jimi adams

jimi adams

Professor of Sociology

diffusion processes

A main interest of mine with SNA is examining how the structure of networks promote or constrain a population’s diffusion potential. This area has been a core thread in my research since early in graduate school. Over the years this has taken a number of forms, and has involved a lot of fun methods & collaborators.

From Behaviors to Identities

Over the past few years, I’ve worked with David Schaefer & others to use recent advances in statistically modeling the co-evolution of social network and behavioral data–via exponential random graph (ERG) and stochastic actor based (SAB) models–to examine smoking behavior and intervention potentials. Recently, we’ve begun thinking about new ways to use these models that is more consistent with theories of religious and health “identities.”

HIV (& other STD) epidemic modeling

This area of my work all started out with thinking about the spread (or control) of HIV in a variety of populations. I’ve worked with primary data (in Malawi), secondary data (from Colorado Springs; here’s a clip of the PI talking about the launch of the project), and simulations in this work. The punchline is that structural features of networks can operate independently of individual level behaviors to substantially alter a population’s epidemic potential. In next phases of this work, I’m interested in exploring how different layers of multiplex networks combine in complementary and contradictory ways.

Networks & Health

While the strands described above highlight some specific projects, this all fits within a broader interest of thinking about how health and networks are related in a broad sense. Recent advances in this field can be seen in our special issue of Network Science. For the bulk of 2020, I Incorporated this perspective into efforts contributing to a team modeling COVID-19 for the state of Colorado.

Related publications: