ICPR Abstracts: Session 38

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Session 38: Papers

Social Networks

38.1
Racial and Ethnic Variations in Social Network 
Support for Premarital Relationships

Chalandra M. Bryant, Catherine A. Surra 
and Misty Francis, University of Texas at Austin

Romantic relationships do not arise within a social 
vacuum. Instead, they are deeply embedded in the partners' 
social networks. Couples in premarital relationships 
participate in a social system involving many people who 
significantly influence their perceptions of their romantic 
partners. Such influence, as it operates across three racial 
and ethnic groups, is the focus of this study. Three 
hypotheses tested the influence of the psychological 
networks of 281 premarital Latinos, African Americans, 
and Anglos. Consistent with past research, we expect to 
find that social network support for relationships of all 
respondents will be associated with respondents 
experiencing greater satisfaction, love, commitment, and 
couple identity in their relationships. Because Latinos 
emphasize kinship with the family as the center of 
identity, self- worth, and social support, and because 
African Americans are enmeshed in a tightly knit network 
of family members serving as a major source of 
socioemotional support, we expect that Latinos and 
African Americans will be more influenced by their family 
members than will be Anglos.

38.2
A Decade of Network Change: Turnover, Persistence 
and Stability in Intimate Personal Relationships

Barry Wellman, Renita Yuk-lin Wong,
David Tindall and Nancy Nazer
University of Toronto

We analyze changes in intimate relationships in personal 
networks using data from interviews conducted a decade 
apart with 33 Torontonians. There is much turnover in 
these networks, with only 27% of intimate ties persisting. 
Durable ties tend to be with intimates who have provided 
social support, are in frequent telephone contact, or are 
immediate kin. There was almost complete turnover in the 
networks of those Subjects who got married or divorced 
during the decade. By contrast, the amount of turnover in 
personal relationships is not associated with whether the 
Subjects had moved to a different home, or started/stopped 
doing paid work during the decade. 

38.3
Relationships and Help: 
The Strength of Rather Strong Ties

Bonnie H. Erickson
University of Toronto

Conventional scholarly wisdom holds that weak ties 
provide access to scarce resources while strong ties 
provide personal help, because weak ties are less inbred 
but strong ties provide more information and motivation. 
But existing research is largely confined to people's 
stronger ties. This study of thousands of relationships, 
from very weak to almost intimate, indicates that the effect 
of strength is curvilinear for instrumental help and linear 
for personal help. RATHER strong ties combine moderate 
amounts of communication, closeness, and diversity and 
hence deliver much of the help that people receive. 

38.4
Losing and Gaining Relationships in Old Age:
Changes of Personal Network Size in a Four-year 
Longitudinal Study

Theo van Tilburg
Vrije Universiteit 

There are widely differing ideas about the development of 
social networks among older adults, and earlier studies 
revealed mixed results on the association between age and 
network size. In the present study, changes in network size 
are studied using data from three waves of a large 
longitudinal study in the Netherlands among older adults 
(N approximately 2,500; age at Time 1 between 55 and 85 
years). Preliminary results show a small and not 
significant decrease in total network size. The size of the 
partial network of children-in-law increases significantly 
over time, while the size of partial networks of friends and 
neighbors decrease.

38.5
How People Seek Help: Individual and Social 
Influences on Decision-Making for Medical and 
Alternative Health Care

Merrijoy Kelner and Beverly Wellman
University of Toronto

We compare the personal relationships and network 
characteristics of 300 patients of family physicians with 
those of patients/clients of chiropractors, 
acupuncturists/traditional chinese medicine doctors, 
naturopaths and Reiki practitioners. We examine how 
perceptions of their health status and choice of practitioner 
is affected by the social networks in which these 
relationships are located, their social situations (e.g., paid 
worker or "homemaker", with or without children or 
spouse) and sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, 
gender).  Preliminary results suggest that those with more 
wide-ranging social networks (larger, structurally 
complex, more heterogeneous) are associated with 
choosing acupuncture, naturopathy and Reiki and not 
physicians and chiropractors.