Daniel J Hruschka
Biographic Data
| ID | 94344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel J Hruschka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel J |
| FAMILY NAME | Hruschka |
| SIGNATURE | HRUSCHKA D J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2188-7782 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 64 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 373 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Mentoring in the social science laboratory: Advancing graduate student research & training
Graduate research programs aim to cultivate students’ abilities to conduct scientific research, including theory development and application, research design, data analysis, and transferable skills like collaboration and communication. Historically, social science training has emphasized individual rather than team-based work. This may limit knowledge creation and negatively impact student confidence and overall mental health. With a growing emph…
How to organise undergraduate lab training: Evidence from 10 working social science research labs
The impacts of undergraduate research experiences are multiple and varied. Working in traditional laboratories (e.g. in the bench sciences) fosters many skills, including independence and critical thinking. Likewise, social science laboratories demonstrate important impacts on students with regard to clarification of career paths, understanding the research process, fostering a systems thinking approach to complex problems, and the ability to ana…
The relationship between altitude and BMI varies across low‐ and middle‐income countries
OBJECTIVES: Studies suggest that living at high altitude decreases obesity risk, but this research is limited to single-country analyses. We examine the relationship between altitude and body mass index (BMI) among women living in a diverse sample of low- and middle-income countries. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 1 583 456 reproductive age women (20-49 years) in 54 countries, we fit regression models predict…
Educational & income disparities among ethnic minorities of China
Deprivation or discrimination? Comparing two explanations for the reverse income–obesity gradient in the US and South Korea
In high-income countries, poverty is often associated with higher average body mass index (BMI). To account for this reverse gradient, deprivation theories posit that declining economic resources make it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight. By contrast, discrimination theories argue that anti-fat discrimination in hiring and marriage sorts heavier individuals into lower-income households. This study assesses competing predictions of these…
Assessing comparative asset-based measures of material wealth as predictors of physical growth and mortality
Social scientists and policymakers have increasingly relied on asset-based indices of household wealth to assess social disparities and to identify economically vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. In the last decade, researchers have proposed a number of asset-based measures that permit global comparisons of household wealth across populations in different countries and over time. Each of these measures relies on different…
Evaluating the Performance of Five Asset-based Wealth Indices in Predicting Socioeconomic Position in Rural Bangladesh
Social scientists have developed numerous asset-based wealth indices to assess and target socioeconomic inequalities globally. However, there are no systematic studies of the relative performance of these different measures as proxies for socioeconomic position. In this study, we compare how five asset-based wealth indices—the International Wealth Index (IWI), the Standard of Living portion of the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI-SL), the Pov…
One size does not fit all. How universal standards for normal height can hide deprivation and create false paradoxes
Public health practitioners and social scientists frequently compare height against one‐size‐fits‐all standards of human growth to assess well‐being, deprivation, and disease risk. However, underlying differences in height can make some naturally tall populations appear well‐off by universal standards, even though they live in severe states of deprivation. In this article, I describe the worldwide extent of these population differences in height …
Viewpoint: Food insecurity among college students: A case for consistent and comparable measurement
A growing body of research among college students has estimated remarkably high levels of food insecurity when compared to food insecurity estimates from the general population over the past decade, with recent literature reviews reporting average prevalence rates of 33–51% compared to 9.8% among U.S. adults. Given these high rates of food insecurity, policymakers at the state- and federal-levels are considering legislation to better understand a…
An Agricultural Wealth Index for Multidimensional Wealth Assessments
Social scientists have increasingly used asset‐based wealth scores, like the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) wealth index, to assess economic disparities. However, current indices primarily capture wealth in globalized market economies, thus ignoring other forms of prosperity, such as success in agricultural activities. Using a simple extension to the standard estimation of the DHS wealth index, we describe procedures for estimating an agricu…
“What we look with” is as important as “What we look at”
Agricultural wealth better predicts mental wellbeing than market wealth among highly vulnerable households in Haiti: Evidence for the benefits of a multidimensional approach to poverty
OBJECTIVES: Lack of wealth (poverty) impacts almost every aspect of human biology. Accordingly, many studies include its assessment. In almost all cases, approaches to assessing poverty are based on lack of success within cash economies (eg, lack of income, employment). However, this operationalization deflects attention from alternative forms of poverty that may have the most substantial influence on human wellbeing. We test how a multidimension…
Comparing hemoglobin distributions between population-based surveys matched by country and time
We identify substantial differences in anemia estimates from surveys of similar populations. Further work is needed to identify the cause of these differences to improve the robustness of anemia estimates for comparing populations and tracking improvements over time
Similarity in meal plan use among first-year roommates
Disentangling basal and accrued height‐for‐age for cross‐population comparisons
OBJECTIVES: Current standards for comparing stunting across human populations assume a universal model of child growth. Such comparisons ignore population differences that are independent of deprivation and health outcomes. This article partitions variation in height-for-age that is specifically associated with deprivation and health outcomes to provide a basis for cross-population comparisons. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using a multilevel model with…
Disentangling wealth effects on fertility in 64 low- and middle-income countries
The amplifying role of need in giving decisions
Friendship: Development, Ecology, and Evolution of a Relationship
Friends-they are generous and cooperative with each other in ways that appear to defy standard evolutionary expectations, frequently sacrificing for one another without concern for past behaviors or future consequences. In this fascinating multidisciplinary study, Daniel J. Hruschka synthesizes an array of cross-cultural, experimental, and ethnographic data to understand the broad meaning of friendship, how it develops, how it interfaces with kin…
Worldwide fertility declines do not rely on stopping at ideal parities
A key demographic hypothesis has been that fertility declines rely on stopping at target parities, but emerging evidence suggests that women frequently reduce fertility without specific numeric targets. To assess the relative importance of these two paths to fertility decline, we develop a novel mixture model to estimate: (1) the proportion of women who stop at a target parity; and (2) mean completed fertility among those who do not. Applied to D…
Identifying the limits to socioeconomic influences on human growth
Food insecurity negatively impacts academic performance
Recent research has documented high rates of food insecurity among university students, particularly students in their first year. Food insecurity among university students has been linked to poorer self‐reported health and academic outcomes. However, few studies have linked reports of food insecurity to objective student outcomes. In this study, we examine how food insecurity is associated with first‐year university students' ( n = 591) academic…
Different forms of household wealth are associated with opposing risks for HIV infection in East Africa
Cooperative Relationships
Cooperative relationships arise from a history of mutually beneficial interactions between individuals, and they enable cooperation among a range of entities, including biological organisms, business firms, and nation‐states. As one of the simplest of emergent social forms, cooperative relationships can possess higher level properties (e.g., common expectations and rules of interaction, shared communication protocols) that are more than the sum o…
Stability and Change in In-Group Mate Preferences among Young People in Ethiopia Are Predicted by Food Security and Gender Attitudes, but Not by Expected Pathogen Exposures
Measuring material wealth in low‐income settings: A conceptual and how‐to guide
Although wealth is consistently found to be an important predictor of health and well‐being, there remains debate as to the best way to conceptualize and operationalize wealth. In this article, we focus on the measurement of economic resources, which is one among many forms of wealth. We provide an overview of the process of measuring material wealth, including theoretical and conceptual considerations, a how‐to guide based on the most common app…
Redefine statistical significance
Reliability in Coding Open-Ended Data: Lessons Learned from HIV Behavioral Research
Analysis of text from open-ended interviews has become an important research tool in numerous fields, including business, education, and health research. Coding is an essential part of such analysis, but questions of quality control in the coding process have generally received little attention. This article examines the text coding process applied to three HIV-related studies conducted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider…
When There Is More than One Answer Key: Cultural Theories of Postpartum Hemorrhage in Matlab, Bangladesh
Individuals can acquire cultural knowledge from many sources, including personal experience, informal learning, and schooling. Identifying these distinct source models and describing personal variation in their use present ongoing theoretical and methodological challenges. Three questions are of particular importance: (1) how to determine if there is more than one cultural model, (2) how to characterize the differences between models, and (3) how…
Distribution of distress in post-socialist Mongolia: A Cultural Epidemiology of Yadargaa
Disentangling basal and accumulated body mass for cross‐population comparisons
Measures of human body mass confound 1) well‐established population differences in body form and 2) exposure to obesogenic environments, posing challenges for using body mass index (BMI) in cross‐population studies of body form, energy reserves, and obesity‐linked disease risk. We propose a method for decomposing population BMI by estimating basal BMI (bBMI) among young adults living in extremely poor, rural households where excess body mass accu…
Vulnerability to fat-stigma in women's everyday relationships
Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity
Objectives. We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. Methods. Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. Results. We confirmed Christakis and Fowler's basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, b…
Biocultural Dialogues: Biology and Culture in Psychological Anthropology
Impartial Institutions, Pathogen Stress and the Expanding Social Network
Population level differences in adult body mass emerge in infancy and early childhood: Evidence from a global sample of low and lower‐income countries
Many studies have linked measures of adult body shape and mass in ancient and contemporary populations to ecogeographical variables such as temperature and latitude. These results tend to support Bergmann's rule, which posits that bodies will be relatively less slender for their height in colder climates and more slender in warmer climates. Less well explored is the ontogeny of these population‐level differences. Here we use data on infants and c…
Competence, Agreement, and Luck: Testing Whether Some People Agree More with a Cultural Truth than Do Others
The cultural consensus model (CCM) is a frequently used model of cultural diversity, which predicts how individuals from a common cultural background would share knowledge in a specific domain. Cultural competence, or the degree to which an individual agrees with a local cultural truth, is a central concept in CCM, and many uses of competence estimates rest on the assumption that they reflect real variation among individuals in their knowledge of…
Different forms of household wealth are associated with opposing risks for HIV infection in East Africa
Women's social networks and birth attendant decisions: Application of the Network-Episode Model
Population differences in the relationship between height, weight, and adiposity: An application of burton's model
The study of human variation in adiposity and lean mass is important for understanding core processes in human evolution, and is increasingly a public health concern as the “obesity epidemic” expands globally. The dominant measure of population differences in adiposity is Body Mass Index (BMI), which suffers from systematic biases across populations due to variation in the relationship between true body fat, height and weight. Here we develop sim…
Food insecurity negatively impacts academic performance
Recent research has documented high rates of food insecurity among university students, particularly students in their first year. Food insecurity among university students has been linked to poorer self‐reported health and academic outcomes. However, few studies have linked reports of food insecurity to objective student outcomes. In this study, we examine how food insecurity is associated with first‐year university students' ( n = 591) academic…
Disentangling wealth effects on fertility in 64 low- and middle-income countries
A glossary of culture in epidemiology
Culture frequently is used to explain population differences in health. This glossary defines key concepts and terms relevant to the concept of culture and describes three challenges—definitional, theoretical, and methodological—in identifying specific pathways by which culture affects health
Worldwide fertility declines do not rely on stopping at ideal parities
A key demographic hypothesis has been that fertility declines rely on stopping at target parities, but emerging evidence suggests that women frequently reduce fertility without specific numeric targets. To assess the relative importance of these two paths to fertility decline, we develop a novel mixture model to estimate: (1) the proportion of women who stop at a target parity; and (2) mean completed fertility among those who do not. Applied to D…
Revisiting Psychological Mechanisms in the Anthropology of Altruism
Cultural Models and Fertility Timing among Cherokee and White Youth in Appalachia: Beyond the Mode
Much anthropological research and theory concerns how group differences in behavior, subjective experience, and ways of seeing the world (i.e., cultural differences) are created and maintained. Both within and outside the United States, there are dramatic group differences in fertility. In the United States, American Indian groups exhibit some of the highest and earliest fertility. We used ethnographic data as well as structured card-sort and que…
Viewpoint: Food insecurity among college students: A case for consistent and comparable measurement
A growing body of research among college students has estimated remarkably high levels of food insecurity when compared to food insecurity estimates from the general population over the past decade, with recent literature reviews reporting average prevalence rates of 33–51% compared to 9.8% among U.S. adults. Given these high rates of food insecurity, policymakers at the state- and federal-levels are considering legislation to better understand a…
Disentangling basal and accrued height‐for‐age for cross‐population comparisons
OBJECTIVES: Current standards for comparing stunting across human populations assume a universal model of child growth. Such comparisons ignore population differences that are independent of deprivation and health outcomes. This article partitions variation in height-for-age that is specifically associated with deprivation and health outcomes to provide a basis for cross-population comparisons. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using a multilevel model with…
Defining Cultural Competence in Context: Dyadic Norms of Friendship Among U.S. High School Students
Cultural competence is often defined as the ability to adhere to a core set of beliefs and practices. In this article, I argue that in many cases competence also involves the creative and occasionally idiosyncratic use of conventional knowledge to meet both personal goals and the specific requirements of local relationships and settings. I illustrate this tension between adopting broadly shared cultural norms and adapting them to local circumstan…
Fixed-Choice and Open-Ended Response Formats: A Comparison from HIV Prevention Research in Zimbabwe
This article examined similarities and differences in responses to open-ended and fixed-choice question formats gathered from Zimbabwean women participating in an HIV intervention study ( n = 227). Specifically, the authors compared the responses of women to two questions (one open-ended and one fixed-choice) about male condom negotiation strategies used with their partners. Comparisons across formats revealed that the definitions of negotiation …
Educational & income disparities among ethnic minorities of China
Extracted‐Food Resource‐Defense Polygyny in Native Western North American Societies at Contact
Fixed-Choice and Open-Ended Response Formats: A Comparison from HIV Prevention Research in Zimbabwe
This article examined similarities and differences in responses to open-ended and fixed-choice question formats gathered from Zimbabwean women participating in an HIV intervention study ( n = 227). Specifically, the authors compared the responses of women to two questions (one open-ended and one fixed-choice) about male condom negotiation strategies used with their partners. Comparisons across formats revealed that the definitions of negotiation …
Distribution of distress in post-socialist Mongolia: A Cultural Epidemiology of Yadargaa
Reliability in Coding Open-Ended Data: Lessons Learned from HIV Behavioral Research
Analysis of text from open-ended interviews has become an important research tool in numerous fields, including business, education, and health research. Coding is an essential part of such analysis, but questions of quality control in the coding process have generally received little attention. This article examines the text coding process applied to three HIV-related studies conducted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider…
Estimating between- and within-individual variation in cortisol levels using multilevel models
Biocultural Dialogues: Biology and Culture in Psychological Anthropology
A glossary of culture in epidemiology
Culture frequently is used to explain population differences in health. This glossary defines key concepts and terms relevant to the concept of culture and describes three challenges—definitional, theoretical, and methodological—in identifying specific pathways by which culture affects health
When There Is More than One Answer Key: Cultural Theories of Postpartum Hemorrhage in Matlab, Bangladesh
Individuals can acquire cultural knowledge from many sources, including personal experience, informal learning, and schooling. Identifying these distinct source models and describing personal variation in their use present ongoing theoretical and methodological challenges. Three questions are of particular importance: (1) how to determine if there is more than one cultural model, (2) how to characterize the differences between models, and (3) how…
Culture as an explanation in population health
In the last two decades, culture has emerged in population health as a common explanation for health outcomes and disparities. This paper systematically reviews such cultural accounts, focusing on a historical sample of articles from prominent population health journals (1930-2008, n=100) and a contemporary sample of articles in the American Journal of Public Health (2008, n=95). The review reveals that references to culture rarely (1) specify th…
Culture and epidemiology special issue: Towards an integrated study of culture and population health
Defining Cultural Competence in Context: Dyadic Norms of Friendship Among U.S. High School Students
Cultural competence is often defined as the ability to adhere to a core set of beliefs and practices. In this article, I argue that in many cases competence also involves the creative and occasionally idiosyncratic use of conventional knowledge to meet both personal goals and the specific requirements of local relationships and settings. I illustrate this tension between adopting broadly shared cultural norms and adapting them to local circumstan…
Cultural Models and Fertility Timing among Cherokee and White Youth in Appalachia: Beyond the Mode
Much anthropological research and theory concerns how group differences in behavior, subjective experience, and ways of seeing the world (i.e., cultural differences) are created and maintained. Both within and outside the United States, there are dramatic group differences in fertility. In the United States, American Indian groups exhibit some of the highest and earliest fertility. We used ethnographic data as well as structured card-sort and que…
FriendshipDevelopment, Ecology, and Evolution of a Relationship: Development, Ecology, and Evolution of a Relationship
Friends—they are generous and cooperative with each other in ways that appear to defy standard evolutionary expectations, frequently sacrificing for one another without concern for past behaviors or future consequences. This multidisciplinary study synthesizes an array of cross-cultural, experimental, and ethnographic data to understand the broad meaning of friendship, how it develops, how it interfaces with kinship and romantic relationships, an…
Nepali Concepts of Psychological Trauma: The Role of Idioms of Distress, Ethnopsychology and Ethnophysiology in Alleviating Suffering and Preventing Stigma
Effectiveness of an integrated approach to reduce perinatal mortality: Recent experiences from Matlab, Bangladesh
The continuum of care approach provided through the integration of service delivery modes decreased the perinatal mortality rate within a short period of time. Further testing of this model is warranted within the government health system in Bangladesh and other low-income countries
Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity
Objectives. We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. Methods. Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. Results. We confirmed Christakis and Fowler's basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, b…
Vulnerability to fat-stigma in women's everyday relationships
Do economic constraints on food choice make people fat? A critical review of two hypotheses for the poverty–obesity paradox
In low income countries worldwide, rising standards of living have spurred an unprecedented rise in obesity. However, in numerous wealthy countries the trend frequently reverses with poorer and less educated women more likely to be overweight than their wealthier compatriots. One prominent explanation for this reverse gradient is that economic deprivation leads to food choices which paradoxically increase energy intake. If true, this would challe…
Absolute wealth and world region strongly predict overweight among women (ages 18–49) in 360 populations across 36 developing countries
Hruschka et al. Respond
We thank Dr. Bartle for pointing out that clustering of obesity in families would be expected given shared genetics. Of course, we would also expect that common home environment plays a role.1 Our key finding that shared social norms only weakly account for shared body size in a sample including both family and friends leaves room for developing a number of plausible alternative hypotheses for the social bases of obesity clustering, including som…
Women's social networks and birth attendant decisions: Application of the Network-Episode Model
Response to Fincher and Thornhill
Fast life histories, not pathogens, account for state-level variation in homicide, child maltreatment, and family ties in the U.S.
Population differences in the relationship between height, weight, and adiposity: An application of burton's model
The study of human variation in adiposity and lean mass is important for understanding core processes in human evolution, and is increasingly a public health concern as the “obesity epidemic” expands globally. The dominant measure of population differences in adiposity is Body Mass Index (BMI), which suffers from systematic biases across populations due to variation in the relationship between true body fat, height and weight. Here we develop sim…
Competence, Agreement, and Luck: Testing Whether Some People Agree More with a Cultural Truth than Do Others
The cultural consensus model (CCM) is a frequently used model of cultural diversity, which predicts how individuals from a common cultural background would share knowledge in a specific domain. Cultural competence, or the degree to which an individual agrees with a local cultural truth, is a central concept in CCM, and many uses of competence estimates rest on the assumption that they reflect real variation among individuals in their knowledge of…
Psychology (31 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Medicine (27 works) · Population (27 works) · Demography (26 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Geography (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Mathematics (13 works) · Demography (12 works)