This research questions whether homophily or "sameness" within the advertising agency positively or negatively impacts the black owned advertising agency's ability to build client relationships, expand business related to their perceived expertise, or expand business not related to their perceived expertise. Why study black owned advertising agencies? The case of black advertising agency owners provides a particularly compelling context in which to understand homophily and its impact on relationship marketing. Historically, black advertising entrepreneurs have been marginalized to the black consumer market, which was a reflection of black American citizens' struggle for civil and labor rights. This research seeks to understand whether this historical sameness in ownership, employees, and consumer target negatively or positively impacts 21st century black advertising agency owners' ability to build broader relationships to sustain or grow their businesses. In depth interviews were conducted to understand this issue. Respondents revealed the aspects of homophily or sameness that were important to their relationship marketing activities, the pursuit and development of their advertising agency, employee hiring, and mentoring. This research not only revealed the types of white dominate group bias the respondents experienced, but just as important, revealed in-group or black-on-black bias in the advertising industry as well. / text

Data that can be represented as a network, where there are measurements both on units and on pairs of units, are becoming increasingly prevalent in the social sciences and public health. Homophily in network data, or the tendency of units to connect based on similar nodal attribute values (i.e. income, HIV status) more often than expected by chance is receiving strong attention from researchers in statistics, medicine, sociology, public health and others. Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS) is a link-tracing network sampling strategy heavily used in public health worldwide that is cost efficient and allows us to survey populations inaccessible by conventional techniques. Via extensive simulation we study the performance of existing methods of estimating population averages, and show that they have poor performance if there is homophily on the quantity surveyed. We propose the first model-based approach for this setting and show its superiority as a point estimator and in terms of uncertainty intervals coverage rates, and demonstrate its application to a real life RDS-based survey. We study how the strength of homophily effects can be estimated and compared across networks and different binary attributes under several network sampling schemes. We give a proof that homophily can be effectively estimated under RDS and propose a new homophily index. This work moves towards a deeper understanding of network structure as a function of nodal attributes and network sampling under homophily. / Statistics

This thesis examines young people’s preferences for social interaction with others perceived to be similar and different, and school staff’s interpretations of the young people’s social behaviour. The issue is explored with reference to a tension between social inclusion, the principle of embracing difference, and homophily, the sociological concept that similarity breeds connection. The idea of examining the two notions together was given by an analogy from aesthetics: as inclusion is understood as an ethical obligation to embrace difference, it may come into tension with people’s actual preferences for social interaction that can be represented by homophily. The project, influenced by personal construct psychology, focused on participants’ perceptions of similarity and difference. The tension was explored empirically using scenarios to conduct in depth semi-structured interviews with young people with Asperger syndrome, visual impairment and without disabilities, and school staff from mainstream and special settings. As the tension was expected to have an ethical dimension, the methods were influenced by research in moral psychology. According to the findings, homophily was consistent with the experiences of the participants in the study, and inclusion was considered to be an ethical obligation. The data also suggested that homophily and inclusion can come into a tension. This tension is evident in education, as students with disabilities or other differences might express a preference to be among similar others. School staff then would face the tension of respecting their preferences or enforcing inclusion, something that young people stressed would show lack of respect. As homophily can also conceal discrimination, the tension was not easily resolved. The matter is related to school policies about difference but, since it cannot be fully resolved by them, it can be related to a particular ethos that would recognise the role of open dialogue. Theoretically, the homophily/inclusion tension is one between individuality and commonality. It can challenge our understanding of what the ethical obligation to inclusion actually entails, and what treating the students respectfully should mean. Overall, it questions the justice of inclusion and opens a debate about participatory decision-making and democratic school management. The practical significance of the study can be located in the implications of the tension in the everyday school life. The particular approach to inclusion that the study suggests can be translated into appropriate training activities for the management of difference at school level. It can also inform school policies of inclusion and difference to acknowledge students’ preferences and tensions of values.

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Asian international students (AIS) are becoming increasingly more populous in American universities each year. While AIS are enrolled in the same required classes as American students, it has been observed that frequent interaction between AIS and American students is rather uncommon. Due to obvious social hesitation between the two groups of students during classroom discussion, the study presented was initiated in order to unveil possible reasons for this social integration dilemma. Social Attractiveness, Perceived Homophily and Attributional Confidence scales were selected in order to determine possible factors contributing to this dilemma. In order to pursue explanations for the dormant socialization between the two groups of students during class, a survey was administered to a convenience sampling of 426 undergraduate students enrolled in upper-level courses at the University of Central Florida. Results indicated that passive classroom behavior was perceived as less socially desirable by American students. In fact, participants determined that students reflecting passive classroom behavior were less socially attractive, less similar, and less predictable than students that demonstrated active classroom behavior. Ethnicity factors did not play a key role in determining social appeal. These findings provide evidence that the social integration dilemma facing AIS and American students has much more to do with perceived social behavior and cultural differences regarding classroom behavior than with racial prejudice or ethnicity factors.

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This study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior by drawing on research investigating the 'halo effect,' which posits that physically attractive people are more likely to be hired, get a raise, perceived positively, and/or live happily within certain professions. Extant work has shown this trend is not generalizable across all fields. For example, scientists who are viewed as relatively unattractive and unsociable are perceived as producing higher quality research compared to their more attractive and sociable counterparts. The fitness industry, and the bodybuilding community in particular, presents an interesting issue where muscularity is an indicator of expertise and credibility, however, for female bodybuilders a muscular physique may diminish her perceived attractiveness and diminish such evaluations. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines how muscularity influences assessments of attractiveness, credibility, and homophily and indirectly influences participants' attitudes and perceived control over theory own weight lifting behavior. Though the hypothesized model was not a good fit, an exploratory respecification of the proposed model shows physical attractiveness plays a central role in assessments of homophily, credibility, and attitude. / Master of Arts / There has been a recent increased focus on the fitness and health industries over the past decade. With the expansion of photo-based social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, there has been an emphasis on individuals representing more physically fit and athletic body types. Many of these female “fitness models” and social media influencers break typical gender norms and are depicted as more muscular than the traditional female thin ideal. These social media influencers are arguably judged on their physical attractiveness, homophily, and credibility with regards to exercise and nutrition. This online experiment looks to identify if muscularity plays a role in how participants perceive two of these female bodybuilders on physical attractiveness, credibility, and homophily, and indirectly perceives their attitudes and perceived control to weight lift. This is accomplished by using a questionnaire consisting of 68 questions pertaining to the thin ideal, muscular ideal, physical attractiveness, credibility, homophily, attitude, and perceived behavioral control. Physical attractiveness was found to be a driving force for attitude and perceived behavioral control to weight lift. These results provide practical implications for society as we continue to judge women based on their physical attractiveness.

Sweden Rock Festival is one of the biggest festivals in Sweden and its focus on rock music in its different forms keeps the audience coming back and keeps the festival going. Time and time again the festival is noticed as being one of the safer festivals based on the amount of reported assaults and reported accidents. The purpose of this paper is to try to find the reason why the Sweden Rock Festival is perceived as safe. Looking at our rules and regulations harassment, violent crimes and sexual predatory behaviour is more common on a city street in daylight than it is at the festival even if some men and women are barely wearing clothes, are intoxicated and at times sleeping alone in the grass in a secluded area. The materials put together show that people choose to co-exist and care for each other to keep the festival safe and welcoming. The paper is based on my own observations at the festival as well as interviews with other visitors, these were conducted in person. I have found statistics from the police and materials written about the festival. I have chosen to use the theory of homophily in some parts of the analysis but I am focusing on performance theories as well as the values and morals aspect to get a full picture of what actually happens when you set foot at the Sweden Rock Festival.

The success of firm lawyers depends largely upon their ability to develop a clientele. Naturally, access to potential clients and the relationships between lawyers and their clients and potential clients are exceedingly important for client development. Various factors likely play into relationships between lawyers and business leaders, two important factors being homophily and in-group preferences. Both homophily and in-group preferences mechanisms would predict that law firms are more likely to assign clients to associates who bear certain similarities to those clients. Accordingly, associates who are more similar to the business community they serve are more likely to be assigned clients and awarded responsibility. In this way, a lawyers' success depends in part on the composition of the business community in which they operate. In making partnership decisions, law firms value associates' aptitude for client relations, thus incorporating these effects into promotion evaluations. This study asks the question: at the state level, to what extent does the success of female-owned businesses correlate to the success of female lawyers who work at law firms? Using a national survey of lawyers seven years after admission to the bar, logistic regression demonstrates that it is not the percentage of businesses in a state that are female-owned that influences the likelihood of making partner for female associates. Rather, the results show that the percentage of sales generated by female-owned businesses is the influential variable: as women generate a greater percent of a state's economic activity, female lawyers are in turn more likely to achieve the status of partner.

Where do people go to meet friends in the digital age? How do people understand with whom they want to be friends? Drawing from qualitative interviews, participant observation, and content analysis, I examine the website Meetup.com, which allows people to search for common interests on the Internet and meet up with groups of people face-to-face. My study offers new insights into why people turn to the Internet to meet new people; how voluntary organizations determine who they want as their members; and how gender and sexuality shape people's friendships and participation in these groups. This thesis has larger implications for the study of friendship, voluntary organizations, social capital, and Internet studies. / text