Fulton Receives SSSR Research Grant

Brad Fulton has collected data on 4,000 community organizations and 3,000 board members to assess how multi-organizational collaborations navigate racial and religious differences as they work together to address issues of common concern.

The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion has awarded Fulton a research grant to carry out Phase II of his national study of community coalitions. As racial and religious diversity are increasing in most communities throughout the United States, this project draws on social capital theory and uses network analysis to assess how diversity affects social connections and cohesion. Fulton links his data with data on the racial and religious composition of the communities in which the coalitions reside to show how the external environment shapes internal associational patterns. The model he has developed to analyze the relationship between heterogeneity and social cohesion can be applied to several other contexts including schools, congregations, and neighborhoods.