Sonya Conner (Sociology) presented her research “Head Start Advantage: The Cumulative Effects of Family-Based Cultural Resources on Educational Achievement Outcomes” at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, which was held February 23-26, 2012. This research uses data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a prospective longitudinal study of American children, their families, and their teachers, to investigate the mechanisms through which class-based cultural resources create disparate educational trajectories for children and adolescents.
Conner also recently had a paper, “Talking with Me or Talking at Me? The Impact of Status Characteristics on Doctor-Patient Interaction” (co-authored with B. Mitchell Peck, University of Oklahoma), published in Sociological Perspectives (Vol. 4, Issue 4). Using data collected between 2007 and 2008 from a large family medical practice, they find physician-dominated interactions (as opposed to a collaborative, patient-centered model, an approach that research has found yields better health outcomes than the physician-centered model) to be more typical when doctors had a higher race or gender status than their patients. These findings suggest that dealing with inequities in health and health care requires that policy makers consider not only macro-level factors, such as inadequate access to health care, but also micro-level factors—in particular, the doctor-patient encounter as a mechanism through which health inequities are formed.
Achievers
Research Team Publishes Article on English Phonology Development
Linda Larrivee (Interim Dean, School of Education, Health, and Natural Sciences), Susanna Meyer (Communication Sciences and Disorders), Emily Soltano (Psychology), and Karen Vine (WSU-SLP graduate . . .