UCNets is the first study of its kind in the country and quite possibly, in the world. It has four overarching aims:
- To accurately and fully describe the social ties of a younger group and of an older group of Bay Area residents, paying particular attention to how those relationships change as people’s lives change.
- To identify the causal connections among life changes, personal ties, and health. How, for example, does getting a new job or retiring affect the number or types of people a person is involved with and in which ways? How do those aspects of people’s ties in turn affect their well-being and how they handle issues of health? The panel structure of this study will allow researchers to untangle the complex patterns of cause and effect.
- To test the practicality and validity of using web-based network techniques. The project incorporates an innovative switching design from face-to-face to web interviewing.