178 rd c s gay avd

Despite previous empirical studies which have linked social capital to a number of health outcomes, few studies have investigated sub-group specific social capital among populations at increased risk for HIV infection such as gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men GBM.

Many GBM of color belong to constructed families in which friends refer to each other with kinship terms such as parents and children. No studies have measured social capital provisions within constructed family networks. This study developed a preliminary instrument for assessing social capital among constructed families.

The network level social capital scale incorporated the following theoretical domains hypothesized to define social capital derived from network membership: social influence, multiplex ties, heterogeneity, social cohesion, trust, quality of support, and compositional quality.

A cross-sectional survey administered an eight-item scale to GBM who belonged to constructed families. The factor structure and confirmatory factor analysis were assessed. A final single factor solution was obtained which was comprised of six items with high factor loadings. The resulting measures were highly correlated with an alpha of 0.

This study assessed the psychometric properties of a preliminary network level social capital instrument among GBM in constructed families. Future studies may utilize or adopt this scale to measure network-level social capital within other populations.

Citation: Zarwell M, Robinson WT Development of a social capital scale for constructed families of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licensewhich permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Accordingly, these are protected and confidential data that may not be made freely and publicly available under state and federal law. A limited de-identified analytical data set, however, can be made available to researchers who submit 178 rd c s gay avd concept proposal to the New Orleans Office of Public Health for a formal research and data sharing agreement.

Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. HIV continues to disproportionately impact specific populations despite public health approaches.

One such avenue for network level intervention are constructed families of gay and bisexual men. Historically, constructed families are social connections that have served as important sources of identification and a foundation of support to LGBT persons[ 3 ]. Membership in constructed family networks may buffer against stressors many LGBT people of color experience including multiple intersecting stigmas due to their sexual and racial identities and therefore may be important to leverage for HIV prevention and interventions.

Pageant families are similar to houses because individual members may compete in gay pageant competitions; however, these competitions are not synonymous with balls and awards are judged using different beauty and talent categories. Pageant families may also share common identities by informally adopting a family surname.

In comparison, gay families, while similar to both the house ball community and pageant families, are not always associated with performance or ball culture. Gay families frequently provide mentorship, social support, and resilience to LGBT people who experience adversity [ 13 — 17 ].

Gay families may also share a family surname but are not synonymous with performance culture. Researchers have argued that other forms of constructed families, including gay families, may be just as valid for HIV prevention interventions as membership in particular gay families can increase or decrease HIV risk[ 71418 ].

While studies have examined HIV risk and prevention opportunities within the house and ball community in large cities, few studies have explored the larger context of constructed families, social connectivity to resources, and social capital [ 15 ]. While many studies have explored social support provided by constructed family membership[ 141819 ], to date no studies have explored social capital attributed to membership in constructed families for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.

This study aims to develop a new measure of social capital among GBM who belong to constructed family networks. The theory of social capital is predicated on the notion that social networks have value.