This book helps students navigate the first year of college and beyond by using social scientific research to understand the often hidden rules of college. (full pdf available)

This chapter explains how visuals enhance the study of social problems through four examples of data collection and research dissemination. The first example studies meaning differentiation by examining photographs that represent the concept of community. The second studies social isolation via network graphs of social media connectivity. In the third example, the problem of racial segregation is critically analyzed through maps that serve as visual tools for disseminating information about...

Does interacting with social science data in early adulthood promote generosity? To investigate this question from a life course development perspective, two distinct samples were drawn for a survey with an embedded experimental design. The first sample is of emerging adult college students (n = 30, median age = 20 years). The second sample is of young adults who were selected to participate based on their prior participation in a nationally representative and longitudinal study (n = 170...

Social scientists since the original Chicago School researchers find that neighborhoods and other geographic areas exert effects on residents, both while they live in those areas and even long afterward. The context effects are net of the individuals composing them, meaning there are cumulative effects that cannot be explained by individual-level characteristics alone. Another way of describing this is to state that the sum is greater than its parts: neighborhoods and other geographic areas...

Herzog, Patricia Snell and Song Yang. 2018. "Social Networks and Charitable Giving: Trusting, Doing, Asking, and Alter Primacy." Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(2): 376-394.This study examines social networks and financial giving to charitable or religious causes. Conventional social capital measures of general social trust and size of social network are studied as predictors of charitable giving. To these traditional measures, we add an examination of particular network aspects...

This book introduces some of the analytical approaches that the social sciences bring to the study of philanthropy. Readings introduce the role of philanthropy in promoting social justice and civil society; intersections of philanthropy with important issues in the social sciences, such as race, class, gender, religion, and youth; organizational theories; and examples of philanthropy analytics, both traditional modes of data collection and contemporary data science.

Patricia Snell Herzog. 2018. “Philanthropy.” In Marc H. Bornstein, Martha E. Arterberry, Karen L. Fingerman, and Jennifer E. Lansford (eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human Development. SAGE.Philanthropy is a practice of donating to foundations or nonprofit organizations for the purposes of bettering the collective good. Because philanthropic gifts often come in the form of monetary donations and are typically given to support charitable causes, philanthropy can be thought of as synonym

Patricia Snell Herzog and Heather Price. 2016. American Generosity: Who Gives and Why. Oxford University Press.American charitable giving veers from the hyperbolically generous to the hyperbolically stingy. On some days, no one has a quarter to spare; in times of disaster, Americans will put their lives on hold to build houses for those displaced by hurricanes. The crucial question of who gives and why they do it lies at the heart of American Generosity. Patricia Snell Herzog and Heather Price..

Patricia Snell. 2010. “Emerging Adult Civic Disengagement: A Longitudinal Analysis of Moral Values in Explaining Interest in Political Involvement.” Journal of Adolescent Research. 25(2): 258-287.

Patricia Snell Herzog. 2011. “‘Just Reproduce After What I Taught You:’ Spatial Segregation of Religious Youth Socialization and the Reproduction of Social Inequality.” Youth & Society, 43(3): 931-956.