Research

Broadly, my research investigates how organizational contexts affect the foundations and consequences of interpersonal social networks. Across a range of settings, from urban police departments to 1970s communes and contemporary middle schools, my work addresses the foundations of attachment, conflict, coordination, and influence in organizations and, ultimately, the possibilities for implementing institutional change.

Methodologically, I develop new tools for analyzing relational data like networks, event sequences, and multilevel structures. These methodological interests tend to lead me to branch out to new topical research areas.

Institutional and Interpersonal Dimensions of Police Misconduct

Much of my current research focuses on the how routine organizational practices foster and perpetuate misconduct in urban police departments. Using large-scale administrative data from the Chicago Police Department from the early 1980s through today, I apply network analysis and other tools from computational social science techniques to study how misconduct allegations are related to personnel policies, career trajectories, and the social organization of work teams in the field.

The Social Organization of Schools and Adolescent Development

My dissertation research focused on the organization of ties among friends and friends-of-friends and their implications for emotional attachment to school, compliance with perceived norms towards sexual behavior, and gendered dimensions of friendship.

In a new project, I am examining how bridging friendships in middle school networks are related to interpersonal conflict. This work includes a particular focus on racial and gender differences in the relationship between conflict and personal network structure.

Latent Trait Models for Social Networks

In a recent article in Sociological Methodology, I propose a suite of methods to improve measurement and modeling of latent dimensions of dyads with survey data. This work synthesizes elements of item response theory, statistical network models, and multilevel (mixed effects) models. I am in the process of extending these methods to jointly model network nominations and their latent qualities as well as incorporating supra-dyadic structure.

Social Sequence Analysis

Recently in Sociological Methods and Research, John Levi Martin and I proposed new algebraic models to analyze categorical time series. This work has motivated several of my substantive projects including my ongoing study of trajectories of police misconduct.

Publications

Issue Alignment and Partisanship in the American Public: Revisiting the 'Partisans without Constraint' Thesis (with Austin C. Kozlowski; Social Science Research; replication materials)

Explanatory Item Response Models for Dyadic Data from Multiple Groups (forthcoming; Sociological Methodology; preprint link)

Some Methods for the Analysis of Event Sequence Data from Multiple Respondents (with John Levi Martin; forthcoming in Sociological Methods and Research)

Protest Movements and Citizen Discontent. (with John Levi Martin and Rick Moore) 2018. Sociological Forum 33 (3).

Networks, Status, and Inequality (with John Levi Martin; forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks)

Manuscripts Under Review

Secondhand Closure: Adolescent Peer Groups and Belonging in School

Manuscripts in Preparation

When Apples Change Barrels: Personnel Sorting and Misconduct Allegations in the Chicago Police Department

Group Ecology and Interpersonal Perception

Status, Dyadic Power, and Gendered Attributions of Instrumentality in 44 Naturally Occurring Communities. (with Jaclyn S. Wong)