Reuben J Thomas
Biographic Data
| ID | 3601320 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Reuben J Thomas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Reuben J |
| FAMILY NAME | Thomas |
| SIGNATURE | THOMAS R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0009-0007-8471-5327 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 577 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Interpreting discordant results in mixed-method research: Data triangulation, participant voices, and epistemic issues in health research
In this article, we discuss unexpected methodological challenges revealed during interim analysis of data from a mixed-methods study with female Mexican immigrants. ' Tertulias ' was a randomized controlled trial of an innovative peer support group model for reducing social isolation and depression among women immigrants from Mexico using a Community-Driven, Community-Engaged Research (CD-CEnR) approach. We describe discordant data obtained using…
Zoom & WhatsApp digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) enhance community engaged research with women immigrants from Mexico
This article demonstrates how digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Zoom/WhatsApp) unexpectedly and counterintuitively proved to be valuable tools for community-engaged health research when, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were integrated into a research study testing a peer support group intervention with female immigrants from Mexico. Because of pandemic restrictions, we changed the study protocol to hold meet…
Revealing the power of peer support in the lives of women immigrants from Mexico
To address high rates of social isolation and depression among female Mexican immigrants, we are testing Tertulias (Spanish, conversational gatherings), an innovative peer support group intervention. Our anthropologically inspired theoretical architecture integrates gendered emplacement theory, women's funds of knowledge, and cultural and contextual situatedness. We used a community-driven, community-engaged research (CD-CEnR) design, involving 5…
Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting
We present data from a nationally representative 2017 survey of American adults. For heterosexual couples in the United States, meeting online has become the most popular way couples meet, eclipsing meeting through friends for the first time around 2013. Moreover, among the couples who meet online, the proportion who have met through the mediation of third persons has declined over time. We find that Internet meeting is displacing the roles that …
Online Exogamy Reconsidered: Estimating the Internet’s Effects on Racial, Educational, Religious, Political and Age Assortative Mating
As the Internet’s role in creating new couples continues to expand, now accounting for over a third of recently-formed U.S. couples, its impact on endogamy is increasingly consequential. While there are good reasons to expect greater diversity from online romantic sources, there are also good sociological reasons to predict greater assortativity online. Increases in the rates of interracial and interreligious couples within the U.S. have occurred…
Sources of Friendship and Structurally Induced Homophily across the Life Course
How people meet new friends changes throughout life in ways that change the potential for diverse friendships. This study presents results from the first U.S. survey with data on how respondents met their friends, specifically the two nonfamily friends they most often socialize with. The most common sources of new friendships shift across life from the dominance of schooling during youth, to the centrality of work in midlife, to neighbors and vol…
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation…
Population Size, Network Density, and the Emergence of Inherited Inequality
The inheritance of social standing from one generation to the next did not occur for most of the time that humans have lived, but became common only once human societies grew beyond a certain size. This paper offers a theory of how social inheritance may have resulted from this change in size, simply through the accompanying decrease in social network density. This decrease brought about differentiation in social network positions, creating struc…
Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
This article explores how the efficiency of Internet search is changing the way Americans find romantic partners. We use a new data source, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey. Results show that for 60 years, family and grade school have been steadily declining in their influence over the dating market. In the past 15 years, the rise of the Internet has partly displaced not only family and school, but also neighborhood, friends, and the…
Bowling Young: How Youth Voluntary Associations Influence Adult Political Participation
Do the voluntary activities of youth increase political engagement in adulthood? Political participation is typically characterized by inertia: reproduced within families, highly correlated with social class, and largely stable after the onset of adulthood. This research illustrates an element of political socialization that occurs just before the transition into full citizenship, that mimics adult civic life, and that can be available regardless…
Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
This article explores how the efficiency of Internet search is changing the way Americans find romantic partners. We use a new data source, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey. Results show that for 60 years, family and grade school have been steadily declining in their influence over the dating market. In the past 15 years, the rise of the Internet has partly displaced not only family and school, but also neighborhood, friends, and the…
Bowling Young: How Youth Voluntary Associations Influence Adult Political Participation
Do the voluntary activities of youth increase political engagement in adulthood? Political participation is typically characterized by inertia: reproduced within families, highly correlated with social class, and largely stable after the onset of adulthood. This research illustrates an element of political socialization that occurs just before the transition into full citizenship, that mimics adult civic life, and that can be available regardless…
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation…
Online Exogamy Reconsidered: Estimating the Internet’s Effects on Racial, Educational, Religious, Political and Age Assortative Mating
As the Internet’s role in creating new couples continues to expand, now accounting for over a third of recently-formed U.S. couples, its impact on endogamy is increasingly consequential. While there are good reasons to expect greater diversity from online romantic sources, there are also good sociological reasons to predict greater assortativity online. Increases in the rates of interracial and interreligious couples within the U.S. have occurred…
Sources of Friendship and Structurally Induced Homophily across the Life Course
How people meet new friends changes throughout life in ways that change the potential for diverse friendships. This study presents results from the first U.S. survey with data on how respondents met their friends, specifically the two nonfamily friends they most often socialize with. The most common sources of new friendships shift across life from the dominance of schooling during youth, to the centrality of work in midlife, to neighbors and vol…
Zoom & WhatsApp digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) enhance community engaged research with women immigrants from Mexico
This article demonstrates how digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Zoom/WhatsApp) unexpectedly and counterintuitively proved to be valuable tools for community-engaged health research when, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were integrated into a research study testing a peer support group intervention with female immigrants from Mexico. Because of pandemic restrictions, we changed the study protocol to hold meet…
Revealing the power of peer support in the lives of women immigrants from Mexico
To address high rates of social isolation and depression among female Mexican immigrants, we are testing Tertulias (Spanish, conversational gatherings), an innovative peer support group intervention. Our anthropologically inspired theoretical architecture integrates gendered emplacement theory, women's funds of knowledge, and cultural and contextual situatedness. We used a community-driven, community-engaged research (CD-CEnR) design, involving 5…
Bowling Young: How Youth Voluntary Associations Influence Adult Political Participation
Do the voluntary activities of youth increase political engagement in adulthood? Political participation is typically characterized by inertia: reproduced within families, highly correlated with social class, and largely stable after the onset of adulthood. This research illustrates an element of political socialization that occurs just before the transition into full citizenship, that mimics adult civic life, and that can be available regardless…
Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary
This article explores how the efficiency of Internet search is changing the way Americans find romantic partners. We use a new data source, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey. Results show that for 60 years, family and grade school have been steadily declining in their influence over the dating market. In the past 15 years, the rise of the Internet has partly displaced not only family and school, but also neighborhood, friends, and the…
Population Size, Network Density, and the Emergence of Inherited Inequality
The inheritance of social standing from one generation to the next did not occur for most of the time that humans have lived, but became common only once human societies grew beyond a certain size. This paper offers a theory of how social inheritance may have resulted from this change in size, simply through the accompanying decrease in social network density. This decrease brought about differentiation in social network positions, creating struc…
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation…
Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting
We present data from a nationally representative 2017 survey of American adults. For heterosexual couples in the United States, meeting online has become the most popular way couples meet, eclipsing meeting through friends for the first time around 2013. Moreover, among the couples who meet online, the proportion who have met through the mediation of third persons has declined over time. We find that Internet meeting is displacing the roles that …
Online Exogamy Reconsidered: Estimating the Internet’s Effects on Racial, Educational, Religious, Political and Age Assortative Mating
As the Internet’s role in creating new couples continues to expand, now accounting for over a third of recently-formed U.S. couples, its impact on endogamy is increasingly consequential. While there are good reasons to expect greater diversity from online romantic sources, there are also good sociological reasons to predict greater assortativity online. Increases in the rates of interracial and interreligious couples within the U.S. have occurred…
Sources of Friendship and Structurally Induced Homophily across the Life Course
How people meet new friends changes throughout life in ways that change the potential for diverse friendships. This study presents results from the first U.S. survey with data on how respondents met their friends, specifically the two nonfamily friends they most often socialize with. The most common sources of new friendships shift across life from the dominance of schooling during youth, to the centrality of work in midlife, to neighbors and vol…
Zoom & WhatsApp digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) enhance community engaged research with women immigrants from Mexico
This article demonstrates how digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Zoom/WhatsApp) unexpectedly and counterintuitively proved to be valuable tools for community-engaged health research when, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were integrated into a research study testing a peer support group intervention with female immigrants from Mexico. Because of pandemic restrictions, we changed the study protocol to hold meet…
Revealing the power of peer support in the lives of women immigrants from Mexico
To address high rates of social isolation and depression among female Mexican immigrants, we are testing Tertulias (Spanish, conversational gatherings), an innovative peer support group intervention. Our anthropologically inspired theoretical architecture integrates gendered emplacement theory, women's funds of knowledge, and cultural and contextual situatedness. We used a community-driven, community-engaged research (CD-CEnR) design, involving 5…
Interpreting discordant results in mixed-method research: Data triangulation, participant voices, and epistemic issues in health research
In this article, we discuss unexpected methodological challenges revealed during interim analysis of data from a mixed-methods study with female Mexican immigrants. ' Tertulias ' was a randomized controlled trial of an innovative peer support group model for reducing social isolation and depression among women immigrants from Mexico using a Community-Driven, Community-Engaged Research (CD-CEnR) approach. We describe discordant data obtained using…
Psychology (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Social Capital and Networks (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Immigration (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · The Internet (3 works) · Community Health and Development (2 works)