Jeremy Freese

Toward Some Fundamentals of Fundamental Causality: Socioeconomic Status and Health in the Routine Clinic Visit for Diabetes

The concept of “fundamental causality” has gained increasing attention as a way of understanding the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health outcomes. Using enthnographic data from a comparative study of two diabetes clinics, the authors further develop the fundamental cause concept in three ways. First, they provide an exposition of the constituent claims implied by an assertion of fundamental causality. Second, they show how ethnographic data can be used to explicate such claims by showing some of the mechanisms that might operate to preserve the fundamental relationship in diabetes treatment regimens. Finally, they offer elaborations and refinements of the fundamental cause concept.

Most Reported Genetic Associations With General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives

General intelligence (g) and virtually all other behavioral traits are heritable. Associations between g and specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in several candidate genes involved in brain function have been reported. We sought to replicate published associations between g and 12 specific genetic variants (in the genes DTNBP1, CTSD, DRD2, ANKK1, CHRM2, SSADH, COMT, BDNF, CHRNA4, DISC1, APOE, and SNAP25) using data sets from three independent, well-characterized longitudinal studies with samples of 5,571, 1,759, and 2,441 individuals. Of 32 independent tests across all three data sets, only 1 was nominally significant. By contrast, power analyses showed that we should have expected 10 to 15 significant associations, given reasonable assumptions for genotype effect sizes. For positive controls, we confirmed accepted genetic associations for Alzheimer’s disease and body mass index, and we used SNP-based calculations of genetic relatedness to replicate previous estimates that about half of the variance in g is accounted for by common genetic variation among individuals. We conclude that the molecular genetics of psychology and social science requires approaches that go beyond the examination of candidate genes.

Genetics and the social science explanation of individual outcomes.

Accumulating evidence from behavioral genetics suggests that the vast majority of individual‐level outcomes of abiding sociological interest are genetically influenced to a substantial degree. This raises the question of the place of genetics in social science explanations. Genomic causation is described from a counterfactualist perspective, which makes its complexity plain and highlights the distinction between identifying causes and substantiating explanations. For explanation, genomic causes must be understood as strictly mediated by the body. One implication is that the challenge of behavioral genetics for sociology is much more a challenge from psychology than biology, and a main role for genetics is as a placeholder for ignorance of more proximate influences of psychological and other embodied variation. Social scientists should not take this challenge from psychology as suggesting any especially fundamental explanatory place for either it or genetics, but the contingent importance of genetic and psychological characteristics is itself available for sociological investigation.

When do older adults turn to the internet for health information? Findings from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.

AbstractBACKGROUND: Understanding how and when patients use nonphysician sources of health information is important to facilitate shared decision making within provider outpatient visits. However, little is known about which older adults seek health information on the internet or when. OBJECTIVE: To determine how patient characteristics are related to seeking health information online and to the timing of these searches in relation to doctor visits. PARTICIPANTS: Six thousand two hundred and seventy-nine respondents (aged 63 to 66 years) who completed the 2004 round of phone and mail surveys (70% response) as part of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study Graduate Sample. MEASUREMENTS: Self-reported use of the internet to search for health information and timing of use. RESULTS: One-third of respondents had searched online for information about their own health or health care. Half of these searched for health information unrelated to their last doctor visit, while 1/3 searched after a visit, and 1/6 searched before. Among respondents with internet access at home or work, years of education (odds ratio [OR]=1.09, confidence interval [CI]=1.06 to 1.13) and openness-to-experience (OR=1.26, CI=1.16 to 1.36) were positively associated with searching online for health information irrespective of timing in relation to doctor visits. Compared with those who had never sought health information online, sicker individuals (especially those with cancer, OR=1.51, CI=1.14 to 1.99) were more likely to seek information online after a doctor visit. Attitudinal and personality factors were related to seeking health information online before or unrelated to a visit. CONCLUSIONS: There are important differences in the timing of online health information searches by psychological and health characteristics among older adults with internet access.

The Generalizability of Survey Experiments

Survey experiments have become a central methodology across the social sciences. Researchers can combine experiments’ causal power with the generalizability of population-based samples. Yet, due to the expense of population-based samples, much research relies on convenience samples (e.g. students, online opt-in samples). The emergence of affordable, but non-representative online samples has reinvigorated debates about the external validity of experiments. We conduct two studies of how experimental treatment effects obtained from convenience samples compare to effects produced by population samples. In Study 1, we compare effect estimates from four different types of convenience samples and a population-based sample. In Study 2, we analyze treatment effects obtained from 20 experiments implemented on a population-based sample and Amazons Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The results reveal considerable similarity between many treatment effects obtained from convenience and nationally representative population-based samples. While the results thus bolster confidence in the utility of convenience samples, we conclude with guidance for the use of a multitude of samples for advancing scientific knowledge.

Replication Standards for Quantitative Social Science Why Not Sociology

The credibility of quantitative social science benefits from policies that increase confidence that results reported by one researcher can be verified by others. Concerns about replicability have increased as the scale and sophistication of analyses increase the possible dependence of results on subtle analytic decisions and decrease the extent to which published articles contain full descriptions of methods. The author argues that sociology should adopt standards regarding replication that minimize its conceptualization as an ethical and individualistic matter and advocates for a policy in which authors use independent online archives to deposit the maximum possible information for replicating published results at the time of publication and are explicit about the conditions of availability for any necessary materials that are not provided. The author responds to several objections that might be raised to increasing the transparency of quantitative sociology in this way and offers a candidate replication policy for sociology.

Using Anchoring Vignettes to Assess Group Differences in General Self-Rated Health

This article addresses a potentially serious problem with the widely used self-rated health (SRH) survey item: that different groups have systematically different ways of using the item’s response categories. Analyses based on unadjusted SRH may thus yield misleading results. The authors evaluate anchoring vignettes as a possible solution to this problem. Using vignettes specifically designed to calibrate the SRH item and data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS; N = 2,625), the authors show how demographic and health-related factors, including sex and education, predict differences in rating styles. Such differences, when not adjusted for statistically, may be sufficiently large to lead to mistakes in rank orderings of groups. In the present sample, unadjusted models show that women have better SRH than men, but this difference disappears in models adjusting for women’s greater health-optimism. Anchoring vignettes appear a promising tool for improving intergroup comparability of SRH.

Fundamental Causality: Challenges of an Animating Concept for Medical Sociology

Arguably, the most important problem at the intersection of sociology and epidemiology is how to understand the pervasive positive relationship between various indicators of social position (hereafter, socioeconomic status or SES) and health. The lower status people are, the sooner they die, and the worse health they have while alive. Negative associations between SES and health overall have been found in almost every place and time for which data permit adequate study, implying that the generalization has held even as the prevalence of particular causes of ill-health and death have varied (see reviews in Marmot 2004; Link and Phelan 1995; Deaton 2002; House et al. 1990). In addition, data suggest that the negative association between at least some indicators of SES and some indicators of health may be increasing in some populations, including the United States (Duncan 1996; Lauderdale 2001; Preston and Elo 1995; Steenland et al. 2004; Krieger et al. 2008). Meara et al. (2008) found that while life expectancy had increased 1.6 years between 1990 and 2000 among those who had attended college, it had not increased at all over this same period among those who had not. While various caveats can be raised, none should detract from appreciating that socioeconomic disparities in health in studied populations overwhelmingly are pervasive and profound.

Who are feminists and what do they believe? The role of generations

Using the 1996 General Social Survey, the antecedents of feminist self-identification and their link to gender-related social attitudes are explored. Although most socio-demographic variables show either no relationship or a weak relationship with feminist self-identification, there are strong differences across cohorts. Males and females who were young adults during the second wave of feminism (birth years 1936 to 1955) are more likely to identify as feminists than are those younger or older. In addition, the link between feminist self-identification and some social attitudes is cohort specific: Seemingly profeminist positions distinguish self-identified feminists from nonfeminists only among members of the second-wave generation. These results reinforce the importance of political generation and suggest increasing heterogeneity in public conceptions of feminism.

The provision of hospital chaplaincy in the United States: A national overview

Over the past 25 years, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has changed its guidelines regarding religious/spiritual care of hospitalized patients to increase attention concerning this aspect of hospital-based care. Little empirical evidence assesses the extent to which hospitals relied on hospital chaplains as care providers during these years. This study investigates (1) the extent of chaplaincy service availability in US hospitals between 1980 and 2003; (2) the predictors of having chaplaincy services in 1993 and 2003; and (3) the change in the magnitude of these predictors between years. This study examines the presence or absence of chaplaincy or pastoral care services in hospitals using the American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals (ranging from 4,946–6,353 hospitals) in 1980–1985, 1992–1993, and 2002–2003. Between 54% and 64% of hospitals had chaplaincy services between 1980 and 2003, with no systematic trend over this period. In 1993 and 2003, hospital size, location, and church affiliation were central factors influencing the presence of chaplaincy services. Smaller hospitals and those in rural areas were less likely to have chaplaincy services. Church-operated hospitals were much more likely to have chaplaincy services; but between 1993 and 2003, church-operated hospitals were more likely to drop chaplaincy services than to add them. Not-for-profit hospitals were more likely than investor-owned hospitals to add chaplaincy services. Changes to Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations policies about the religious/spiritual care of hospitalized patients between 1980 and 2003 seem to have had no discernible effect on the fraction of US hospitals that had chaplaincy services. Rather, characteristics of hospitals, their surroundings, and their religious affiliations influenced whether they provided chaplaincy services to patients.