Bosick’s current work explores the relationship between criminal offending and the transition to adulthood experiences of urban, at-risk youth. A separate project examines the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the transition to adulthood experiences of a sample of primarily African-American single mothers who were displaced by the storm. Other projects investigate the movement of underrepresented minority students into graduate degree programs, disparities in police reporting among juvenile delinquents, and adolescent predictors of persistent offending.
Dr. Candan Duran-Aydintug is currently working on two research projects.
In one project she is working on a project with Adams County Safe House staff members.
Using focus groups and semi-structured face-to-face interviews, she is hoping to gain an in-depth understanding of how shelter staff constructs their clients’ identities and their narratives as they grapple with the common question: “Why do they stay in or go back to abusive relationships?”
The research, “Safe House Members’ Understanding and Social Construction of Their Clients’ Identities and Accounts” is being supported by a grant from the UCD Center for Faculty Development.
In this research, Dr. Duran plans to answer the following questions:
• Why do shelter staff members believe that these women go back?
• How do shelter staff members describe these women, their lives and the choices they make?
• In working with these women toward empowerment (the shelter’s main goal), what obstacles do they encounter and what role do they attribute to the women in the existence of these obstacles and in giving into them?
These questions will lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon, may result in more focused training of shelter staff and certainly will carry legal and policy implications.
The second project is on Stay Home Fathers and on that I am working with Charlene Shelton, UCD Sociology MA graduate.
Using a phenomenological approach, their aim is to gain an in-depth understanding how fathers who stay home connect with their children how they define their role as “fathers”, what support groups they have, what obstacles they encounter, and how the negotiations are made between mothers and fathers.
Dr. Lucy Dwight is co-authoring a report entitled "Understanding and Responding to Female Juvenile Offenders in Colorado" for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
Dr. Flaming's current research concerns Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRC). Two questions guide this research. First, what are the housing options available to proactive elders who cannot remain at home and either cannot afford to live in a CCRC or are not willing to risk loss of the entrance fee? There are new retirement communities now available and are the focus of my current research. Second, what are the perceptions and knowledge of housing options of elderly who still remain in their homes but are proactive in their plans for the future? A review of life course research suggests the value of case studies of current and prospective CCRC residents which feature their life histories and expectations of housing in their future.
Dr. Paula Fomby's area of research is on family demography, especially family structure and child well-being; poverty in the United States; immigrants and immigration.
Fomby, Paula and Estacion, Angela (forthcoming). “Cohabitation and Children’s Externalizing Behavior in Latino Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family.
Fomby, Paula and Osborne, Cynthia (forthcoming). “The Influence of Union Instability and Union Quality on Children’s Aggressive Behavior.” Social Science Research. Available online at doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2010.02.006.
Fomby, Paula; Mollborn, Stefanie; and Sennott, Christie A (2010). “Race/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Family Instability on Adolescents’ Risk Behavior.” Journal of Marriage and Family. 72:2 (234-253).
Fomby, Paula and Cherlin, Andrew J (2007). “Family Instability and Child Well-Being.” American Sociological Review 72:2 (181-204).
Dr. Akihiko Hirose is currently working on three main lines of research.
1. Gastro-Orientalism: this project with Kay Pih (CSU Northridge) examines how the authenticity of East Asian ethnic food is constructed through the identification of a racialized other, people whose strangeness authenticates the exotic quality of the restaurant. The authenticity of ethnic food is discursively produced by the characterization of restaurants, chefs, and clientele as having a racial meaning of the ‘Oriental’ other. Such racialized authenticity of the scene is simultaneously constructed with the quality of a cultural consumer ‘self’ which is linked to the notion of whiteness.
2. Theory of Structure and Agency: this theoretical project attempts to identify reasons why the problem of the structure of agency in sociological theory has not been solved. Structure is often assigned a normative tone that supposedly interferes with humanistic, individual agency. Sociology, being unable to disassociate itself from culturally normative discourse about optimistic human nature, proceeded with the project of structure and agency to maintain either antagonism or a normative reconciliation between society and the individual.
3. Social and Cultural Capital in Immigrant Networks: by relying on the concepts of social and cultural capital, this project investigates factors affecting the availability of health insurance, the accessibility of health care, and the dissemination of the relevant information among low-wage immigrant workers.
Dr. Patrick M. Krueger is working on a series of papers that explore the social determinants of health behaviors. Although physicians and the public often think of behaviors as something that result from individuals' choices, Krueger's work draws attention to the role of family and socioeconomic factors for shaping behaviors. For example, clinicians who deal with sleep problems often counsel their patients to sleep in quiet rooms and to go to bed at the same time each night, but ignore the broader social context in which sleep occurs. Krueger's recent paper with Elliot Friedman (University of Wisconsin), titled "Sleep Duration in the United States: A Cross-sectional Population-based Study" (published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2009) draws attention to significant social factors that shape sleep hours. Adults who work long hours, have young children, have low levels of education, or have few economic resources are more likely to sleep six or fewer hours in a usual night.