J W Neal
Biographic Data
| ID | 5145 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J W Neal |
| GIVEN NAMES | J W |
| FAMILY NAME | Neal |
| SIGNATURE | NEAL J W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7749-8121 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 400 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Recommendations for conducting ethical network research
Ethical considerations in social network studies are grounded in the general principles of human subjects’ research, including avoidance of harm, promotion of justice, equitable distribution of burdens and benefits, respect for human dignity, and protection of confidentiality. To help navigate these challenges, this article presents recommendations for conducting ethical network research, developed by a multi-disciplinary and multi-national worki…
Selecting key opinion leaders under practical challenges
When undertaking a community intervention, interventionists frequently recruit the help of community members who serve as key opinion leaders (KOLs). However, selecting a team of KOLs can be challenging because the evaluation of potential teams must balance considerations of members’ availability and diversity, as well as the team’s breadth of network coverage and cost of recruitment. This paper has two goals: to review the practical challenges t…
Network interventions to improve search and facilitate research-practice transfer
Tracking types of non‐parents in the United States
Background Efforts to document different types of non‐parents have distinguished those who are voluntarily childless, involuntarily childless, and temporarily childless. However, an expanded approach is needed to incorporate the role of non‐biological children and to classify individuals who do not want children despite infecundity or who are undecided about wanting children. Objective This study operationalizes the Attitudes, Behavior, and Circu…
Estimating the percentage of men who are childfree using the National Survey of Family Growth
Objective This comment aims to clarify trends in the percentage of men in the United States who are childfree (i.e., do not have and do not want children). Background Bozick (2023, Journal of Marriage and Family , 85 (1), 293–304) used data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to examine trends in the percentage of men who are childfree during the first two decades of the 2000s, concluding that there was a considerable increase. Howev…
What predicts children’s perceptions of intergroup connections within the classroom
Intergroup connections play a role in fostering positive developmental outcomes. Scholarship has been limited in exploring children's perceptions of such relationships. We apply cognitive social structures and network assortativity coefficients to capture third through eighth grade children's perceptions of intergroup connections related to gender, socio-economic status, and race/ethnicity within their classroom networks. Of the 99 participants, …
Exploring Facilitators and Disruptors of Polarization During Adolescence Within Contested Settings
Today’s adolescents must find ways to engage in a shared reality, especially in settings marked by intergroup conflict, as a prerequisite for reducing conflict and building collective solutions to societal problems. Polarization processes (epistemic) have been notably overlooked within this critical developmental period. This qualitative case study addresses this gap by identifying key socializing actors and settings within established theoretica…
Personality, political party identification, and partisan news consumption
Using social network analysis to identify peer coaches in the real world of elementary schools
Coaching can increase elementary school teachers’ implementation of evidence‐based classroom practices, including equity‐centered or culturally responsive practices. However, coaching by personnel external to schools can be expensive and difficult to sustain. Community science principles and social network research suggest the potential of influential peer leaders in schools to accelerate implementation. In the first phase of a multi‐year project…
Understanding the developmental transition between parallel and social play during preschool
Preschoolers are expected to transition from parallel play, where they engage in similar activities next to peers, to social play, where they engage in direct interactions with peers. We use longitudinal, multiplex social network analysis to examine the transition between observed parallel and social play over a school year in a 3-year-old classroom ( N = 25, 45% girls, 48% White) and a 4-year-old classroom ( N = 28, 42.86% girls, 60.71% White). …
Trends in the Prevalence of Childfree Women in the Philippines, 1993-2022
Research has documented trends in, and demographic associations with, the prevalence of childfree women in multiple countries. However, despite significant media coverage, little is known about childfree women in the Philippines. We use population-representative data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program to investigate changes in the prevalence of childfree women age 15-49 in the Philippines between 1993 and 2022 (Pooled N = 120,3…
How many friends do youth nominate? A meta-analysis of gender, age, and geographic differences in average outdegree centrality
A Framework for Studying Adults who Neither have Nor Want Children
The population of adults who neither have nor want children is large and growing. However, it remains poorly understood because its members can be difficult to identify in traditional demographic surveys, and existing research on the population uses a range of methods and terms. In this paper, we review current practices, then to bring a level of consistency and comparability to this literature, we propose a common framework for studying this pop…
Methodological moderators of average outdegree centrality
Empirical articles vary considerably in how they measure child and adolescent friendship networks. This meta-analysis examines four methodological moderators of children’s and adolescents’ average outdegree centrality in friendship networks: boundary specification, operational definition of friendship, unlimited vs. fixed choice design, and roster vs. free recall design. Specifically, multi-level random effects models were conducted using 261 ave…
Critical Consciousness
Critical consciousness represents the analysis of inequitable social conditions, the motivation to effect change, and the action taken to redress perceived inequities. Scholarship and practice in the last two decades have highlighted critical consciousness as a key developmental competency for those experiencing marginalization and as a pathway for navigating and resisting oppression. This competency is more urgent than ever given the current soc…
Childfree in a Family-Friendly Neighborhood
Zachary P. Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal on preferences and perceptions
Understanding brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners
Background: Brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners (BIBS) bridge research and policy or practice, and can elevate the role of evidence in decision making. However, there is limited integration of the literature across different sectors to understand the strategies that BIBS use, the skills needed to carry out these strategies, and the expected outcomes of these strategies. Aims and objectives: In this review, we characterise the strategie…
Defining brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners
The role of full- and half-day preschool attendance in the formation of children's social networks
Inferring signed networks from preschoolers' observed parallel and social play
That'll move the chains
Network selection and influence effects on children’s and adolescents’ internalizing behaviors and peer victimization
Academic development and disparities in linguistically diverse middle school classrooms
As evidence mounts of persistent disparities in academic outcomes by English learner (“EL”) classification status, it is critical that we better understand how to create more equitable classroom learning environments. The present study investigates the role of classroom peer academic collaboration networks within linguistically diverse, “English‐medium” middle school classrooms. Across 29 classrooms, 491 early adolescents (including 158 EL studen…
Social development quartet
This Social Development quartet highlights how social network approaches can enhance developmental researchers’ understanding of the benefits of intergroup connections for diverse youth. The introduction provides an overview of the four included articles, highlighting their common and unique contributions to the literature. The first article describes four relational mechanisms that could explain the benefits of intergroup connections and summari…
A systematic review of social network methods in high impact developmental psychology journals
Although researchers have collected social network data to characterize childhood and adolescent relationships since the 1930s, an expansion of social network analytic techniques has led to the rapid growth of social network data collection in the field of developmental psychology. Despite this growth, reflection on social network methods in developmental psychology has not kept pace. This systematic review aims to understand how articles publish…
Nested or Networked? Future Directions for Ecological Systems Theory
B ronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory ( EST ) is among the most widely adopted theoretical frameworks for studying individuals in ecological contexts. In its traditional formulation, different levels of ecological systems are viewed as nested within one another. In this article, we use Simmel's notion of intersecting social circles and Bronfenbrenner's earlier writing on social networks to develop an alternative ‘networked’ model that inste…
The (In)compatibility of Diversity and Sense of Community
Community psychologists are interested in creating contexts that promote both respect for diversity and sense of community. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has uncovered a community‐diversity dialectic wherein the contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity often run in opposition to those that foster sense of community. More specifically, within neighborhoods, residential integration provides opportunities for intergro…
Transforming Individual Civic Engagement into Community Collective Efficacy
Collective efficacy is defined as residents’ perceived collective capacity to take coordinated and interdependent action on issues that affect their lives. This study explored factors associated with neighborhood collective efficacy among residents. Utilizing a national sample of 4,120 urban households provided by Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connection Initiative, we investigated the mediating role of residents’ perceptions of bonding soci…
Linking the Levels
In this article, we assert that relationships and networks are of paramount importance for understanding and improving settings, neighborhoods, communities, and larger social systems. Here, we claim that network and relational perspectives can provide conceptual and empirical ‘links’ between levels of analysis, more fully reflecting a transactional view. We also describe some of the sophisticated methodologies that can be employed in empirical st…
Power as a Structural Phenomenon
In an effort to inform empowerment theory and research, this paper provides a structural conception of power. First, we examine the essential features present in three dominant conceptions of power in community psychology: social power, psychopolitical power, and relational power. Next, commonalities in the key features of power identified by these conceptions are explored and pared down to yield a more parsimonious conception of power that is gr…
Transforming social cohesion into informal social control
This study investigates the relationship between perceptions of social cohesion and informal social control within U.S. urban neighborhoods and adds neighborhood racial homogeneity to investigate the ways in which racial homogeneity may contribute to effects on informal social control, as theorized by social disorganization researchers. Data from the Annie E. Casey’s Making Connections initiative (level 1) and the 2010 decennial census (level 2) …
Hanging out
This paper explores associations between two demographic characteristics (i.e., sex and grade level) and the peer network features (i.e., size, density, and demographic homophily) of 144 third through eighth grade students (ages 8-15) in an urban, US elementary school with considerable diversity in race and socioeconomic status. The results offer only partial support for the two cultures theory, as sex differences in network size attenuated with …
Kracking' the Missing Data Problem
Social network analysis can enrich school-based research on children's peer relationships. Unfortunately, accurate network analysis requires near-complete data on all students and is underutilized in school-based research because of low rates of parental consent. This article advocates Krackhardt's cognitive social structures (CSS) as a solution to the problem of missing data in social network research. It compares CSS to other common strategies …
Expediting the Analysis of Qualitative Data in Evaluation
Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators’ needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and assessment methods by proposing procedures that evaluators can use to expedite the coding and analysi…
Social Aggression and Social Position in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence
Because the mechanism of harm used in social aggression generally involves the manipulation of peer relationships, it is important to consider its social correlates. The current paper uses social dominance theory as a frame to review developmental research on social aggression perpetration and three indicators of social position: sociometric status, perceived popularity, and social network position. Consistent with social dominance theory, social…
The Public School as a Public Good
Individuals’ satisfaction with their community can play an important role in urban politics, and the quality of public schools is a key predictor of community satisfaction. However, most discussions of public schools focus only on their educational and social benefits for children, although others expand the scope to consider benefits to their parents as well. In this paper, we take a broader view, arguing that local public schools are providers …
Network Analysis in Community Psychology
Highlights Network analysis is ideally suited for community psychology research because it focuses on context. Use of network analysis in community psychology is growing. Network analysis in community psychology has employed some potentially problematic practices. Recommended practices are identified to improve network analysis in community psychology
Exploring Empowerment in Settings
This paper brings together two trends in the empowerment literature—understanding empowerment in settings and understanding empowerment as relational—by examining what makes settings empowering from a social network perspective. Specifically, extending Neal and Neal's (Am J Community Psychol 48(3/4):157–167, 2011 ) conception of network power, an empowering setting is defined as one in which (1) actors have existing relationships that allow for t…
Brokering the Research–Practice Gap
Despite widespread recognition of a research–practice gap in multiple service sectors, less is known about how pre‐existing communication channels facilitate the flow of information between researchers and practitioners. In the current study, we applied an existing typology of brokerage developed by Gould and Fernandez (Sociol Methodol 19:89–126, 1989 ) to examine what types of brokerage facilitate information spread between researchers and educa…
Classroom Peer Relationships and Behavioral Engagement in Elementary School
Applying social capital and systems theories of social processes, we examine the role of the classroom peer context in the behavioral engagement of low‐income students ( N = 80) in urban elementary school classrooms ( N = 22). Systematic child observations were conducted to assess behavioral engagement among second to fifth graders in the fall and spring of the same school year. Classroom observations, teacher and child questionnaires, and social…
Channels of Change
This study informs community science, and seeks to narrow the research-to-practice gap, by examining how the interpersonal networks within a setting influence individuals' use of interventions. More specifically, it explores the role of two network mechanisms-cohesion and structural similarity-in urban elementary school teachers' use of interventions designed to improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Lagged regression models exami…
Network ties and mean lies
The current study considers how the structure of peer networks facilitates or constrains children's opportunities to engage in relationally aggressive behaviors such as social exclusion and rumor spreading. Specifically, the influence of two network features, centrality and density, on relational aggression are explored using grade‐level behavioral and social network data collected on a demographically diverse sample of 144 third through eighth g…
An Examination of Network Position and Childhood Relational Aggression
Applying resource control theory and social exchange theory, we examined the social network conditions under which elementary age children were likely to engage in relational aggression. Data on classroom peer networks and peer‐nominated behaviors were collected on 671 second‐ through fourth‐grade children in 34 urban, low‐income classrooms. Nested regression models with robust cluster standard errors demonstrated that the association between chi…
Aggression Norms in the Classroom Social Network
In a cross‐sectional sample of African‐American 2nd–4th grade students ( N = 681), we examine the moderating effects of classroom overt and relational aggression norms on peers’ social acceptance of classmates who exhibit overt and relational aggression in urban schools. Extending theory and research on classroom norms, we integrate social network data to adjust aggression norms based on children’s direct and indirect connections in the classroom…
Seeing Eye to Eye
This study examines the association between classroom characteristics and teacher-student agreement in perceptions of students' classroom peer networks. Social network, peer nomination, and observational data were collected from a sample of second through fourth grade teachers (N=33) and students (N=669) in 33 classrooms across five high poverty urban schools. Results demonstrate that variation in teacher-student agreement on the structure of stu…
Examining the many dimensions of children's popularity
Using peer nomination data, this study explored predictors of popularity among 144 third- through eighth-grade students in a diverse urban school. Findings demonstrated that children were more likely to be nominated as popular by peers when they exhibited higher levels of prosocial behavior or aggression. Furthermore, a significant interaction between prosocial behavior and aggression predicted popularity. Children with high levels of peer-nomina…
Codevelopment of preschoolers’ temperament traits and social play networks over an entire school year
Children enter preschool with temperament traits that may shape or be shaped by their social interactions in the peer setting. We collected classroom observational measures of positive emotionality (PE), negative emotionality (NE), effortful control (EC), and peer social play relationships from 2 complete preschool classrooms (N = 53 children) over the course of an entire school year. Using longitudinal social network analysis, we found evidence …
How many friends do youth nominate? A meta-analysis of gender, age, and geographic differences in average outdegree centrality
Scaling-Up Youth-Led Social Justice Efforts through an Online School-Based Social Network
The exploration of social networking sites (SNS) in promoting social change efforts offers great potential within the field of community psychology. Online communities on SNS provide opportunities for bridging across groups, thus fostering the exchange of novel ideas and practices. Currently, there have only been limited efforts to examine SNS within the context of youth-led efforts. To explore the potential of SNS to facilitate the diffusion of …
Is Community Psychology “Too Insular”? A Network Analysis of Journal Citations
The current study uses social network analysis to explore one aspect of cross‐disciplinary connections in community psychology–citations from articles published in community psychology's main journals (i.e., American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology ) to allied disciplines in 2009. Results indicate that although community psychology journals cited a wide range of disciplines, their levels of citation to any indi…
Kracking' the Missing Data Problem
Social network analysis can enrich school-based research on children's peer relationships. Unfortunately, accurate network analysis requires near-complete data on all students and is underutilized in school-based research because of low rates of parental consent. This article advocates Krackhardt's cognitive social structures (CSS) as a solution to the problem of missing data in social network research. It compares CSS to other common strategies …
Social Aggression and Social Position in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence
Because the mechanism of harm used in social aggression generally involves the manipulation of peer relationships, it is important to consider its social correlates. The current paper uses social dominance theory as a frame to review developmental research on social aggression perpetration and three indicators of social position: sociometric status, perceived popularity, and social network position. Consistent with social dominance theory, social…
Network ties and mean lies
The current study considers how the structure of peer networks facilitates or constrains children's opportunities to engage in relationally aggressive behaviors such as social exclusion and rumor spreading. Specifically, the influence of two network features, centrality and density, on relational aggression are explored using grade‐level behavioral and social network data collected on a demographically diverse sample of 144 third through eighth g…
Seeing Eye to Eye
This study examines the association between classroom characteristics and teacher-student agreement in perceptions of students' classroom peer networks. Social network, peer nomination, and observational data were collected from a sample of second through fourth grade teachers (N=33) and students (N=669) in 33 classrooms across five high poverty urban schools. Results demonstrate that variation in teacher-student agreement on the structure of stu…
Hanging out
This paper explores associations between two demographic characteristics (i.e., sex and grade level) and the peer network features (i.e., size, density, and demographic homophily) of 144 third through eighth grade students (ages 8-15) in an urban, US elementary school with considerable diversity in race and socioeconomic status. The results offer only partial support for the two cultures theory, as sex differences in network size attenuated with …
Channels of Change
This study informs community science, and seeks to narrow the research-to-practice gap, by examining how the interpersonal networks within a setting influence individuals' use of interventions. More specifically, it explores the role of two network mechanisms-cohesion and structural similarity-in urban elementary school teachers' use of interventions designed to improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Lagged regression models exami…
Power as a Structural Phenomenon
In an effort to inform empowerment theory and research, this paper provides a structural conception of power. First, we examine the essential features present in three dominant conceptions of power in community psychology: social power, psychopolitical power, and relational power. Next, commonalities in the key features of power identified by these conceptions are explored and pared down to yield a more parsimonious conception of power that is gr…
The Multiple Meanings of Peer Groups in Social Cognitive Mapping
Social cognitive mapping (SCM) is a common approach to identifying peer groups in developmental research. However, this approach involves three stages that each implies a unique conception of peer group. This article aims to bring conceptual clarity to the identification of peer groups using SCM by demonstrating how the meaning of peer groups differs at each stage of SCM. First, in the data collecting stage, interaction groups identify sets of ch…
Opening the Black Box of Social Cognitive Mapping
The Public School as a Public Good
Individuals’ satisfaction with their community can play an important role in urban politics, and the quality of public schools is a key predictor of community satisfaction. However, most discussions of public schools focus only on their educational and social benefits for children, although others expand the scope to consider benefits to their parents as well. In this paper, we take a broader view, arguing that local public schools are providers …
An Examination of Network Position and Childhood Relational Aggression
Applying resource control theory and social exchange theory, we examined the social network conditions under which elementary age children were likely to engage in relational aggression. Data on classroom peer networks and peer‐nominated behaviors were collected on 671 second‐ through fourth‐grade children in 34 urban, low‐income classrooms. Nested regression models with robust cluster standard errors demonstrated that the association between chi…
Nested or Networked? Future Directions for Ecological Systems Theory
B ronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory ( EST ) is among the most widely adopted theoretical frameworks for studying individuals in ecological contexts. In its traditional formulation, different levels of ecological systems are viewed as nested within one another. In this article, we use Simmel's notion of intersecting social circles and Bronfenbrenner's earlier writing on social networks to develop an alternative ‘networked’ model that inste…
Classroom Peer Relationships and Behavioral Engagement in Elementary School
Applying social capital and systems theories of social processes, we examine the role of the classroom peer context in the behavioral engagement of low‐income students ( N = 80) in urban elementary school classrooms ( N = 22). Systematic child observations were conducted to assess behavioral engagement among second to fifth graders in the fall and spring of the same school year. Classroom observations, teacher and child questionnaires, and social…
Is Community Psychology “Too Insular”? A Network Analysis of Journal Citations
The current study uses social network analysis to explore one aspect of cross‐disciplinary connections in community psychology–citations from articles published in community psychology's main journals (i.e., American Journal of Community Psychology and Journal of Community Psychology ) to allied disciplines in 2009. Results indicate that although community psychology journals cited a wide range of disciplines, their levels of citation to any indi…
Expediting the Analysis of Qualitative Data in Evaluation
Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators’ needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and assessment methods by proposing procedures that evaluators can use to expedite the coding and analysi…
The bright side of positive perceptual bias
This study explores whether findings linking positive perceptual bias to childhood aggression extend to perceptual bias in network centrality. We present data from nested regression models that examine associations between perceptual bias in network centrality and aggressive behavior in a sample of 421 urban African American second through fourth grade students. Children who overestimated their network centrality compared to peer-reports were les…
Transforming Individual Civic Engagement into Community Collective Efficacy
Collective efficacy is defined as residents’ perceived collective capacity to take coordinated and interdependent action on issues that affect their lives. This study explored factors associated with neighborhood collective efficacy among residents. Utilizing a national sample of 4,120 urban households provided by Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connection Initiative, we investigated the mediating role of residents’ perceptions of bonding soci…
Exploring Empowerment in Settings
This paper brings together two trends in the empowerment literature—understanding empowerment in settings and understanding empowerment as relational—by examining what makes settings empowering from a social network perspective. Specifically, extending Neal and Neal's (Am J Community Psychol 48(3/4):157–167, 2011 ) conception of network power, an empowering setting is defined as one in which (1) actors have existing relationships that allow for t…
The (In)compatibility of Diversity and Sense of Community
Community psychologists are interested in creating contexts that promote both respect for diversity and sense of community. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has uncovered a community‐diversity dialectic wherein the contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity often run in opposition to those that foster sense of community. More specifically, within neighborhoods, residential integration provides opportunities for intergro…
Linking the Levels
In this article, we assert that relationships and networks are of paramount importance for understanding and improving settings, neighborhoods, communities, and larger social systems. Here, we claim that network and relational perspectives can provide conceptual and empirical ‘links’ between levels of analysis, more fully reflecting a transactional view. We also describe some of the sophisticated methodologies that can be employed in empirical st…
Children's Positive School Behaviors and Social Preference in Urban Elementary Classrooms
This study examined the associations between prosocial and academically oriented behaviors and social preference as a function of individual (i.e., gender), developmental (i.e., grade) and contextual factors (i.e., group descriptive norms). Data were gathered from a sample of 2 nd , 3 rd and 4 th grade children (51% male, 97.5% African American) in 34 classrooms from high‐poverty inner‐city neighborhoods. Multilevel analyses indicated that indivi…
Small worlds or worlds apart? Using network theory to understand the research-practice gap
The implementation of effective community interventions can be challenging for many reasons, including financial and time costs, lack of infrastructure, local contextual variations, and barriers to fidelity. But, prior to all of these is the challenge of limited information exchange between the researchers developing interventions and the practitioners implementing them, or the so-called research-practice gap. In this paper, we use network theory…
Aggression Norms in the Classroom Social Network
In a cross‐sectional sample of African‐American 2nd–4th grade students ( N = 681), we examine the moderating effects of classroom overt and relational aggression norms on peers’ social acceptance of classmates who exhibit overt and relational aggression in urban schools. Extending theory and research on classroom norms, we integrate social network data to adjust aggression norms based on children’s direct and indirect connections in the classroom…
Brokering the Research–Practice Gap
Despite widespread recognition of a research–practice gap in multiple service sectors, less is known about how pre‐existing communication channels facilitate the flow of information between researchers and practitioners. In the current study, we applied an existing typology of brokerage developed by Gould and Fernandez (Sociol Methodol 19:89–126, 1989 ) to examine what types of brokerage facilitate information spread between researchers and educa…
Seeing and being seen
Psychology (52 works) · Social Psychology (38 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Political science (25 works) · Computer Science (24 works) · Developmental psychology (22 works) · Community Health and Development (20 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Medicine (17 works) · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression (14 works)