Assistant Professor
College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Cassie McMillan Biography
Cassie McMillan
Areas of Expertise
Social networks
Social inequality
Substance use
Youth crime and delinquency
Computational methods
About
Cassie McMillan is an assistant professor of Sociology and Criminology & Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. She received her PhD in Sociology and Demography from Pennsylvania State University. Her research applies a social networks perspective to disentangle how our connections both reproduce and challenge systems of social inequality. She develops computational and statistical methodologies that can better address these issues and applies these techniques to study adolescents’ experiences with substance use, delinquency, and bullying.
Project Description
One of Dr. McMillan’s current projects examines how social network ties that persist from adolescence to adulthood shape trajectories of tobacco, alcohol, and substance use across the life course. In particular, she is considering whether the impact of these sustained relationships varies according to the gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity of the individuals involved in a friendship pair. Results from this study will uncover the ways that our social network structures inform disparities in substance use and recovery. Other recent projects consider how adolescent friendship and dating patterns collectively shape the diffusion of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as the role that youth networks play in shaping the immigrant health paradox.
Publications – Past Three Years
Freelin, B.N., McMillan, C., Felmlee, & D., Osgood, D. W. (in press). Changing contexts: A quasi-experiment Examining Adolescent Delinquency and the transition to high school. Criminology.
McMillan, C. (in press). Who run the world? Gender and the social network of R&B/hip hop collaboration from 2012-2022. Applied Network Science.
Corradi, A., McMillan, C., & Dietrich, N. (2022). A hostile reputation: A social network approach to interstate hostility. Social Networks. 71, 61-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2022.06.004
McMillan, C., Kreager, D., & Veenstra, R. (2022). Keeping to the code: How local norms of friendship and dating inform macro-structures of adolescents’ romantic networks. Social Networks. 70, 126-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2021.11.012
McMillan, C., Felmlee, D., Ashford, J.R. (2022). Reciprocity, transitivity, and skew: Comparing local structure in 40 positive and negative social networks. PLOS ONE. 17(5), e0267886. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267886
McMillan, C. (2022). Worth the weight: Conceptualizing and measuring strong versus weak tie homophily. Social Networks. 68, 139-174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2021.06.003
McMillan, C., & Schaefer, D. R. (2021). Comparing targeting strategies for network-based adolescent drinking interventions: A simulation approach. Social Science & Medicine. 282, 114136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114136
Felmlee, D., McMillan C., & Whitaker, R. (2021). Dyads, triads, and tetrads: A multivariate simulation approach to uncovering network motifs in social graphs. Applied Network Science. 6(68). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-021-00403-5
Robert, F., Felmlee, D., & McMillan C. (2020). With friends like these: Aggression from amity and equivalence. American Journal of Sociology. 126(3), 673-713. https://doi.org/10.1086/712972
McMillan, C., & Felmlee, D. (2020). Beyond dyads and triads: A comparison of tetrad motifs in 20 social networks. Social Psychology Quarterly. 83(4), 383-404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272520944151
McMillan, C., Felmlee, D., & Braines, D. (2020). Dynamic Patterns of terrorist networks: Security versus efficiency in the evolution of eleven Islamic extremist attack networks. Journal of Quantitative Criminology. 36, 559-581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-019-09426-9
McMillan C. (2019). Tied Together: Adolescent Friendship Networks, Immigrant Status, and Health Outcomes. Demography, 56(3), 1075–1103. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00770-w