In their recent publication “Social Network Negativity and Physical Activity: New Longitudinal Evidence for Young and Older Adults 2015-2018”, PhD Candidate Soli Dubash and co-author Markus Schafer show how the interpersonal environment affects physical activity. Drawing on panel data for two different age cohorts, Dubash and Schafer use fixed effects logistic regression to clarify the impact of social network changes on physical activity. Their findings suggest that among younger adults (aged 21-30), as social networks become more negative, physical activity declines; they find no effects on adults aged 50-70. This further affirms the notion that physical activity is embedded in social networks and suggests that changes to young adults’ social networks may affect healthy lifestyle choices. Read the full article in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.
Soli Dubash is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. Soli's dissertation focuses on understanding and modelling how social networks and the contexts in which they are enacted shape, and are shaped by, health across the life course. He is particularly interested in examining how our health changes when our relationships change, how our relationships change as our health changes, and how network change contributes to inequality. Soli's research agenda integrates quantitative, computational, and survey methodology to study health and stress processes, social network dynamics, culture, and life course inequalities. His scholarly agenda is dedicated to producing research that (1) can help people make evidence-based decisions about their health and their community members’; (2) holds practical implications for policy design and targeted interventions; and (3) clearly presents results in ways which are publicly accessible, can inform future research design, and facilitate meta-analyses. Soli strongly values open science principles and transparent research practices. By doing so, he aims to both make people aware of the possible effects of their personal ties to influence their health, behaviour, and well-being (and vice versa); and, to allow readers to reach their own decisions as to how he came to these results and their consequences.