and Findings from the 1998 General Social Survey”. Research on Aging 25:327-365.
Idler, Ellen L. 2003. “Gender Differences in Self-Rated Health, in Mortality, and in the Relationship Between the Two.” The Gerontologist 43:372-375.
Battle, V. DuWayne and Ellen Idler. 2003. “Meaning and Effects of Congregational Religious Participation.” Aging, Spirituality, and Religion, A Handbook, Volume II. Pp.121-133. Mel Kimble and Susan McFadden, Editors. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Phillips, Julie A. and Megan M. Sweeney. Forthcoming. “Can Differential Exposure to Risk Factors Explain Recent Racial and Ethnic Variation in Marital Disruption?” Social Science Research.
Phillips, Julie A. and Megan M. Sweeney. 2005. “Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Disruption among White, Black and Mexican American Women.” Journal of Marriage and Family 67: 296-314.
Sweeney, Megan M. and Julie A. Phillips. 2004. “Understanding Racial Differences in Marital Disruption: Recent Trends and Explanations.” Journal of Marriage and Family: 66: 639-650.
Phillips, Julie A., Jane E. Miller, Joel Cantor and Dorothy Gaboda. 2004. “Context or Composition: What Explains Variation in SCHIP Disenrollment?” Health Services Research: 39(4): 865-885.
Phillips, Julie A. 2002. “White, Black, and Latino Homicide Rates: Why the Difference?” Social Problems 39(3): 349-373.
Phillips, Julie A. 2002. “Race and Violence.” Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rosenfield, Sarah, Julie Phillips, and Helene Raskin White. 2006. "Gender, Race, and the Self in Mental Health and Crime", Social Problems 53:161-185.
Rosenfield, Sarah, Mary Clare Lennon, and Helene White. 2005. "Mental Health and the Self: The Impact of Self-Salience," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 6:326-340.
Rosenfield, Sarah and Kathy Pottick. 2004. "Power, Gender, and the Self: Reflections on Improving Mental Health for Males and Females," in Stuart A. Kirk, ed., Mental Health in the Social Environment: Critical Perspectives. Columbia University Press.
Rosenfield, Sarah. 2002. "Gender Stratification, Stress, and Mental Health," in Ann Maney and Juan Ramos, Socioeconomic Conditions, Stress and Mental Disorders: Toward a New Synthesis of Research and Public Policy Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Rosenfield, Sarah, Jean Vertefuille, and Donna McAlpine. 2000. "Gender Stratification and Mental Health: An Exploration of Dimensions of the Self," Social Psychology Quarterly 63:208-223.
Ongoing Research Projects
Deborah Carr
Illness Representations and End-of-Life Planning
This project explores the ways that chronically ill older adults think about and plan for their health care at the end of life. A guiding assumption is that the ways that older adults think about the duration, symptoms, cause, and consequence of their illness affects their attitudes about life and death, and the extent to which they take steps to prepare for their health care needs during their final days and weeks of life. These steps include having a living will, appointing a durable power of attorney for health care, and holding discussions about the end of life. This project involves a survey of 400 older patients seeking care at UMDNJ; focus group interviews with patients and a family member or caregiver; and dyadic interviews with pairs of patients and their caregivers. Students are welcome to participate in all stages of this project, ranging from conducting closed-ended interviews, to helping transcribe and analyze focus group transcripts. This project is funded by National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Aging (NIA/NIH)
Cultural and Cognitive Influences on End-of-Life Planning among African-American and White Colorectal Cancer Patients This project explores the way that colorectal cancer patients and their family members (or caregivers) think about their illness symptoms and consequences, and how these beliefs affect their preparations for end-of-life health care. I am particularly interested in the ways that cultural and religious beliefs shape one's attitudes and practices related to death, dying, and end of life health care. The project will entail focus group interviews with colorectal cancer patients (stratified by race and gender), and separate focus group interviews with the cancer patients' family members or caregivers. Students may participate in either conducting focus group discussions, or transcribing and analyzing focus group interviews. This project is funded by the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.
Spousal Bereavement and Marital Relations in Late Life
Much of my research focuses on the ways that older men and women adjust to the loss of their spouse, and the ways that spousal bereavement is shaped by characteristics of the late marriage. This research is based on the Changing Lives of Older Couples study, a large study of 1,545 married men and women in the Detroit metropolitan area. Married persons who became widowed after the initial wave of data collection were reinterviewed six, 18 and 48 months after their loss. Married matched controls were interviewed at the same time. The CLOC study contains rich data about marital relations, social support and integration, physical and mental health, and family characteristics among older adults. Students are invited to use the CLOC data to explore an array of questions about late life. Further information on the CLOC study can be found at http://www.cloc.isr.umich.edu.
Social and Psychological Consequences of Obesity
I am conducting research on the ways that body weight shapes social experiences, including interpersonal relationships, psychological well-being, and experiences of interpersonal and institutional discrimination. These studies are based on data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, a national survey of more than 3,000 men and women ages 25-74 in 1995. The MIDUS includes rich information on attitudes, values, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, physical and mental health, family and social relations, and community involvement. Students are invited to use the data; the broad content of the MIDUS study makes it useful for studying a diverse array of sociological and psychological questions. A second wave of data is currently being collected, and should be available in late 2005 or early 2006. This project is funded by the NIA. Further information on the MIDUS can be found at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~carrds/midus/midus_home.htm.
Social and Behavioral Contexts of the Aging Mind
This project examines the ways that stressors experienced over the life course affect the psychological and physical well-being of older adults. An overarching aim of the project is two evaluate to competing perspectives: cumulative disadvantage, and steeling effects. Do accumulated adversities and stressors over the life course overwhelm the coping abilities of older adults? Or do individuals who manage stressors and adversities over the life course feel better prepared and more efficacious as they manage the strains of later life? Specific stressors may include economic adversities, marital dissolution, non-normative events, and health difficulties. This study is based on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), a long-term study of more than 10,000 adults who graduated Wisconsin high schools in 1957. They have since been re-interviewed at ages 35 (in 1975), 53 (1993) and 64-65 (2004-05). The WLS obtained rich information on educational and career plans and trajectories, family relations, work, health, and relationships with significant others. The data set also includes a parallel interview with a brother or sister of the main respondent. Students are invited to use the data to study a broad array of questions pertaining to social stratification, health, and the life course. This project is funded by the NIA. Further information on the WLS can be found at http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/wls/index.html.
End-of-Life Planning and Well-Being of Older Adults
This project investigates the ways the older adults prepare for their end of life health concerns. Of particular interest is the way that long-standing family relationships, socioeconomic resources, and experiences with loved ones' deaths affect older adults own attitudes towards and preparations for their own eventual death. This study is based on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), a long-term study of more than 10,000 adults who graduated Wisconsin high schools in 1957. They have since been re-interviewed at ages 35 (in 1975), 53 (1993) and 64-65 (2004-05). The WLS obtained rich information on educational and career plans and trajectories, family relations, work, health, and relationships with significant others. The data set also includes a parallel interview with a brother or sister of the main respondent. Students are invited to use the data to study a broad array of questions pertaining to social stratification, health, and the life course. This project is funded by the NIA. Further information on the WLS can be found at http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/wls/index.html .
Allan Horwitz
Allan V. Horwitz is working on a book entitled The Loss of Sadness. One part of the book traces the historical transformation of normal sadness into major depressive disorder and the progressive widening of the kinds of conditions that are now treated as disordered. Another part develops criteria for distinguishing normal sadness from depressive disorder. A final part examines the policy ramifactions of treating depressive conditions as normal or as disordered.
Ellen Idler
Last Year of Life
Data from the New Haven Established Populations for the Study of the Elderly in which a subset of elderly persons interviewed during their last year of life was identified (N=499). This survey of health and functioning, depression, social roles, and quality of life permits an extraordinary prospective view of individuals at the end of life. Current analyses focus on religious participation and belief during that last year of life, and the relationship of these factors to multiple indicators of quality of life. Collaborators on this project include Stanislav Kasl (Yale University School of Public Health) and Julie McLaughlin (University of North Carolina Charlotte, Department of Sociology).
Heart Surgery
A prospective study of heart surgery patients (N=569) interviewed prior to and shortly after surgery for coronary artery bypass / heart valve replacement with one year follow-up. Depression, social networks, religious involvement and other aspects of psychosocial resources were assessed pre-surgery. Outcomes include mortality at up to 4 years and one-year physical functioning and social role functioning. The project pioneered several new measures of religious participation in worship services in an attempt to better understand the frequently-identified association of religious service attendance with lower mortality. Collaborators include Richard Contrada (PI), David Boulifard, and May Chen (Rutgers University Department of Psychology).
Processes of Illness Management (PRIM)
A study of internal medicine outpatients (N=210) interviewed prior to physician visits, with 24-hour and one-month follow-up interviews. Physician visits are also audiotaped, and physicians complete a short questionnaire on the visit. The purpose of the study is to identify patient illness representations and self-perceptions of health prior to and following care encounters. Self-perceptions of health are known to predict mortality in large population studies, but little is understood about how they are generated. Patients and physicians both rate patient’s health, and each is asked what they think the other’s response would be. Discrepant ratings of health may be tied to specific aspects of illness representations, for example illness identity, cause, duration, consequences, or controllability. Collaborators include Howard Leventhal (PI), Pablo Mora, and Alison Phillips (Rutgers University Department of Psychology) and Elaine Leventhal (Robert Wood Johnson Medical School).
Catherine Lee
Catherine Lee was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Program at the University of Michigan . Her research interests include an examination of racial classificatory schemes in biomedical research that is funded by the National Institutes of Health or regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The project explores how scientists define and research race and make conclusions about health, disease, and difference.
Julie Phillips
"Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and the Self in Mental Health." (With Sarah Rosenfield)
This project investigates explanations for the disparities by gender and race/ethnicity in mental health.
“Explaining Recent Temporal Trends in U.S. Suicide Rates.”
This project studies the social and economic forces that have shaped recent temporal trends in suicide rates in the United States . This project lays out the groundwork for future work that will explore how social, economic and cultural conditions affect forms of lethal violence (homicide and suicide) across races, as well as the ways in which individual and contextual factors together affect the risk of violent deaths.
“Understanding Variation in U.S. Homicide Rates across Time and Space, 1970-1999.” National Science Foundation.
This project examines factors that produce variation in homicide rates over time and place.
“Disenrollment from NJKidCare: A Multilevel Analysis of SCHIP Retention.” (With Jane E. Miller). Joint Center for Poverty Research, University of Chicago/Northwestern University.
This project examined how individual and contextual factors explain variation in disenrollment rates from the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Helene White
(Note: The first four data sets are available for secondary data analysis. Research opportunities on the fifth study include implementing interventions, data collection, and program evaluation.)
The Rutgers Health and Human Development Project (HHDP)
The Rutgers Health and Human Development project is a prospective, multiple cohort longitudinal study of adolescent development. Adolescents were originally identified by a random telephone survey of the State of New Jersey. Following the telephone survey, field staff interviewed interested participants and their parents in their homes. Subsequently, subjects came to the test site for a full day of testing. Male (N=688) and female (N=692) subjects were tested initially between 1979 and 1981 (Time 1) at the ages of 12, 15, and 18. These subjects returned three years later in 1982-1984 (Time 2), again in 1985-1987 (Time 3), and finally in 1992-1994 (Time 4), and were retested using essentially the same battery of instruments. Ninety one percent (N=1257) of the original sample returned at Time 4. The youngest cohort has been followed a fifth time (Time5). The original sample was predominantly white and middle or working class. Longitudinal data are available about physical and mental health, substance use, life stresses, coping, delinquency, family relations, school, peers, neighborhoods, dating, intimate partner relationships, marriage, children, work, etc.
The Pittsburgh Youth Study
The Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS) is a prospective, multiple cohort longitudinal study of the development of delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems. In 1987-88, random samples of first, fourth, and seventh grade boys enrolled in the City of Pittsburgh public schools were selected. Approximately 850 boys in each grade (85% of the target sample) were screened. About 500 boys in each grade (the 250 exhibiting the highest rates of antisocial behavior and another 250 randomly selected from the remaining 600) were selected for the first follow up 6 months later. After the first follow up, the boys in the youngest and oldest cohorts were subsequently followed up at 6-months intervals for 3 years and then annually for a total of 14 years. Data exist for the youngest cohort from approximately age 7 through age 20 and oldest from approximately age 13 through age 25. Attrition has remained relatively low and the completion rate has averaged about 91% across 14 years of data collection. The oldest and youngest samples combined are 56% African-American, 42% White and 2% other or mixed. Over one third of the boys' families received public assistance or food stamps. Data have been collected from the boys, their primary caretakers and teachers. In addition, official criminal records and social service records have been searched. Longitudinal data are available about physical and mental health, substance use, violence, delinquency, family relations, school, work, peers, neighborhoods, intimate relationships, etc.
The Pittsburgh Girls Study
The Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS) is a longitudinal study of 2,451 girls living in the city of Pittsburgh, who were ages 5 to 8 years when first recruited. High-risk girls were over-sampled based on neighborhood disadvantage. These girls, a primary caretaker, and a teacher have been interviewed annually for five years thus far and the study is ongoing. Slightly more than half the sample is African American with the remainder almost all White. Approximately one third of the fami lies were receiving public assistance at the first assessment. Retention rates have been well over 90% across waves. Longitudinal data are available about physical and mental health, substance use, violence, delinquency, family relations, school, peers, neighborhoods, dating, etc.
Child Abuse and Neglect Study
This study uses a prospective cohort design in which court-substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect and matched controls were followed prospectively into adulthood. Cases of childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect were identified from juvenile (family) and adult criminal court records from the years 1967-1971 in a metropolitan area in the Midwest. Children were under 12 years old at the time of the abuse or neglect. Matched controls were selected based on their similarity to the target children in terms of sex, age, race, and approximate family socioeconomic status at the time. The original sample consisted of 1,575 abused and/or neglected individuals and matched controls. Seventy-six percent (1,196) were interviewed approximately 20 years after the childhood victimization had occurred (mean age=29) during 1989-1995; of these, 93% were located and 75% (896) were interviewed in 2000-2002 (mean age=40). In addition, official arrest records have been searched twice. Approximately half of the sample is female (48.7%) and two-thirds is white (62.4%). The sample is skewed toward the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Longitudinal data are available about physical and mental health, substance use, violence and crime, neighborhoods, intimate partner relationships, marriage, children, work, life stresses, coping etc.
The Rutgers Transdisciplinary Prevention Research Center (RTPRC)
The Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies has been awarded a NIDA substance use Prevention Center grant. Current projects focus on preventing substance use during the transition from middle school to high school and the transition from high school to college. Students would be involved in developing, implementing and evaluating brief interventions for college students, including high risk students (e.g., student athletes, first year students, and students mandated to treatment because they violated university rules about alcohol and drug use in residence halls).
Key Sociological Questions
This area focuses on a number of core questions:
1. Health and well-being is the ultimate individual-level outcome variable for most fields in sociology. Sociologists study diverse topics as inequality, deviance, globalization, etc. at least in part because they have negative impacts on well-being. This core area studies how well-being stems from fundamental social and cultural processes and not just biological and psychological forces.
2. All social processes - whether individual, organizational, or societal - have temporal dimensions. These include how processes at earlier periods affect those that occur in later processes and experiences, how historical period and birth cohort affect human behavior, and how the intersection of individual biography with history is at the core of sociological analysis.
3. Health, population, and life course studies link individual and environmental factors. They identify the pathways through which macro-level structural processes and cultural belief systems affect individual level behavioral and psychological outcomes, and help specify the effects by race, class, and gender.
4. The number of people in a population, as determined by births, deaths, and migrations, has a fundamental impact on social behavior. Population size and composition are social facts that cannot be reduced to psychology or biology.
5. The decline in mortality and fertility rates has produced aging populations throughout the developed world. Knowledge about the health and well-being of aging populations is critical for social institutions, particularly the state and the health care system.
6. Designations of health and illness do not solely stem from nature but have important social components. Cultural and cognitive processes crucially affect how health and illness states are defined.
7. Culture and social structure are institutionalized in medical care systems intended to take care of the sick and to promote healthy behavior.
History
The sociology of aging and the life course can be said to have its roots in the Rutgers Department of Sociology. In the mid-1960s, with support from the Russell Sage Foundation, Matilda White Riley and colleagues Anne Foner, Sarane Boocock, and others conducted a pioneering comprehensive review of existing social scientific research on aging, published in 1968 as a three-volume series, Aging and Society. The conclusion of their study was that virtually all research on aging populations to that date contained serious methodological flaws, and that major improvements in study design were required if researchers were to identify and distinguish aging effects from cohort and period effects. This began the continuing tradition of research and teaching in aging and the life course at Rutgers. In 1979, Matilda Riley became the founding Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Research at the newly-established National Institute on Aging. Moving through several distinguished capacities at NIA and NIH as a whole, Riley was awarded in 1998 at age 87, the rare position of Scientist Emeritus at NIH.
In 1985, the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research was established at Rutgers University. This Institute, headed by David Mechanic, has recruited a strong cadre of leading researchers in social and behavioral aging to Rutgers, and is the center for interdisciplinary health research at Rutgers. The Institute's mission is to stimulate innovation and improvements in health and health care in New Jersey and in the nation through research and training. Its core program areas are in health policy, particularly at the state level, health services research, aging and health, prevention and cost-effectiveness, mental health, history of medicine and psychiatry, health psychology, and medical sociology; its external funding in 2002 was $13+ million. There are approximately thirty core faculty members, representing the disciplines of anthropology, demography, economics, epidemiology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, public health, sociology, and statistics, and the professions of medicine, law, nursing, clinical psychology, psychiatry, and social work. Notable among its ongoing activities is a biweekly seminar series that brings nationally pre-eminent researchers from these many fields to present to audiences of faculty, postdoctoral students, and graduate students. An important development in 1999 was the founding of the Center for State Health Policy, a semi-autonomous unit directed by Joel Cantor and Susan Reinhard, that conducts health policy research focused on state programs, particularly on long-term care, access to health care, racial and ethnic health disparities, health care performance measurement, pharmaceutical policy, and state health data and information.
The close ties between the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research create a lively network of opportunities for graduate students in the Department, for research experience, mentoring, and stimulating speakers. (Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research)
Julie McLaughlin - ASA Best Dissertation Award 2004, Mental Health Section
Tami Videon - ASA Best Dissertation Award 2003, Mental Health Section
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