GECC - Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center

Social Environment

Overview

The Social Environment domain encompasses a person’s workplace, neighborhood, society, and groups to which they belong. These social ties and forces can be characterized by how people relate to each other and the structures of the community. The social environment is composed of and created by individuals, but is also more than the sum of individuals in a given context.

The Social Environment domain’s initial efforts will focus on residential contexts, relational processes, and the workplace.

Relational Processes

Relational processes encompass the dynamic ways individuals and groups interact, influence each other, and shape social structures over time. These processes are foundational to how relationships are formed, maintained, and changes in various social contexts.

The study of relational processes includes topics like social networks, social capital, social cohesion, social isolation, social connectedness, collective efficacy, and social support. The social environment domain is especially interested in exploring mechanisms linking these facets of relational processes to cognitive again.

Residential Context

Residential context refers to the physical layout and its overlap with the social composition of cities, towns, and neighborhoods – this includes, for example, the ways that roads may connect or divide places and the economic composition of a given place.

These characteristics represent the complex ways different groups of people cluster together in response to civic and private influences, both positive and negative. Research about residential context of the social environment has traditionally focused on residential neighborhoods where people live but has recently expanded to also study “activity space” where people work and gather.

Workplace

The workplace is a critical social environment for most people throughout their lives, but there is a paucity of research investigating how the social dimensions of labor and occupation — such as workplace structures and exposures, as well as social patterning of risk or job insecurity in precarious work — confer risk or resilience when it comes to cognitive aging.

Community Insights

In the fall of 2024, the GECC hosted a series of town hall meetings with hundreds of unique participants. These meetings yielded critical insights for the Social Environment domain, including highlighting key themes and gaps in research.

Key Themes

Social connections and networks
Social and community support
Isolation and belonging

Gaps in Research

How social networks are formed
Workplace as a social environment
How the social processes act as a modifier of risk

Priorities

To address these priorities and facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between the exposome and AD/ADRD outcomes, the Social Environment domain will leverage existing measures as well as develop novel measures.

Overview

Write an overview article of the gaps and priorities in the Social environment exposome domain, specifically those relating to social isolation and cohesion, work, and residential context.
Create a conceptual glossary of the key terms used to study the social environment.

Social Isolation & Cohesion

Create a measurement glossary defining key constructs (e.g., loneliness), clarifying related terms, and providing cited recommendations for measures, including questionnaires, operationalization, survey sources, and literature examples.
Develop a questionnaire-based glossary for social cohesion, defining key constructs (e.g., social isolation), identifying related terms, and detailing recommended measures for each feature.
Compile data sources on social cohesion and produce documentation on best practices for their use.

Work

Create a questionnaire-based measurement glossary for labor market constructs (e.g., employment, unemployment, occupation), clarifying related terms, sources of confusion (e.g., social networks at work), and providing cited measure recommendations.
Collect and document data sources on labor market, employment, and occupation in detail.

Residential Context

Produce an article on the current data sources and available measures for residential context that align with theoretical constructs of place.
Compile and produce detailed documentation on data sources related to residential context, such as bereavement probability, generational connectivity index, and neighborhood connectivity.