Why Social Science? - Because It Produces Essential Data for Our Democracy
By Ronald L. Wasserstein, Ph.D., Executive Director, American Statistical Association
The social sciences are vitally important to the institutions of democracy. Those institutions include a constellation of federal statistical agencies responsible for collecting and disseminating data. With these…
Sexsmith receives Roy C. Buck Award for paper on health care access
PRI affiliate Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is the recipient of the college's 2017 Roy C. Buck Faculty Award, which recognizes the best article accepted or published by a refereed scholarly journal in the social sciences…
Science achievement gaps study recognized
Penn State researchers Paul Morgan, CEDR director and professor of education, and Marianne Hillemeier, professor of health policy and administration and demography, and their colleague George Farkas, professor of education at University of California Irvine, received the Distinguished Research…
COSSA Releases 2018 Edition of State Fact Sheets, New Federal Funding Dashboard
COSSA has released the 2018 edition of its state funding fact sheets, a set of one-pagers that highlight the amount of federal social science research funding that goes to each state, including one for Pennsylvania. Accompanying this year’s fact sheets is a brand-new federal funding dashboard with…
Giving grant applications a second chance
NIH receives many meritorious grant applications for which there are inadequate resources to fund. Thanks to the Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR), there is now a second chance at funding for these applications.
Leidos Health’s Life Sciences has partnered with NIH to…
Former U.S. Census director Robert Groves to present Clogg Lectures
Robert M. Groves, executive vice president and provost and Gerard J. Campbell S.J. Professor in the Department of Math and Statistics and the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, will present the 2018 Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lectures on March 26 and 27 at the Penn State University…
Fellowship equips researchers with skills to engage community in research
Gina Brelsford’s daughter was born at 32 weeks in 2007 and was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care (NICU) unit for five weeks. That experience inspired the associate professor of psychology at Penn State Harrisburg to study the role of religion and spirituality in coping by parents of…
Clinical research guidebook is solid example of collaboration
A newly launched online guidebook can help early-career to established Penn State researchers more easily navigate the clinical research process at Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
The guidebook, a project sponsored by the Penn State Clinical…
Libraries surveying faculty on digital technologies’ impact
Penn State University Libraries is conducting a survey of all Penn State faculty about the impact of digital technologies on research, teaching and publishing.
The survey will be conducted from Tuesday, March 13, to Tuesday, April 10, in partnership with national research organization Ithaka S+R,…
Discovery Series to feature 'Innovations Training and iCorps @ NIH'
"Innovations Training and iCorps @ NIH: Planning and Funding the Future of Your Research" will be presented at the next Discover Seminar Series, part of the Research Quality Assurance Lunchtime Lecture Series at Penn State College of Medicine. The seminar will be held at noon in Lecture Room D at…
CTSI Community Engaged Research Core accepting Faculty Fellowship applications
This opportunity is open to all Penn State junior or mid-level faculty who want to advance their practice of community-engaged research. Community-engaged research is the active involvement and participation of community stakeholders. The degree of community involvement in research is determined…
Hormones may affect girls’ interests, but not their gender identity or playmates
Prenatal exposure to male hormones influences which activities girls are interested and engage in, but the effects of those hormones don’t extend to gender identity or who they socialize with, according to Penn State researchers.
The researchers explored how prenatal exposure to androgens —…
Why Social Science? - Because It is an Engine for Social Progress
By Darla Spence Coffey, PhD, MSW, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Social Work Education & James Herbert Williams, PhD, MSW, MPA, Arizona Centennial Professor of Social Welfare Services at Arizona State University
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is dedicated…
McCourtney Institute Mood of the Nation Poll examines public trust in the FBI
Months of attacks on the FBI are impacting the public’s perception of the Bureau’s 13,000 agents, according to newly-released findings from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Mood of the Nation Poll.
Among Democrats, 67 percent trust the FBI to do what is right “most of the time” or “just…
Why the 2020 census shouldn’t ask about your citizenship status
By Jennifer Van Hook, Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography, for The Conversation
“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”
In Dec. 2017, the Department of Justice formally proposed adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. This question would ostensibly help to…
Brick to speak on data privacy within scientific research
Tim Brick, a Penn State professor of human development and family studies and part of SSRI's QuantDev group , will discuss “The MID/DLE Way: Privacy by Design for Science in Real Time” on March 1 from 1:30–3:00 p.m. The event will be held in 233A HUB-Robeson Center.
This talk is hosted by the…
Thomas publishes book on migrants aiding U.S. military in Iraq
Kevin Thomas, Population Research Institute affiliate and associate professor of sociology, demography, and African studies, recently published his book titled, "Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq". The publication explores why migrants risk traveling to Iraq despite the dangers of the…
Applications open for Community Engaged Research Core Faculty Fellowship Program
Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute‘s Community Engaged Research Core is now accepting applications for its 2018-19 Faculty Fellowship Program.
This opportunity is open to all Penn State junior or mid-level faculty who want to advance their practice of community-engaged research…
Morgan's research featured recently in NYT & WSJ
CEDR director and PRI affiliate Paul Morgan's research was recently reported on in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and details why the research should be resulting in changes in federal-level educational policy.
Additionally, Morgan gave the Naomi Zigmond Plenary…
Twitter resources available for Penn State researchers
The Computational and Spatial Analysis (CSA) Core of the Population and Social Science Research Institutes has built the infrastructure for collecting and managing Twitter data and has capacity in processing and analyzing the data for social science and population research. The Core has collected…
New research collaboratory aims to harness the power of data to improve health
Health care professionals have long theorized that medical conditions, like asthma or cancer, are a result of not only genetics but also environmental and lifestyle factors. These theories, however, have been difficult to prove conclusively without the ability to analyze large-scale population…
Frankenberg reviews report about school and residential segregation
Balancing Act: Schools, Neighborhoods, and Racial Imbalance, published by the Brookings Institution, takes up the important task of considering school and residential segregation by exploring the racial makeup of schools compared to their proximate neighborhoods.
Professors Genevieve Siegel-Hawley…
NIH Announces Inclusion Across the Lifespan Policy
By Mike Lauer
Last month, NIH announced a revision (NOT-OD-18-116) to a decades-old policy originally conceived in response to concerns that children were not appropriately included in clinical research. These changes broaden the policy to address inclusion of research participants of all ages, and…
ICS Symposium 2018 to explore big data and computational research
In today’s society, data is being collected everywhere, all the time—from your phone, from your car, in hospitals, in the workplace. Data has the potential to solve major social problems. But to make sense of such massive quantities of data, researchers must find innovative methods to gather and…
Stigma increases risk of depression for people with Multiple Sclerosis
People with Multiple Sclerosis — MS — who feel stigmatized are more likely to suffer from depression, according to researchers, who add that having a support system of friends and family and a sense of autonomy may help reduce the harmful effects of stigma.
As part of an ongoing research project,…