Smartphones, GPS traces, stress biomarkers, and 1,405 Columbus teenagers across six waves of data – a study that is transforming how social science measures neighborhoods
Sociologists have long been at the forefront of theorizing about, and measuring, social forces in one’s environment and those that are present due to our social connections to one another. Dr. Christopher Browning has taken this work to advanced levels, through his Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study. The innovative, creative, sophisticated and impactful AHDC has transformed social science research and led to unparalleled evidence of how adolescents interact with, and are shaped by, their communities – and what this means for their risk behaviors, victimization experiences, education, and health and well-being.
Browning, and his interdisciplinary team, designed the AHDC as a local Franklin County study of adolescents ages 11–17. They not only surveyed 1,405 adolescents from the area, but have also been collecting and analyzing multiple layers of data on them, tracking their social connections, activity spaces, primary caregivers, and ecological conditions. They have given study participants smart phones and used GPS tracking to trace their whereabouts. They have used real-time check-ins, providing activity and other reports that could be layered upon adolescents’ corresponding geographic locations. They have collected biomeasure data to assess multiple indicators of physiological stress including inflammation, immune function, cortisol, and cellular aging. They have collected caregiver and community survey data to further detail the social and structural conditions of adolescents’ lives.
Altogether, they have created a prospective, six-wave series of data collection efforts that has revealed complicated and multi-layered changes in the lives of adolescents, over time. Supported by extensive grant funding, AHDC research has contributed dozens of groundbreaking studies that have improved understandings of our communities and how adolescents operate, and are shaped, within them.