Community-based research in public health focuses on social, structural, and physical environmental inequities through active involvement of community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process. Partners contribute their expertise to enhance understanding of a given phenomenon and to integrate the knowledge gained with action to benefit the community involved. This review provides a synthesis of key principles of community-based research, examines its place within the context of different scientific paradigms, discusses rationales for its use, and explores major challenges and facilitating factors and their implications for conducting effective community-based research aimed at improving the public’s health.

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Review of community-based research: assessing partnership approaches to improve public health.

The Community Question has set the agenda for much or much of sociology. It is the question of how large-scale social systemic divisions of labor affect the organization and content of primary ties. Network analysis is proposed as a useful approach to the Community Question, because, by focusing on linkages, it avoids the a priori confinement of analysis to solidary groupings and territorial units. Three contentions about the Question are evaluated: arguments that Community is Lost, Saved or Liberted. Data are presented about the structure and use of the "intimate" networks of 845 adult residents of East York, Toronto. Intimate networks are found to be prevalent, composed of both kin and nonkin, nonlocal, asymmetric, and of sparse density. Help in dealing with both emergencies and everyday matters is available from almost all intimate networks, but from only a minority of intimate ties. The data provide broad support for the Liberated argument, in conjunction with some portions of the Saved argument.

The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers

Private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the U.S. economy. The majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos (i.e., between living persons), but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior. This paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers. Two motives are considered: altruism and exchange. Evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior. Observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange-related motives. This finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well-being.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1831976

Motives for Private Income Transfers

Studies of organizational culture often focus on discrete cultural forms and fail to place phenomena studied within an overarching conception of culture. Overlap and confusion in terminology occur across studies. To alleviate these problems, this paper offers distinguishing definitions and advocates studying rites and ceremonials, which consolidate multiple cultural forms. The paper also presents, illustrates, and discusses a typology of rites and ceremonials and examines the implications of cultural studies for research and practice.

Studying Organizational Cultures Through Rites and Ceremonials

The authors investigate the structure of intergenerational cohesion by examining social‐psychological, structural, and transactional aspects of adult child‐parent relations. The authors use latent class analysis to develop a typology based on three underlying dimensions of intergenerational solidarity: affinity, opportunity structure, and function. The same five types are found for relations with both mothers and fathers: tight‐knit, sociable, intimate but distant, obligatory, and detached. Relationship types are also differentiated by sociodemographic characteristics; relations with fathers and divorced parents tended to have the weakest cohesion. The authors conclude that adult intergenerational relationships in American families are structurally diverse but generally possess the potential to serve their members' needs.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/231213

Intergenerational solidarity and the structure of adult child-parent relationships in American families

Kinship in an Urban Setting.

As the number of birth order studies continues to burgeon, it seems appropriate to review the state of this research area. This paper examines theories, findings, problems, and possibilities. Theories which incorporate the guiding assumptions of most birth order studies include intrauterine or physiological, only-child uniqueness, dethronement, anxious or relaxed parent, sibling influence, and economic. Findings are compiled under personality adjustment and problems, education-achievement-intelligence, anxiety-affiliation-dependence-conformity, and miscellaneous. The two most consistent findings in the birth order literature are: (1) greater educational attainment, including college attendance, among first-borns (including only children), and (2) first-borns are more affiliative and dependent than laterborns. Problems involve cohort and demographic difficulties, needed controls and specifications, the restrictiveness of early socialization theories, and researcher-induced bias in experimental studies. These problems themselves may also be viewed as possibilities, as they are solved, but three specific possibilities which should be pursued are studies of whole or completed families, theoretical expansions, and sophisticated statistical controls.

Birth Order: A Critical Review

Isolation, Function, and Beyond: American Kinship in the 1960's.

Initiation ceremonies : a cross-cultural study of status dramatization

Many changes are occurring in the world's families. Some observers feel that the changes are destructive, whereas others see them as leading to new opportunities and understanding. Issues in international family studies include regional limitations and the various aspects of doing research cross-culturally. Knowledge regarding certain categories of families, inheritance, and the social psychology of families is incomplete. There are, however, some universals and universal or worldwide changes, including movement toward individual partner choice, more divorces, lower fertility, and greater opportunities for women.

/pdf/families-and-family-study-in-international-perspective-2rfyudwr3x.pdf

Bert N. Adams

Papers

Kinship in an Urban Setting.

Birth Order: A Critical Review

Isolation, Function, and Beyond: American Kinship in the 1960's.

Initiation ceremonies : a cross-cultural study of status dramatization

Families and family study in international perspective