Research

Social Networks and Health: Older Population

During 2018-2022 I worked as a research assistant for three interdisciplinary projects:  KSHAP (PI: Yoosik Youm, Homepage), KURE (PI: Chang Oh Kim), and CMERC (PI: Hyeong Chang Kim). My work was to manage and maintain social network data and conduct statistical analysis on the relationships between social networks and health.  

My research delves into the relationships between social networks and health. My main goal is to understand how the quality of social relationships or available social resources produces differences in an individual's health.  For example, I found that individuals whose social network was limited inside the village had a higher probability of death even when controlling for selection bias and attrition (Link). My current work expands on previous findings and further explores the role of social resources (availability of college-educated individuals or accessibility to various geographical areas) associated with cardiovascular health. 

Education and Health: Adolescents

During 2020-2022, I was involved in a research project - KSAH - that applied an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the relationships between adolescents' social networks and health. 

Together with Dr. Dohoon Lee, I wrote and published a paper investigating the relationships between single-sex schooling and health among Korean high school students. To deal with endogeneity bias, we applied school-district fixed effects. We found that boys in single-sex schools were less likely to exercise and girls in single-sex schools had higher levels of academic stress. This work was previously presented at several conferences and earned several awards.

This work was recently accepted and published in the Korean Journal of Sociology.