Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

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Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Psychometric data on single-item and multi-item subjective well-being scales are presented, and the measures are compared. Measuring various components of subjective well-being is discussed. In terms of causal influences, research findings on the demographic correlates of SWB are evaluated, as well as the findings on other influences such as health, social contact, activity, and personality. A number of theoretical approaches to happiness are presented and discussed: telic theories, associationistic models, activity theories, judgment approaches, and top-down versus bottom-up conceptions.

Subjective Well-Being

A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2651&context=soss_research

Subjective Well-being

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

List of Figures vii List of Tables ix Acknowlegments xiii Introduction School Choice, Parent Incentives, and the Use of Information 3 PART ONE Chapter 1 Reinventing the Governance Structure of Education: School Choice as Educational Reform 21 Chapter 2 Parent Behavior and the Demand Side of School Choice 39 Chapter 3 Studying Choice: The Research Design 59 PART TWO Chapter 4 The Distribution of Preferences: What Do Parents Want from Schools? 87 Chapter 5 How Do Parents Search for Information? 108 Chapter 6 Building Social Networks to Search for Information about Schools 126 PART THREE Chapter 7 The Distribution of Knowledge: How Much Do Parents Know about the Schools? 149 Chapter 8 Allocational Efficiency: You Can't Always Get What You Want -- But Some Do 164 Chapter 9 Productive Efficiency: Does School Choice Affect Academic Performance? 185 Chapter 10 Does Choice Increase Segregation and Stratification? 204 Chapter 11 Choosing Together Is Better than Bowling Alone: School Choice and the Creation of Social Capital 223 Chapter 12 Opting Out of Public Schools: Can Choice Affect the Relationship between Private and Public Schools? 238 CONCLUSION Chapter 13 Myths and Markets: Choice Is No Panacea, But It Does Work 261 Notes 275 References 285 Index 307

Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools

One of the most contentious policy areas in the United States today is the expansion of school choice. While many dimensions of parental-choice behavior have been analyzed, many of the most enduring questions center on the aspects of schools parents prefer and how these preferences will affect the socioeconomic and racial composition of schools. Using Internet-based methodological tools, we study parental preferences revealed through information search patterns and compare these findings to the standard ones in the literature, which are based largely on telephone interviews. Based on this evidence we suggest that unfettered choice may lead to undesirable outcomes in the distribution of students, and it may also lead to reduced pressure on schools to improve academic performance.

/pdf/what-do-parents-want-from-schools-evidence-from-the-internet-ebivd6iqso.pdf

What Do Parents Want From Schools? Evidence From the Internet:

List of Figures Ch. 1 Public Entrepreneurs as Agents of Change Ch. 2 Bringing Back the Entrepreneur: Neoclassical Economic Models and the Role of the Entrepreneur Ch. 3 The Functions of Political Entrepreneurs in the Local Market for Public Goods Pt. 2 The Decision Calculus of the Public Entrepreneur Ch. 4 The Market for Entrepreneurs Ch. 5 The Emergence of Political Entrepreneurs Ch. 6 Entrepreneurs, Policy Dimensions, and the Politics of Growth Ch. 7 Entrepreneurial Challenges to the Status Quo: The Case of the Growth Machine Ch. 8 Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs: The Case of City Managers Pt. 3 The Milieux of the Public Entrepreneur Ch. 9 The Business-Government Nexus in the Local Market for Entrepreneurs Ch. 10 Entry, Voice, and Support for Entrepreneurs Pt. 4 Entrepreneurs and Change in the Local Market for Public Goods Ch. 11 Entrepreneurs and Change in the Local Market for Public Goods Notes Bibliography Index

Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government

While the possible decline in the level of social capital in the United States has received considerable attention by scholars such as Putnam and Fukuyama, less attention has been paid to the local activities of citizens that help define a nation's stock of social capital. Scholars have paid even less attention to how institutional arrangements affect levels of social capital. We argue that giving parents greater choice over the public schools their children attend creates incentives for parents as “citizen/consumers” to engage in activities that build social capital. Our empirical analysis employs a quasi-experimental approach comparing parental behavior in two pairs of demographically similar school districts that vary on the degree of parental choice over the schools their children attend. Our data show that, controlling for many other factors, parents who choose when given the opportunity are higher on all the indicators of social capital analyzed. Fukuyama has argued that it is easier for governments to decrease social capital than to increase it. We argue, however, that the design of government institutions can create incentives for individuals to engage in activities that increase social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2952260.pdf

Institutional Arrangements and the Creation of Social Capital: The Effects of Public School Choice

Skeptics of school choice are concerned that parents, especially low-income ones, will not choose schools based on sound academic reasoning. Many fear that, given choice, parents will sort themselves into different schools along class lines. How-ever, most surveys find that parents of all socioeconomic groups cite academic aspects as important when choosing a school. Moreover, almost no parents refer to the social composition of the student body. Many advocates of choice hold up these results as proof that choice will produce desirable outcomes. However, these results may not be reliable because they may simply be verbal responses to survey items rather than indicators of actual behavior.



In this research, we report on the search behavior of parents in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, examining how they construct their school choice sets and comparing this to what they say they are seeking in choosing schools. The data indicate that parental decisions are influenced by demographics. Based on this evidence, we argue that unfettered choice may reduce the pressure on schools to improve their performance and could potentially increase stratification. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management

Mark Schneider

Papers

Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools

What Do Parents Want From Schools? Evidence From the Internet:

Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government

Institutional Arrangements and the Creation of Social Capital: The Effects of Public School Choice

School choice in Chile: Is it class or the classroom?