The role of professional networks in partner selection
This study analyzes American Community Survey data to show that higher average education levels among coworkers are positively linked to individuals' spouse's educational attainment, especially for women and when spouses share the same occupation or industry, suggesting workplace environments influence educational homogamy and socioeconomic sorting.
ABSTRACT This study uses American Community Survey data (2017–2022) to examine whether the educational composition of professional environments is associated with spouse selection. We find a significant positive association between the average education level of opposite-sex coworkers in an individual's occupation and industry and the educational attainment of the individual's spouse. This association is stronger for women and is substantially larger when spouses share the same occupation or industry. The findings show that workplace environments may contribute to educational homogamy and, in turn, to socioeconomic sorting.
- Research Article
1
- 10.1177/00027642231178281
- Jun 12, 2023
- American Behavioral Scientist
Using American Community Survey data, we describe the labor market experiences of sexual minority artists and arts majors and explore the differences in their earnings and employment. We identify workers in cohabiting relationships as being either in same-sex or opposite-sex relationships. We find that artists are more than twice as likely to be in same-sex relationships when compared to the overall workforce, largely driven by higher shares of males in same-sex relationships. A similar pattern is observed for arts majors when compared to all college graduates. We find significant heterogeneity in the share of workers in same-sex relationships across individual artist occupations and individual arts majors. In testing for differences in earnings and employment, we use regression analysis, finding an increased likelihood of unemployment for male and female artists in same-sex relationships, earnings penalties for males in same-sex relationships, and earnings premiums for females in same-sex relationships. However, like other studies using coupled data, we hesitate in using causal language in interpreting the earnings regression results due to data limitations.
- Research Article
4
- 10.1007/s10834-019-09637-z
- Jun 20, 2019
- Journal of Family and Economic Issues
Using U.S. Census data from 1960 to 2000 and American Community Survey data from 2010, this paper estimates the relationship between the husband’s educational attainment and his wife’s annual labor earnings. For full-time working wives, each additional year of completed schooling by the husband was associated with a 2% increase in his wife’s earnings. The returns to spousal education were larger when the couple worked in the same occupation. The estimated relationship has increased slightly since 1970. This increase was larger for younger wives. These results are consistent with cross-productivity and documented increases in educational homogamy.
- Research Article
10
- 10.1007/s11113-023-09754-6
- Jan 28, 2023
- Population Research and Policy Review
American Community Survey (ACS) data have become the workhorse for the empirical analysis of segregation in the U.S.A. during the past decade. The increased frequency the ACS offers over the 10-year Census, which is the main reason for its popularity, comes with an increased level of uncertainty in the published estimates due to the reduced sampling ratio of ACS (1:40 households) relative to the Census (1:6 households). This paper introduces a new approach to integrate ACS data uncertainty into the analysis of segregation. Our method relies on variance replicate estimates for the 5-year ACS and advances over existing approaches by explicitly taking into account the covariance between ACS estimates when developing sampling distributions for segregation indices. We illustrate our approach with a study of comparative segregation dynamics for 29 metropolitan statistical areas in California, using the 2010–2014 and 2015–2019. Our methods yield different results than the simulation technique described by Napierala and Denton (Demography 54(1):285–309, 2017). Taking the ACS estimate covariance into account yields larger error margins than those generated with the simulated approach when the number of census tracts is large and minority percentage is low, and the converse is true when the number of census tracts is small and minority percentage is high.
- Research Article
35
- 10.1097/ico.0000000000000362
- May 1, 2015
- Cornea
The aim of this study was to evaluate factors associated with the age of onset of herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO) in the era of varicella vaccination. A retrospective series of 400 subjects with a diagnosis of HZO, and an analysis of public health databases. Variables studied included the age at onset, period of disease onset (1996-2004 and 2005-2012), sex, smoking habits, diabetes status, autoimmunity, and immunosuppressed status. Community data were gathered from the Oklahoma Outpatient Surgery Discharge Public Use Data File and the United States Census' American Community Survey data set. The mean onset age was significantly lower for 2005 to 2012 as compared with 1996 to 2004 among females (mean decrease, 9.3 years; 95% confidence interval, 4.6-13.9 years; P < 0.0001), but the mean onset age was similar between the 2 periods among males (P = 0.640). Whereas 32.3% of the patients with zoster were <60 years old in 1996 to 2004, compared with 44.8% in the 2005 to 2012 period (χ test: P = 0.017). In the multivariate model, smokers were found to have disease onset 11.5 (95% confidence interval, 6.9-16.1) years younger than nonsmokers. The proportion of younger patients with HZO increased, whereas the institutional and community data sets demonstrate a downward shift of the average age of onset of HZO among females. This may be an effect of widespread childhood varicella vaccination. Immunosuppression and smoking were also associated with a younger age of onset of HZO. This has implications for clinical care of patients at risk for developing HZO, as well as public health and vaccination policies.
- Research Article
6
- 10.1016/j.jaad.2021.04.104
- Jun 1, 2021
- Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
Trends in utilization of reflectance confocal microscopy in the United States, 2017-2019
- Research Article
51
- 10.2139/ssrn.3249890
- Jan 1, 2018
- SSRN Electronic Journal
Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and Their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation
- Research Article
86
- 10.2139/ssrn.1824261
- Apr 27, 2011
- SSRN Electronic Journal
Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and Their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation
- Conference Article
- 10.52326/csd2024.43
- Jan 1, 2024
The paper aims to analyze the importance of professional networking and mentoring in supporting career development in the context of sustainable development. Through a theoretical and practical approach, it will explore how professional networking and mentoring can help promote sustainable career and organizational development. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive perspective and identify relevant tools and strategies for optimizing professional networks and mentoring in supporting sustainable career development.
- Book Chapter
- 10.1007/978-3-030-46951-1_3
- Nov 6, 2020
The chapter provides insight into how professional learning networks can be effectively implemented to encourage the sharing of good practice and developed to support a real world learning context within higher education. Observations will be provided into the potential use and effectiveness of professional learning networks, including setting out a framework which maps how this type of learning activity can be effectively developed and administered within higher education settings.This section provides a forward narrative for the case studies from the University of Portsmouth, which acts as a vehicle for contextualising the effectiveness and prerequisites required for effective learning networks to be established. The chapter will culminate by providing the reader with a proposed approach for the implementation of an effective learning network.
- Research Article
8
- 10.1177/0263774x15614681
- Jul 27, 2016
- Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy
Recent UK government policy initiatives have encouraged universities to seek funding from philanthropic sources. Yet, there has been little investigation into the work of the emergent Higher Education professionals expected to deliver this additional income. In this paper, we consider the role of professional networks in facilitating knowledge exchange amongst university fundraisers. Through interviews with senior UK philanthropy professionals in the 1960s universities, we identify significant variations amongst professional networks and peer groups. We argue that professional networks are multi-layered and often exclusionary. Yet, among participants, these associations provide both open spaces of learning and a means of achieving competitive advantage. Moreover, the networks permit university philanthropy professionals to develop new distinctive identities, transcending the institutional and locational setting of their employing organisations. This paper advances theoretical debates on the complexities of knowledge exchange across spatial scales and the role of these networks in the establishment of a new profession.
- Research Article
- 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag168
- May 15, 2026
- PNAS Nexus
Mobility of researchers is closely linked to knowledge diffusion, scientific innovation, and international collaboration. While prior research highlights the role of networks in shaping migration flows, the extent to which personal and institutional ties influence the direction of scientific mobility remains unclear. This study leverages large-scale digital trace data from Scopus, capturing the complete mobility trajectories, co-authorship networks, and collaboration histories of 172,000 authors over two decades (1996–2020). Using multinomial and conditional multinomial logit models, we examine scholars’ first career move by (i) classifying moves into four network-defined mobility-type categories and (ii) modeling destination choice as a function of co-authorship connection strength, institutional linkages, and institutional prestige. Our findings show that not only first- but also second-order co-authorship ties—connections to a scholar’s collaborators’ collaborators—are a strong correlate of the direction of a move. Scholars with extensive individual professional networks, particularly those migrating abroad, are more likely to move along individual ties. In contrast, scholars from prestigious institutions, and those moving within national borders, are more likely to follow institutional routes. The destination-choice models confirm that both individual and institutional ties are associated with a higher probability of moving to specific research institutions, with a larger estimated association for individual than for institutional ones. Overall, this research provides empirical evidence on how individual and institutional connections shape scholars’ first career mobility. The findings have important implications for migration theory and policy, emphasizing the need to support both individual and institutional collaboration networks to foster global scientific and knowledge exchange.
- Research Article
12
- 10.5296/jsr.v4i2.4883
- Jan 31, 2014
- Journal of Sociological Research
<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><strong>BACKGROUND: </strong>The American Community Survey (ACS) in the United States (US) collects detailed demographic information on the US population. Pressures to use year-to-year population estimates to analyze “trends” (i.e., between-year differences on the characteristics of interest) have motivated the need to explore how single- or multi-year estimates can be used to investigate changes in US population over time. <strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong>The specific aim of this manuscript is to provide empirical evidence that between-year differences in population characteristics have difference levels of uncertainty around point-estimates. <strong>METHODS:</strong> Six ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) single year files from 2005 through 2010 are used to empirically show the heterogeneity of uncertainty in “between-year differences” on level of education, for a birth cohort born between 1960 and 1970 of non-Latino-whites and Mexican Latinos/as. <strong>RESULTS: </strong>The data show the precision of the education estimate decreases as the specificity of the population increases. For example, Mexican’s 99% confidence intervals have wider and more time-varying bandwidths than non-Latino-whites. <strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Inferring meaningful population change requires the challengeable assumption that between-year differences are not the product of data artifacts. Harvesting reputable ACS data demands further research before between-year differences can be treated as “real change.” </p><p> </p>
- Research Article
1
- 10.1016/j.pmedr.2023.102373
- Aug 20, 2023
- Preventive Medicine Reports
A statewide study of disparities in local policies and tobacco, vape, and cannabis retail environments
- Book Chapter
9
- 10.1007/978-94-6209-206-8_2
- Jan 1, 2013
Partner selection and the arousal of love have interested poets, artists, and authors already for millenniums. The process of partner selection—“mate selection”, “mate seeking”, “spouse selection”, or “marital choice”—has proven quite an interesting research target especially in the United States (Hatfield, Benson, & Rapson, 2012). Research has often been relatively narrow studies with small data but they have presented various theories to explain the start of a new relationship.KeywordsPersonality TraitIntimate RelationshipExchange TheoryPhysical AttractivenessMarriage MarketThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
- Research Article
1
- 10.1007/s12110-026-09511-6
- Dec 1, 2025
- Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)
The study of partner preferences in historical populations is constrained by the limited information available in historical sources. These limitations make it difficult to assess the role of characteristics such as physical attractiveness or psychological traits in spouse selection. Instead, this study examines patterns of marriage partner choice among 19th‑century residents of Poznań, Poland, with particular attention to observable factors including place of origin, occupation, denomination, and age at marriage. The research material contained individual information on 15,652 marriages contracted between 1830 and 1900 in seven Poznań parishes. The partners were divided into four categories based on their marital status: first marriages, marriages of remarried men or women, and second marriages. The analyses included correlation, linear regression, Analysis of Variance, and chi-square tests. First and second marriages differed in the age at marriage of men and women, suggesting that motivations and criteria for marriage changed with life stages and marital history. Specifically, individuals entering the first marriages were the youngest, while divorced or widowed individuals who married within their own marriage category were older than those who married someone who had never been married. First marriage individuals had smaller age differences, but the lowest age correlations compared to all other categories, except remarried women who often married men of similar age or even younger. Across all marriage categories, partners exhibited strong homogamy in denominational, geographical, and social backgrounds, emphasizing the influence of social and cultural factors on marital choices. The origin of the spouses played an important role in partner selection, revealing the impact of the geographical context on the timing of marriage. Specifically, marriages were delayed when at least one partner originated from an urban area and in migrants compared to local population. Marital decisions were also shaped by age and social position, e.g., older men with higher socioeconomic status were more likely to marry younger women. However, these partner selection criteria differed between first and subsequent marriages. The findings of our study support established concepts of marriage patterns while illustrating how biological considerations, geographical contexts, social norms, and economic forces jointly shaped personal choices in historical societies.