Peter Shawn Bearman (born 1956)[1] is an American sociologist, notable for his contributions to the fields of adolescent health, research design, structural analysis, textual analysis, oral history and social networks.
He is the Jonathan R. Cole Professor of Social Science in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, the President of The American Assembly at Columbia University, as well as the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE).
He is also the founding director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and co-founding director of Columbia's Oral History Master of Arts Program, the first oral history masters program in the country.
[5] After receiving his PhD, he was a lecturer at Harvard, before joining the sociology department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bearman, along with J. Richard Udry, designed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), currently the only nationally representative study of adolescent sexuality in the United States, which has yielded over a thousand published research articles and received the 2016 Golden Goose Award.
From these data, Bearman has published seminal articles on the sexual network, virginity pledges, same sex attraction, and adolescent suicidality.
He is widely credited with bringing social network analysis methods to the demographic and population research community.
[8][9] Bearman currently directs the Robert Wood Johnson Program in population health at Columbia University.
[10] With co-authors Katherine Stovel, and James Moody, Bearman received the A Roger V. Gould Prize in 2004 for his article “Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks.” The editorial board of the American Journal of Sociology selects one article published in the journal for a two-year period.
They award the prize to an article that is "empirically rigorous, theoretically grounded, and lucidly written.
Bearman is the author of Doormen (University of Chicago Press, 2005), an ethnographic study of doormen in New York City, and is the co-author of Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart with Adam Reich (Columbia University Press, 2018).
36 (2), 210–220 2018 Hoffman, Mark, JP Cointet, Phiipp Brandt, Newton E. Key, and Peter Bearman*.
Volume 68, June 2018, Pages 89–103 (American Sociological Association Religion Section Distinguished Article Award, 2018) 2018 Bearman, Peter.
"Gifts and influence: Conflict of interest policies and prescribing of psychotropic medications in the United States".
2016 Makovi, Kinga; Winter, Alix; Liu, Ka-Yuet; Bearman, Peter (2015).
"The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism".
"Can Sibling Sex Ratios Be Used as a Valid Test for the Prenatal Androgen Hypothesis of Autism Spectrum Disorders?".
2015 Makovi, Kinga; Winter, Alix; Liu, Ka-Yuet; Bearman, Peter (2015).
"The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism".
2015 Fountain, Christine; Zhang, Yujia; Kissin, Dmitry M; Schieve, Laura A; Jamieson, Denise J; Rice, Catherine; Bearman, Peter (2015).
"Does Autism Diagnosis Age or Symptom Severity Differ Among Children According to Whether Assisted Reproductive Technology was Used to Achieve Pregnancy?".
2014 Kissin, DM*, Yujia Zhang, Christine Fountain, Peter Bearman and LA.
Association of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Treatment and Parental Infertility Diagnosis With Autism in ART-Conceived Children”.
30(2):454-65 2013 Hagen, Ryan, Kinga Makovi, and Peter Bearman* “The Influence of Political Dynamics on Southern Lynch Mob Formation and Lethality.
2013 King, Marissa, Connor Essick, Peter Bearman*, and Joseph S. Ross.
2013 Hansen, Helena*, Zoe Donaldson, Bruce Link, Peter Bearman et al. “Independent Review Of Social And Population Variation In Mental Health Could Improve Diagnosis In DSM Revisions”.” Health Affairs.
"Spatial clusters of autism births and diagnoses point to contextual drivers of increased prevalence".
“Closely Spaced Pregnancies are Associated with Increased Odds of Autism in Sibling Births.” Pediatrics.
2011 Keyes, Kerry, Ezra Susser, Keely Cheslak-Postava, Christine Fountain, Ka-Yuet Liu, Soumya Mazumdar, and Peter Bearman*.
“Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Autism Incidence in California from 1994 to 2005.” International Journal of Epidemiology.