Sociologists from Ohio State University (OSU) have mapped the structure of the adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents over 18 months. And they were quite surprised by the results, which showed that, unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of very sexually active people at the high school. Instead, the romantic and sexual network at the school created long chains of connections that spread out through the community, according to this OSU news release. These results have important implications for preventing the spread of STDs in teenage populations. Unlike in adult populations, in which there are cores of sexually active people who are the main conduits of disease and you can focus prevention efforts on them, you need to educate the whole teenage population. Read more about this very interesting research...
Here are the opening paragraphs of this news release.
For the first time, sociologists have mapped the romantic and sexual relationships of an entire high school over 18 months, providing evidence that these adolescent networks may be structured differently than researchers previously thought.
The results showed that, unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of very sexually active people at the high school. There were not many students who had many partners and who provided links to the rest of the community.
Instead, the romantic and sexual network at the school created long chains of connections that spread out through the community, with few places where students directly shared the same partners with each other. But they were indirectly linked, partner to partner to partner. One component of the network linked 288 students -- more than half of those who were romantically active at the school -- in one long chain. (Check this figure for a representation of the network.)
Below are two other images showing these sexual networks (Credit for images and legends: American Journal of Sociology, University of Chicago Press)
Examining the pattern of indirect ties reveals the level of connectivity and redundancy of the network through which disease could travel. While [the above] figure reveals the existence of clusters of romantically involved students, it does not reveal how robustly connected these clusters are to one another. In general, structures like spanning trees are considered structurally fragile because the deletion of a single tie or a single node can break a large component into disconnected subgraphs. [...] Building from the temporally ordered indirect network shown in [the above] figure, [this other one below] reveals how the structure of indirect ties breaks into a set of smaller, mutually reachable sets when cut-points (single pathways between nodes) are eliminated.
Now, let's look at some raw numbers about this long experiment.
Researchers interviewed 832 of the approximately 1,000 students at the school. Students were asked to identify their sexual and romantic partners in the past 18 months from a roster of other students attending their school. (Romantic relationships were ones in which the students named the other as a romantic partner. Non-romantic sexual partners were those in which the participants said they had sexual intercourse, but were not dating).
Slightly more than half of all students reported having sexual intercourse, a rate comparable to the national average. The researchers mapped the network structure of the 573 students involved in a romantic or sexual relationship.
Please read the full news release for more details. Here, I just want to attract your attention to another surprise phenomenon.
The surprising thing about the network at Jefferson High was the near absence of cycling -- situations in which people have relationships with others close to them on the network, Moody said.
The lack of cycling seems traceable to rules that adolescents have about who they will not date. The teens will not date (from a female perspective) one’s old boyfriend’s current girlfriend’s old boyfriend. This would be considered taking "seconds" in a relationship.
Not dating "one’s old boyfriend’s current girlfriend’s old boyfriend"!!! I doubt I will ever be able to compose such an expression.
For more information, this research work has been published by the American Journal of Sociology (Volume 110, Number 1, Pages 44-91, July 2004) under the almost poetic title "Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks." Here is a link to the abstract.
This article describes the structure of the adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents residing in a midsized town in the midwestern United States. Precise images and measures of network structure are derived from reports of relationships that occurred over a period of 18 months between 1993 and 1995. The study offers a comparison of the structural characteristics of the observed network to simulated networks conditioned on the distribution of ties; the observed structure reveals networks characterized by longer contact chains and fewer cycles than expected. This article identifies the micromechanisms that generate networks with structural features similar to the observed network. Implications for disease transmission dynamics and social policy are explored.
You also can read the full paper (PDF format, 48 pages, 519 KB). The illustrations above have been extracted from pages 18 and 20 of this document.
Sources: Ohio State University, January 24, 2005; and various websites
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