Research Interests: Neighborhoods, childhood, racial disparities, health.

Current Position: Beth is a Research Scientist for the Adolescent Health and Development in Context project, working with IPR faculty Dr. Chris Browning. The project’s main goal is to study the neighborhood contexts of adolescent health and risk behaviors in the Columbus area. She works on developing real-time survey and location data collection using smartphones in an effort to construct more comprehensive measures of social and spatial contexts. In addition to a traditional in-home survey, youth respondents will be provided with a smartphone for a week that records GPS locations and sends survey prompts five times per day, asking the youth to report on their activity, presence of peers and adults, and risk behaviors participation. This research will develop our understanding of how risk behaviors emerge and occur within youths’ communities – the actual places they go and people with which they interact on a daily basis.