Previous IPR Seminars

Tuesday, 05/31/2011 
Religion and the Transition to Low Fertility in Africa

Dr. Ivy Kodzi, IPR post doctoral researcher

It is documented across various cultures that religious differences in values result in differences in fertility behavior. This connection applies not only to historical fertility regimes, but also to contemporary regimes. For Africa, a pluralist society, religion is increasingly featuring as a salient factor in the transition to low fertility. Using multiple censuses from selected African countries, I examine whether religious differences persist in completed fertility. With multiple Demographic and Health Survey datasets, I also examine how net of social determinants, religion is associated with supply (through women’s autonomy in the use of contraception) and demand (family size preferences) determinants of fertility.

Tuesday, 05/24/2011 
IPR 10th Anniversary Seminar: Racial Boundaries and Demographic Change

Dr. Daniel T. Lichter, Ferris Family Professor, Prof. of Sociology, Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, Cornell University 
ABSTRACT: Growing racial and ethnic diversity will transform America over the foreseeable future. Increases in America's racial minority populations, along with new immigration, will reshape racial boundaries and ethnic relations. Professor Lichter highlights America's movement toward a majority-minority society, and its implications for America's future. He identifies emerging racial differences of family structure and childbearing, new patterns of interracial marriage, and changing racial segregation. Is America moving toward a post-racial society or is it fragmenting along racial and cultural lines?

Tuesday, 05/17/2011 
Grant Writing and Mentoring: A Panel Discussion

Jill Morris IPR, and Jeff Agnoli, Office of Research, facilitators

ABSTRACT: “Selling” your research idea to a sponsor requires research writing that is concise, persuasive, and innovative. Join us for this unique panel discussion featuring faculty members who have been mentored by grant writing experts. You will learn about how these faculty prepare their proposals, obtain peer review feedback, and revise their proposals for submission to sponsoring agencies.
We will be featuring faculty from a variety of academic disciplines. Our panelists have served as grant writing mentors for pre-tenure faculty, been the recipient of mentoring, or participated in a grant writing consultation program contracted through an external vendor.

Tuesday, 05/03/2011 
Uprooted: The impact of economic change on food security and health in the Brazilian Amazon

Dr. Barbara Piperata, Prof. of Anthropology, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: The focus of this talk is to explore how recent economic changes are affecting the dietary patterns, food security and health of rural subsistence farmers living in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. Economic change is considered the major driver of the Nutrition Transition, which is characterized by changes in diet and activity patterns and poor health outcomes, including increased rates of overweight/obesity and associated chronic diseases. Much of our current understanding of this transition is based on national-level data, collected primarily in urban areas, leaving us with a poor understanding of within-country variation in the drivers, pace and effect of such changes on human health. This research, funded by an IPR seed grant, provided me with the rare opportunity to capture the early stages of the Nutrition Transition in the Amazon. Longitudinal data on dietary intake (quantitative and qualitative), food security and nutritional status (height, weight, body fat and musculature) were collected in the same rural communities both before (2002-2004) and after (2009) a significant shift in economic strategies driven primarily by receipt of funds from the Bolsa Família Program, the largest conditional cash transfer program in the world, a rise in the price of the açaí fruit and increased governmental pressure to reduce land clearing in the region. Results demonstrate intra-population variation in the impact of such changes on health and the value of ethnographic data for elucidating links between economic change, food security and human health outcomes.

Tuesday, 04/26/2011 
Great Grant Writing: Learn the Fundamentals of Effective Proposal Development

Dinessa Solomon and Jeff Agnoli

ABSTRACT: Resources from this session .
What are the best ways to develop a grant proposal? Are there resources available to help me locate the “right” funding opportunities? How do I know if my idea is innovative enough? How do I go about identifying collaborators and build my research team? Attend this session and you’ll learn how to: identify and create custom email funding alerts; increase your understanding of sponsor funding priorities; and how to package your proposal to ensure it stands out from the crowd.
Our presenters include Dinessa Solomon, director of foundation relations, Office of University Development, and Jeff Agnoli, education, funding and research development, Office of the Vice President for Research. Together they represent a wide range of research development resources, grant writing techniques, and strategic methods to build your research career.

Tuesday, 04/19/2011 
Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Mortality in the 20th Century: Evidence from the Carolinas

Dr. Trevon Logan, Prof. of Economics, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: Racial and socioeconomic gaps in mortality persisted throughout the twentieth century. We know little, however, about how racial or socioeconomic gaps in mortality were related to each other or how cause-specific mortality evolved over the twentieth century more generally. Demographers have repeatedly documented serious data problems that limit our ability to analyze these issues. In an attempt to overcome these problems, we link a random sample of death certificates taken at five year intervals from 1910 to 1975 to the manuscript federal census files of the deceased's early in life and then to the death certificates of the deceased's parents. To our knowledge, the data we construct is the first of its kind in linking parent and child death certificate information with the additional information from the census files. We show that our research design allows us to construct a panel data set that allows us to look at mortality (both general and cause-specific) over time and for specific cohorts. This paper presents preliminary evidence from our pilot study of death certificates from the Carolinas in the twentieth century, documenting racial and occupational differences in mortality over the twentieth century. We outline several avenues of future research to be investigated with this data.

Tuesday, 04/12/2011 
The Differential Utilities of Demographic and Community-Level Data: What Each Can Tell Us about Predictors of Coparenting

Dr. Claire Kamp Dush & Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan 
ABSTRACT: We illustrate the differential utility of community and secondary data to explore a single concept - here coparenting. Accumulating evidence suggests that the quality of the coparenting relationship, or the extent to which parents function as partners or adversaries in rearing children, is critical for child and family functioning. In order to contribute to a better understanding of the development of coparenting relationships and to guide early intervention efforts, attention has turned towards identifying factors that may affect the development and course of coparenting. Using community data, we use the Prenatal Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP), in which expectant parents are asked to play together with a doll, to (a) examine the predictive validity of the prenatal LTP with respect to parents' postpartum reports of coparenting relationship quality, and (b) determine whether coding of maternal gatekeeping, an aspect of coparenting, in the prenatal LTP contributes to the prediction of postpartum coparenting. 182 couples anticipating the birth of their first child were visited in their homes during the third trimester of pregnancy. Couples participated in the prenatal LTP, which was coded for: family warmth, cooperation, playfulness, and structure (traditional scales), and for maternal gate closing and gate opening (maternal gatekeeping scales). At 3 months postpartum, parents completed surveys measuring several aspects of coparenting: Solidarity/Support, Undermining, and Division of Labor. SEM analyses revealed that couples' interactions in the prenatal LTP predicted fathers' but not mothers' postpartum perceptions of coparenting. Specifically, when couples showed more warmth, playfulness, and structure in the prenatal LTP, fathers perceived less undermining and were more satisfied with the division of labor postpartum. However, when mothers demonstrated greater gate closing in the prenatal LTP, fathers perceived less support, greater undermining, and were less satisfied with the division of labor at 3 months postpartum. Next we examine coparenting after a relationship dissolution using secondary data. Supportive coparenting after relationship dissolution is associated with increased father involvement which can buffer against the negative effects of parental relationship dissolution. Low-income, at-risk families are much more likely to experience relationship dissolutions; hence, supportive coparenting after dissolution is particularly important in these families. We examined whether relationship (commitment and quality) and child (difficult temperament and gender) characteristics predicted initial levels of, and change in, supportive coparenting after relationship dissolution in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1603). We used structural equation modeling of latent growth curves to examine four time points collected at the focal child's birth and first, third, and fifth birthdays. Ninety-percent of the mothers had non-marital births, and about three-quarters had a high school diploma or less education. Overall, supportive coparenting decreased over time. Mothers in more committed relationships prior to the dissolution initially had significantly lower supportive coparenting. But over time, mothers who had been in more committed relationships increased in supportive coparenting. Mothers who had been in higher quality relationships prior to dissolution initially reported more supportive coparenting. At each time point, if a mother was romantically involved with a new partner, she reported significantly lower supportive coparenting compared to mothers who were single. With regard to child characteristics, mothers who reported their child as more difficult had significantly lower initial supportive coparenting. Similar results for fathers are discussed. Overall, the relationship characteristics of parents were important predictors of supportive coparenting both initially and over time.

Wednesday, 04/06/2011 
Reproductive Change in Africa: Propects and Challenges

Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah, University of Ghana, Legon

ABSTRACT: Dr. Samuel Agyei-Mensah is Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies, University of Ghana. He is also Associate Professor of Geography and former Head of the Department of Geography. He has an undergraduate degree in Geography with Philosophy from the University of Ghana (1986), and Ph.D in Geography from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway (1997). Professor Agyei-Mensah conducts research in demography, geography of health and development studies. His current research projects include: residential segregation and ethnic assimilation in major Ghanaian cities; demographic and epidemiological transition in Accra, Ghana; fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Agyei-Mensah is a member of the Population Association of America, Union of African Population Studies, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. He serves on the editorial board of Population and Environment (Springer). Sponsored by the Initiative in Population Research and the Center for African Studies. Free and open to the public. Contact cas@osu.edu or call (614) 292 8169 for more information.

Tuesday, 04/05/2011 
Methodology Seminar--Quantifying and Correcting Generalization Bias

Dr. Eloise Kaizar, Asst. Prof. Statistics, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the traditional gold standard evidence for causal conclusions. However, protocols that limit enrollment eligibility introduce selection error that severely limits a RCT's applicability to a wide range of individuals. Conversely, high quality observational data can be representative of entire populations, but freedom to choose treatment can bias estimators based on this data. Observational methods may be useful in quantifying the size of possible bias due to recruitment protocols, and several methods for doing so have been proposed. Further, I will present a simple cross-design estimator of effect size that capitalizes on RCTs' strong internal validity and observational studys' strong external validity. I will evaluate its properties within a formal framework of causal estimation and compare this new estimator to more traditional estimators based on single sources of evidence.

Tuesday, 03/29/2011 Practice PAA Presentations

IPR Graduate Students 
* Jamie L. Lynch and Ryan Brooks- "Low Birth Weight, Parental Investment, and Early Educational Outcomes" * Brian Soller- "Structuring the Future: Anticipated Life Events, Peer Networks, and Adolescent Sexual Behavior" * Jennifer Adams Mendoza (with John B. Casterline)- "Unrealized Fertility in Latin America" * Ashley Hicks (with Anastasia R. Snyder)- "Shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll at least land in the stars: How parental and youth expectations affect educational attainment" * Dmitry Tumin (with Zhenchao Qian)- "Marital Transitions and the Incidence of Weight Changes" * Letitia Kotila- "High Father Involvement and Supportive Coparenting Predict Increased Same-Partner and Decreased Multipartnered Fertility" * David M. Ramey- "Neighborhood Violent Crime during a New Era of Immigration"

Tuesday, 03/08/2011 
Medicare, Hospital Utilization and Mortality: Evidence from the Programs Origins

Dr. Ken Chay, Professor of Economics, Brown University 
ABSTRACT: Dr. Chay examines changes in hospital utilization and mortality rates occurring after the original introduction of Medicare in July of 1966 with the most comprehensive data ever used. The analysis utilizes the “age discontinuity” design of recent studies, while accounting for pre-existing trends as done in another set of more aggregated research. He finds: i) clear evidence that Medicare increased hospital care utilization and costs among the elderly, but at a lower rate than previously found; ii) significant mortality reductions in the eligible population that exhibit an age discontinuity only after the introduction of Medicare – patterns not found in nations that did not introduce a Medicare-style program in the 1960’s; and iii) the sharpest mortality reductions in acute causes of death (heart disease), with little change in cancer deaths. We estimate that Medicare’s introduction had a cost-per-life year ratio below $200 (in 1982-84 dollars), with a lower cost ratio for quality-adjusted life years. We then analyze changes over time in the characteristics of the “marginal” person who benefited from Medicare coverage. We find that the 65-and-over insurance discontinuity fell over time, and that the rates of decline were highest among blacks, the less-educated, poor and disabled. We further document a sharp increase in the mid-1980s in the use of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery on the Medicare eligible, which coincided with an increase in the relative Medicare reimbursement rate for this procedure.

Tuesday, 03/01/2011 
Unprotected Sex Following HIV Testing among Women in Uganda and Zimbabwe: Short- and Long-term Comparisons with pre-test Behavior

Abigail Norris Turner, PhD, Epidemiology, Division of Infectious Diseases, Ohio State University

ABSTRACT: Despite widespread condom promotion for HIV prevention, prospective measurement of condom use before and after HIV testing is infrequent. We analyzed data from a prospective study of hormonal contraception and HIV acquisition among Zimbabwean and Ugandan women, in which HIV testing and counseling were performed approximately every 3 months. We used zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models to examine the number and proportion of unprotected sex acts, comparing behaviour reported 2-6 months before HIV testing with behaviour reported both 2-6 months (short-term analysis) and 12-16 months (long-term analysis) after HIV testing. The proportion of HIV-infected women reporting any unprotected acts in a typical month declined from 74% (pre-infection behavior) to 56% (12-16 months after HIV diagnosis). In multivariable models, HIV-infected women were twice as likely to report that all sex acts were protected by condoms after diagnosis compared with beforehand [adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.99, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.12-3.53]; uninfected women were somewhat less likely to report that all acts were protected (aOR: 0.82, 95% CI: 0.64-1.04). HIV-infected women also reduced their number of unprotected acts by 38% (95% CI: -16 to -55%). However, their proportion of unprotected acts changed little (7% reduction, 95% CI: -18 to +6%). Uninfected women reported little change in number or proportion of unprotected acts over the same time period. HIV-infected women reduced the number, but not the proportion, of unprotected acts. HIV-negative women did not increase condom use after testing and counseling, but neither did they decrease condom use, suggesting that testing negative was not interpreted as endorsement of risky behaviour.

Tuesday, 02/22/2011 
Health and Aging under Very Diverse Conditions: A P01 Grant Application

Dr. Richard Steckel & Dr. Clark Larsen 
ABSTRACT: The public health community has long been interested in research on the subjects of violence, degenerative conditions, infectious and metabolic diseases, impacts of the environment on health, inequality and health, and childhood origins of adult disease. However, nearly all of the research on these themes has been conducted on relatively modern societies, that is, populations that have lived or are living in the industrial age, or in the past one or possibly two centuries. One might think that populations living in poor developing countries meet the diversity challenge but even they have been influenced in varying degrees by the modern world, including its products, technology, pathogens, and political structures. Scientists know that diversity in the circumstances under which events occur, including health challenges, is desirable for discovering underlying relationships and measuring them with precision. On these grounds medical researchers should welcome the study of health outcomes generated by the wide range of ecological and socioeconomic conditions that have existed since the Neolithic Revolution. We surmise that many if not most of these researchers, however, are unlikely to know how this might be done and therefore have given the idea little thought. This application explains and gives examples of how the diversity of the human experience over the millennia can be brought to bear on modern public health concerns, and how this effort might engage medical researchers. Our specific aims are to: • Explain the research value of skeletal remains. • Explain the importance of contextual information • Apply the study of skeletal remains and their context to public health problems. • Engage the medical profession in the research of this application.

Tuesday, 02/08/2011 
Moving to the Land of Milk and Cookies: Obesity among young children of immigrants

Dr. Jennifer Van Hook 
ABSTRACT: Many immigrants hope for better lives for themselves and their children. Yet adapting to life in the United States can be risky even among the most economically successful immigrants. One reason is that poor nutrition, low levels of physical activity, and obesity have reached alarming levels in the United States. In a series of research papers, we documented the prevalence and patterns of obesity among young children of immigrants. We show that children of newly arrived immigrants are particularly vulnerable to this growing health problem, and suggest that this may result from immigrants parents' inexperience with childhood obesity as a health risk.

Tuesday, 01/25/2011 
Public Pension Formation in Developing Countries: Weighing Adequacy and Sustainability

Dr. Jason Seligman 
ABSTRACT: For developing countries with high rates of productivity, population growth and increasing urbanization, public pensions can diversify household risk through provision of risk-free assets. Designing a national system requires consideration of traditional household relationships and behaviors, so as to develop a sustainable program that provides an adequate old-age benefit. We develop an overlapping generations model where households rely on children and own saving to finance retirement consumption. Older generations face retirement risk because of household specific childhood mortality and capital market risk. We show that the introduction of a public pension system financed by a wage tax reduces retirement risk but at the cost of crowding out both capital and labor. The relative magnitude of the crowd out effects depend on the relative cost of taxes to benefits.

Tuesday, 01/18/2011 
Proxy Pattern-Mixture Analysis for Survey Nonresponse

Rebecca R Andridge, Biostatistics, CPH, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: We propose proxy pattern-mixture analysis (PPMA), a simple method for assessing nonresponse bias for the mean of a survey variable subject to nonresponse, when there is a set of covariates observed for nonrespondents and respondents. To reduce dimensionality and for simplicity we reduce the covariates to a single proxy variable that has the highest correlation with the outcome, estimated from a regression analysis of respondent data. The impact of nonresponse on bias depends primarily on three factors: the nonresponse rate, the strength of the proxy variable in predicting the outcome, and the difference in proxy mean for respondents and nonrespondents. The PPMA method combines all three elements in an intuitively reasonable way to produce adjusted estimators of the mean of the outcome based on a pattern-mixture model. Properties are examined through simulation and with data from the Ohio Family Health Survey.

Tuesday, 11/30/2010 
Understanding the Multi-level Determinants of Health: Can Complex Systems Help?

Dr. Ana Diez Roux, Professor of Epidemiology, University of Michigan 
ABSTRACT: Population health researchers have long struggled with the methodological challenges inherent in studying the multilevel determinants of health using observational data and standard analytical approaches. This presentation will review these challenges and outlining the possible utility of complex systems thinking and tools in addressing some of these challenges Examples of exploratory applications of the use of agent-based models to study neighborhood health effects will be presented. The potentialities and limitations of these approaches will be discussed. Dr. Diez Roux has been an international leader in the investigation of the social determinants of health, the application of multilevel analysis in health research, and the study of neighborhood health effects. Her research areas include social epidemiology and health disparities, environmental health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors in health, and cardiovascular disease epidemiology.

Tuesday, 10/19/2010 
Patterns and Implications of Multi-Partnered Fertility among Urban US Parents

Marcy Carlson, University of Wisconsin

ABSTRACT: At the nexus of changing marital and fertility behavior is a new reality of contemporary family life—the fact that a significant fraction of adults today (will) have biological children by more than one partner, sometimes called ‘multi-partnered fertility’ (and abbreviated as MPF). This research uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the prevalence of multi-partnered fertility among urban U.S. parents and to explore the implications for parental relationships and young children’s outcomes. I find that among the majority of unmarried couples having an urban birth in the late 1990s, either the mother, the father or both parents already had a child with another partner; the prevalence is lower (though not zero) among married couples. Fathers’ MPF seems to be associated with less effective co-parenting, lower paternal involvement with children, and lower-quality couple relationships, while mothers’ MPF is linked to greater externalizing behavioral problems and lower cognitive scores among pre-school-aged children.

Tuesday, 10/12/2010 
Conceptual and Methodological Tools for a New Human Population Biology: Inflammation as Exemplar

Thomas McDade, Northwestern University

Tuesday, 10/05/2010 
Designed Missingness for Epidemiological Studies

Warren Strauss, Batelle 
ABSTRACT: Modern epidemiological studies face opportunities and challenges posed by an ever-expanding capacity to measure a wide range of environmental exposures, along with sophisticated biomarkers of exposure and response at the individual level. The challenge of deciding what to measure is further complicated for longitudinal studies, where logistical and cost constraints preclude the collection of all possible measurements on all participants at every follow-up time. This is true for the National Children’s Study (NCS), a large scale longitudinal study that will enroll children starting in early pregnancy and gather information on their development and environment through early adulthood. The success of the NCS will significantly depend on the accurate, yet cost-effective, characterization of environmental exposures thought to be related to the health outcomes of interest. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the use of cost saving, yet valid and adequately powered statistical approaches for gathering exposure information within epidemiological cohort studies. The proposed approach involves the collection of detailed exposure assessment information on a specially selected subset of the study population, and collection of less-costly, and presumably less-detailed and less-burdensome, surrogate measures across the entire cohort. We show that large scale efficiency in costs and burden may be achieved without making substantive sacrifices on the ability to draw reliable inferences concerning the relationship between exposure and health outcome. Several detailed scenarios are provided that document how the targeted sub-sampling design strategy can benefit large cohort studies such as the NCS, as well as other more focused environmental epidemiologic studies.

Tuesday, 09/28/2010 
Ranked Set Sampling: Where Are the Samplers?

Elizabeth Stasny

ABSTRACT: Ranked set sampling (RSS) is a method of data collection that makes use of experts judgment, possibly through a model, of relative sizes of potential sample units. In a simple form of RSS, the observations quantified by the researcher generally will be more representative of the range of values in the population than those obtained from simple random sampling (SRS). RSS has been shown to result in more precise estimators than SRS. Although there is a growing literature of research on RSS, the area is unfamiliar to most sampling statisticians. In this talk, I will present various types of RSS and demonstrate the improvement possible through the use of RSS over standard sampling designs.

Tuesday, 05/25/2010 
The Size of Health Selection Effects

Alberto Palloni, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin at Madison 
ABSTRACT: The association between adult socioeconomic status and health status has been alternately attributed to the material effects of economic status, ties between labor productivity and health and cumulative effects of early life socioeconomic status. This paper considers the lasting effects of early child health for adult socioeconomic gradients in health status. We analyze longitudinal data with measures of developmental, health and socioeconomic outcomes over the life cycle and show how poor health early in life correlates with lower schooling outcomes, lower adult occupational status and poor adult health. We then examine the cumulative effects of early child health for trajectories of both socioeconomic attainment and health accumulation with a set of counterfactual experiments of health effects over the life cycle. The results show that early child health effects contribute little to the socioeconomic gradient in health that is observed in adulthood.

Tuesday, 05/18/2010 
"Of All the Forms of Inequality:" Health Disparities, Justice, and the Distribution of Health Care

Dr. Andrew Courtwright, Massachusetts General Hospital 
ABSTRACT: Over the last twenty years, philosophers have proposed several ethical frameworks—including utilitarian, rights-based, and theories of social justice—designed to explain why we should work to reduce health disparities. Each of these approaches has been modified as epidemiologists have provided more information about the causes of health disparities, particularly the social determinants of health. The first half of this talk uses data on disparities in heart disease, breast cancer, anti-retroviral therapy, and kidney transplant to illustrate the ethical debate about health disparities, particularly appeals to social justice. The second half draws on work on the stigmatization of disease to help rethink those arguments, focusing not just on the distribution of things like access to health care or income, but also on the social message expressed by policies designed to address health disparities.

Tuesday, 05/17/2010 
Grant Writing and Mentoring: A Panel Discussion

TBA

ABSTRACT:
“Selling” your research idea to a sponsor requires research writing that is concise, persuasive, and innovative. Join us for this unique panel discussion featuring faculty members who have been mentored by grant writing experts. You will learn about how these faculty prepare their proposals, obtain peer review feedback, and revise their proposals for submission to sponsoring agencies.
We will be featuring faculty from a variety of academic disciplines. Our panelists have served as grant writing mentors for pre-tenure faculty, been the recipient of mentoring, or participated in a grant writing consultation program contracted through an external vendor.

Tuesday, 05/11/2010 
Presentation cancelled for May 11, will be rescheduled

Jeremy Wallace

Tuesday, 05/04/2010 
Social inequality and first union patterns in Mexico City

Dr. Patricio Solís, Professor and Researcher, Center for Sociological Studies of El Colegio de Mexico

ABSTRACT: High social inequality has been historically one of the most distinctive features of Mexican society. However, the study of social inequality in Mexico has mainly focused on measuring inequality of results, thus overlooking the mechanisms leading to its reproduction over time. Adopting a life-course perspective may contribute to increase our understanding of these mechanisms, by elucidating the ways in which significant life-course events and career pathways mediate between social origins and destinations. This mediating role is not limited to transitions and trajectories in the spheres of education and work, but extends to demographic events such as the transition to marriage, particularly in the case of women. Based on data from a representative survey collected in Mexico City in 2009, I look at the role of women's first union as a transition that mediates between social origins and destinations. Using event history analysis, I explore the effects of class and migratory origins on the timing of marriage, as well as the role of educational and occupational resources as proximate determinants of this transition. Then I analyze assortative mating patterns by education and occupation, exploring how the differences in the timing of first unions by social origins might facilitate homogamy and therefore contribute to the intergenerational transmission of social inequality.

Tuesday, 04/27/2010 
Poverty and Place across the United States: Does County Government Matter to Improving Socioeconomic Conditions?

Dr. Linda Lobao, Prof. Rural Sociology, Sociology,Geography; Dr. Mark Partridge, Dr. David Kraybill, Dr. Wilner Jeanty, all from Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics (AEDE) 
ABSTRACT: Poverty and other economic disparities across the United States have long concerned scholars and policy-makers. A large literature spanning demography, sociology, regional science, and geography addresses economic disparities broadly at the subnational scale. Most of this work employs counties as units of analysis but treats them as population aggregates rather than as local governments. As gaps remain in explaining why populations remain impoverished, researchers increasingly have advocated place-sensitive policies and active local government responses. In doing so, they raise a fundamental question: can local governments themselves influence poverty net of other well-known determinants? To answer this question, we use a unique set of primary and secondary data on county governments across the nation for the post-2000 period. We employ a series of models that control for standard determinants of poverty, spatial influences, and the endogenous effects of job growth. Overall, county government size and degree of autonomy are related to lower adult and child poverty and higher household income. Our study provides some evidence that counties matter to reducing poverty and suggests the need to re-conceptualize the vast amount of past work that treats counties as population aggregates ignoring their role as local states. Co-authored with Mark Partridge, David Kraybill, and P. Wilner Jeanty.

Tuesday, 04/20/2010 
Inflammation: a model of how social determinants of health 'get under the skin'

Dr. Elliot Friedman, Associate Scientist, Institute on Aging, University of Wisconsin, Madison 
ABSTRACT: Social gradients in health are well established, but the biological processes linking social position with health outcomes are not well understood. Inflammation is a particularly appealing candidate biological process because it is sensitive to social and psychological processes related to social standing on the one hand and predicts a range of chronic health conditions on the other. In this discussion I will present evidence linking social status with inflammation. Drawing on the stress model I will then broaden the discussion to consider potential psychosocial mediators of these associations as well as interactions with other biological systems that further illuminate how social determinants may get under the skin to affect health. Inflammation: a model of how social determinants of health 'get under the skin.'

Tuesday, 04/13/2010 
PAA Pracitce Session

IPR Graduate Student Affiliates

Tuesday, 04/06/2010 
Cutoff Designs for Community-based Intervention Studies

Dr. Michael Pennell, Assistant Professor, College of Public Health, OSU 
ABSTRACT: Public health interventions are often designed to target communities defined either geographically (e.g., cities, counties) or socially(e.g., schools or workplaces). The group randomized trial (GRT) is regarded as the gold standard for evaluating these interventions. However, community leaders may object to randomization as groups may be denied a potentially beneficial intervention. Under a regression discontinuity design (RDD), individuals may be assigned to treatment based on the levels of a pretest measure, thereby allowing those most in need of the treatment to receive it. In this talk, I will discuss analysis, power, and sample size issues in applying the RDD and related cutoff designs to community-based intervention studies. I will examine the power of these designs as a function of intraclass correlation, number of groups, and number of members per group and compare results to the traditional GRT.

Tuesday, 03/30/2010 
Aggregation Problems

Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin 
ABSTRACT: How do actions experienced by those who commit them as the result of individual choice or personal intention aggregate up into the remarkably stable population rates that we observe? What are the relationships between individual intentions and aggregate outcomes? This paper explores the practical philosophy of aggregation in four cases: fertility intentions, urban segregation, diabetes and asthma, and the intergenerational transmission of status and family size. Two of the cases are empirical and two are simulations. Two deal with individual intentions and two with structural or biological forces unrelated to intention. Three work across different levels of aggregation, and the last within a specific level over time. The talk is based on a chapter of a book in progress.

Tuesday, 03/09/2010 
Menstrual Cup Adoption and Effects on Education

Dr. Rebecca Thornton, Asst. Prof. of Economics, University of Michigan 
ABSTRACT: Policy-makers have cited menstruation and lack of sanitary products as barriers to girls' schooling. We evaluate these claims using a randomized evaluation of sanitary products provision to girls in Nepal. We find that menstruation has a very small impact on school attendance: girls miss only 0.4 days in a 180 day school year due to their period. Second, improved sanitary technology (menstrual cups) have no effect on reducing this (small) gap: girls who randomly received sanitary products were no less likely to miss school during their period. Claims that menstruation is a barrier to schooling are overstated and modern sanitary products are unlikely to affect educational attainment. However, menstrual cups were associated with significant time saving benefits and the cup was quickly adopted, suggesting other potential benefits for girls.

Tuesday, 03/02/2010 
Methods Workshop: Sampling Urban Residents and Female Sex Workers in Shanghai: Sexual Behavior, Sexual Networks, and Implications for the Spread of HIV/STDs

Giovanna Merli, Associate Professor, Duke University 
ABSTRACT: China is a low HIV prevalence country. In 2007, there were an estimated 700,000 HIV cases corresponding to 0.05 percent of the adult population, with 49% of new cases attributed to heterosexual contact and 20% of all infections among female sex workers and their clients. I present selected findings from two sexual behavior surveys conducted in Shanghai in late 2007-early 2008. The first is a citywide survey of sexual behaviors and (egocentric) sexual networks of a probability sample of 1,689 urban residents and migrants. The second is a study of sexual behavior and sexually transmitted diseases among 522 female sex workers recruited through Respondent Driven Sampling, an innovative network-based sampling approach which purports to extend the sample to all potential members of a hidden population and yield statistically unbiased estimates of risk behaviors and infection status. Special emphasis will be laid on a discussion of the appropriateness of the selected sampling approaches to document crucial risk factors leading to HIV acquisition and transmission in the Chinese context and the implications of these factors for the potential spread (or failure to spread) of HIV in the worlds largest population.

Tuesday, 02/23/2010 
Event cancelled

No seminar today

Tuesday, 02/16/2010 
Cancelled

Ana Diez Roux, School of Public Health, University of Michigan

Tuesday, 02/09/2010 
OSU Media Training for IPR Affiliates

Earle Holland and Jeffery Grabmeier

ABSTRACT: Earle Holland is director of research communications in the Office of University Relations. As senior science communications professional at OSU, he oversees the promotion of research activities, including crisis communications involving research risks (lab animal use, human subjects experimentation, radiation safety, biosafety, infection control, computer security and scientific misconduct). He edits two national news services, has edited the former tabloid magapaper (Quest) and a major four-color magazine reporting on cancer research, treatment and education (Frontiers), and manages the university's research news website. For 20 years has taught a graduate level science writing course for OSU's School of Journalism. Jeff Grabmeier, assistant director of research communications, has been with the office since 1985. Jeff's primary responsibility is to help prepare the office's two national news services, which highlight the faculty's research accomplishments to print and broadcast reporters across the country. For the services, he assigns stories, works with writers, and edits copy. He is the principal writer covering research in the social sciences, business and human ecology. Jeff also assists reporters who are looking for sources or seeking more information on Ohio State research. In addition, Jeff edits the Research page for onCampus, the faculty and staff newspaper, and writes for Quest, the university's tabloid magapaper. Jeff co-chaired the 1997 national CASE Conference titled Effective Techniques for Communicating University Research.

Tuesday, 02/02/2010 
Tobacco Use and Cessation in Ohio Appalachia

Dr. Mary Ellen Wewers, College of Public Heath

Tuesday, 01/26/2010 
Methods Seminar: Geographic Analysis, Part II

Dr. Mei Po Kwan, Professor of Geography, and GeoHealth working group faculty, OSU

Tuesday, 01/19/2010 
GIS Methodology Seminar

Dr. Mei Po Kwan, Dr. Ningchuan Xiao

ABSTRACT: Geocomputation and 3D Geovisualization as Methods in Population and Health Research Dr. Mei-Po Kwan Department of Geography Recent advances in geospatial technologies have enabled the collection of space-time data at high spatial and temporal resolutions, often in conjunction with other contextual and biomarker data. This part of the seminar discusses geocomputation and geovisualization as methods for analyzing these data in population and health research. Geocomputation seeks to depict geographical variations of phenomena across scales and often involves the development and use of dedicated computational algorithms. 3D geovisualization facilitates the identification and interpretation of spatial patterns and relationships in complex data in the geographical context of a particular study area. The use of these methods in the study of individual accessibility and human activity patterns will be presented. (Part II) Dr. Ningchunan Xiao Department of Geography Agent-based Modeling and Social Network Analysis: Linking Spatial Analysis, Computational Science, and Population Research--This part of the seminar will provide an overview of the literature on the topics of agent-based modeling and social network, with a focus placed on overarching some recent developments in spatial analysis, computational science, population and public health research. Examples from social science, public health, economics, and geography will be used.

Tuesday, 01/12/2010 
Children of Adversity: The Health and Nutrition of American Slaves

Dr. Rick Steckel, Professor of Economics, Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: Adult height summarizes net nutrition and health aspects of welfare in childhood, but longitudinal data are virtually unavailable for a thorough investigation of its proximate determinants, which are diet, disease and physical activity from conception to maturity. Here I use a time series of children measured once at different ages to address the data challenge by creating a synthetic measure of longitudinal growth that is sensitive to current conditions.The paper analyzes fluctuations in the measure estimated from heights of 20,000 slave children recorded on coastwise shipping manifests.Drawing upon an economic model that links investments in child health to the relative prices of food, slaves and cotton, and using a novel proxy for exposure to pathogens, I show how economic incentives contributed to fluctuations in growth and to a peculiar pattern of health: severe early childhood stunting followed by extraordinary catch-up by teenagers. The methods expand our tool kit for height studies and the results show that plantation owners systematically manipulated net nutrition in response to price signals. Despite owning all their future labor, planters found it profitable to feed young children poorly, thereby distorting the slave family, cognitive development and personality.

Tuesday, 11/17/2009 
The Contribution of Neighborhood Social Disorganization to SexuallyTransmitted Infection Using Biomarker Measures

Dr. Jodi Ford, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT:

This study examined the contribution of neighborhood social disorganization to sexually transmitted infection (STI) among U.S. young adults using Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and 2000 U.S. Census data. The dependent variable, STI, was a urine biomarker measure of Chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomonas vaginalis. Neighborhood social disorganization was measured via three separate composite indicators: concentrated poverty, residential instability and ethnic heterogeneity. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was employed to adjust for the nesting of individuals within neighborhoods. Findings indicate that concentrated poverty was positively associated with STI, but residential instability was negatively associated, after adjusting for individual sociodemographic and risk behaviors and neighborhood controls. The findings suggest that more mobile neighborhoods may serve as protective environments against STI, potentially through more open network structures. However, a better understanding of how concentrated poverty contributes to STI among young adults is needed. Future research directions and neighborhood theory applications to STI will be discussed.

Tuesday, 11/10/2009 
Schooling and Sexual Behavior in South Africa: The Role of Peer Effects

David Lam, Professor of Economics, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 
ABSTRACT: This study examines the influence of exposure to older peers on sexual debut in urban South Africa. The study analyzes data from the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), a longitudinal survey of young adults in metropolitan Cape Town. The combination of early sexual debut, high levels of school enrollment into the late teens, and high rates of grade repetition create an environment in which young people who progress through school ahead of their cohorts interact with classmates who may be several years older. We construct a measure of cumulative exposure to classmates at least two years older, and show that this measure has a statistically significant positive effect on sexual debut of adolescent girls. It also increases the age difference of the first sexual partner for those girls, and helps explain a significant fraction of the earlier sexual debut of African girls compared to coloured and white girls in Cape Town.

Friday, 11/06/2009 
OSU/BGSU Graduate Student Conference

Graduate Student Researchers

Friday, 11/06/2009 
3rd Annual Huber Lecture-- Some Economic Consequences of the Demographic Transition and Population Aging: Insights from National Transfer Accounts

Dr. Ronald Lee, Professor of Demography, The University of California, Berkeley 
ABSTRACT: Dr. Lee is director of UC Berkeley's Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging, one of 11 centers established by the National Institute on Aging that form part of the national infrastructure for developing the emerging field of the demography of aging. He is the author of numerous articles, papers and publications. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Economic Association, the Population Association of America, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the European Society for Population Economies, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lee has also served as a consultant to the Social Security Administration and was a member of the Census Advisory Committee on Population Statistics for the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Tuesday, 11/03/2009 
Gender Equality and Relationship Transitions

Dr. Lynn Price Cooke, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

ABSTRACT: The theory and cross-national evidence as to effects of a partnered woman’s employment on relationship stability remain mixed. The Gender Equality in Relationship Transitions (GERT) network brings together sociologists, demographers, and economists from Australia, Belgium, East and West Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States to harmonize diverse national longitudinal datasets to compare effects of partnered women’s employment on relationship stability. The selected countries represent a range of usual levels and type of female employment, allowing us to assess how the individual effects of women’s work hours and wages vary in context. Initial results from analyses of British, German, and US panels highlight how the socioeconomic context and total household production are more important predictors than a woman’s employment. Lynn Prince Cooke (DPhil, Nuffield College, Oxford University) is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. From an interdisciplinary perspective and using a multimethod approach, she explores policy effects on life course outcomes for members of different social groups (class, gender, ethnic and demographic intersections). Her research has appeared in American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Social Policy, European Sociological Review, and Journal of Marriage and Family, and she serves on the editorial board of the latter two journals.

Tuesday, 10/27/2009 
Neighborhood Stressors and Health: Crime Spikes, Social Cohesion,and Short-Term Variability in BMI

Dr. Christopher Browning, Associate Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT: Disparities in the prevalence of overweight and obesity across sociodemographic characteristics remain a source of enduring concern for social scientists, clinicians, and policy makers. We apply neighborhood theory to understanding variation in short-term changes in body mass index (BMI), focusing on the role that neighborhood social cohesion and rapid increases in the crime rate (“crime spikes”) play in influencing weight gain. Data on BMI change for adults ages 30-65 are drawn from the 2000-2002 Dallas Heart Study. Results from multilevel linear models indicate that crime spikes increase short-term weight gain while social cohesion exerts a protective effect. However, social cohesion amplifies the positive impact of crime spikes on weight gain, suggesting that cohesive neighborhoods more efficiently disseminate stress-inducing information about local crime. These findings shed light on the contextual processes that influence changing health status and offer a rigorous design for the investigation of neighborhood effects.

Tuesday, 10/20/2009 
How Immigration, Migration, and Aging in Place are Changing America’s Regions and Metropolitan Areas

Dr. William Frey, The Brookings Institute 
ABSTRACT:

Dr. Frey specializes in issues involving urban populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics, and the US Census. He is one of the foremost chroniclers of contemporary urban trends, and is regularly quoted in major newspapers. Dr. Frey's work is factual and thought provoking and covers a broad variety of topics including the 2008 election, race/ethnicity, aging, and the housing market. Recent papers include: "Painting the Mountain States Blue;" "Virginia and Florida: Bookends of the New South;" "Race, Immigration and America’s Changing Electorate." Dr. Frey has worked on the housing/foreclosure crisis, looking at how migration to hot housing markets cools off and how the housing bust influenced state migration patterns. His papers "Older Cities Hold On to More People: Mapping the Growth of Older America" and "Immigration and Demographic Balkanization: Toward One America or Two?" reflect his interest in mainline demography. Finally, Dr. Frey is well-known for his predilection for attending major league baseball games.

Co-sponsored by CURA and IPR

Tuesday, 10/13/2009 
Causal Mediation Analysis

Dr. Luke Keele, Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: In a highly influential paper, Baron and Kenny (1986) proposed a statistical procedure to conduct a causal mediation analysis and identify possible causal mechanisms. This procedure has been widely used across many branches of the social and medical sciences and especially in psychology and epidemiology. However, one major limitation of this approach is that it is based on a set of linear regressions and cannot be easily extended to more complex situations that are frequently encountered in applied research. In this paper, we propose an approach that generalizes the Baron-Kenny procedure. Our method can accommodate linear and nonlinear relationships, parametric and nonparametric models, continuous and discrete mediators, and various types of outcome variables. We also provide a formal statistical justification for the proposed generalization of the Baron-Kenny procedure by placing causal mediation analysis within the widely-accepted counterfactual framework of causal inference. Finally, we develop a set of sensitivity analyses that allow applied researchers to quantify the robustness of their empirical conclusions. Such sensitivity analysis is important because as we show the Baron-Kenny procedure and our generalization of it rest on a strong and untestable assumption even in randomized experiments. We illustrate the proposed methods by applying them to a randomized field experiment, the Job Search Intervention Study (JOBS II). We also offer easy-to-use software that implements all of our proposed methods.

Tuesday, 10/06/2009 
Geographic and Racial Disparities in Mental Health Outcomes

Dr. Stephen Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science, The Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: This presentation begins with a brief review of a study of approximately 5,000 families of children and adolescents with significant behavioral health care. Families in the study participated in the statewide family empowerment initiative through the time period of July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2007. Differences in enrollment rates and service delivery as a function of county size were detected, yet there was no association between the amount of services received and treatment gains. While the behavioral health progress of youth served in this initiative generally followed a positive trajectory in terms of the overall sample, lower improvement rates among minority youth were quite pronounced. The geographic and racial disparities in this relatively small and select sample prompted the need to compare these findings against that of the entire database of youth served during the same time period. We look at 52,339 youth between the ages of 5-11 (children) and 12-16 (adolescents) from the two largest racial/ethnic groups, White non-Hispanic and African American non-Hispanic. Our findings show that race and geography continues to matter in terms of the outcomes reported on this larger sample. Findings regarding the use of both Level 1 (youth’s race and age, hours of treatment received, parent involvement in treatment planning, problem severity and child functioning levels) and Level 2 (county size, per capita resource allocation for behavioral health care, and socioeconomic indicators) variables will be discussed.

Tuesday, 09/29/2009 
Geographical Analysis Revisited: Implications for Population and Health Research

Dr. Mei Po Kwan, Professor of Geography, The Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: In this seminar Dr. Kwan will first discuss the vision, agenda and services of the Geographical Analysis Core under the new NIH center grant funding at OSU. She will focus on its mission and how it will foster innovative population and health research at OSU. She will then discuss some of the key features of her own research, which seeks to advance geographical analysis beyond the conventional area-based spatial framework (in light of recent developments in geospatial technologies that enable us to collect and analyze data at very fine spatial and temporal scales). Dr. Kwan explores the challenges facing contemporary geographical analysis through revisiting four fundamental notions: distance, geographical context, time, and human experience. Drawing upon her recent research projects, she will discuss how new developments in geographical analysis that take these notions into account will help us move population and health research forward in significant ways.

Tuesday, 06/02/2009 
Population Heterogeneity and Causal Inference

Dr. Yu Xie - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

ABSTRACT:

Yu Xie argues that the very objective of social science is not to discover abstract and universal laws but to understand population variability. He calls this "Variability Principle." Causal inference with observational data in social science is impossible without strong assumptions. There are two potential sources of bias. The first is bias in unobserved pretreatment factors affecting the outcome additively. The second is bias due to heterogeneity in treatment effects. The first potential source of bias is usually handled with either collection of new data or unique design features (such as fixed effects models). Our understanding of the second source of bias is so far inadequate. In this presentation, Yu Xie discusses a simple scenario of "composition bias," which is a form of selection bias, under the classic assumption of ignorability. Both simulation and empirical examples are given.

Tuesday, 05/26/2009 
The Mental Health of Mothers and Fathers Before and After Cohabitation

Dr. Claire Kamp Dush, Assoc. Prof. HDFS, Ohio State

ABSTRACT: Using data from years one and three of the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, changes in depressive and anxious symptoms are compared for mothers and fathers who: 1) dissolve a cohabitating union versus remain intact; 2) dissolve a marital union versus remain intact; and 3) dissolve a cohabiting as compared to a marital union. In order to take into account potential sources of third variable bias from selection factors that differentiate those who are in cohabitations from those who are in marriages, mothers and fathers were matched on several sociodemographic control variables that research has demonstrated to be related to union formation and mental health outcomes. Results indicated that fathers who dissolve cohabitating or marital unions have greater increases in depressive and anxious symptoms over time than those who remain in their unions. In contrast, mothers increased in depressive and anxious symptoms, regardless of the type or stability of the union. For both mothers and fathers, no differences were found in change in mental health by type of union dissolution. In this low-income sample of parents, results suggest that the impact of cohabitation and marital dissolution on mental health are similar in magnitude.

Tuesday, 05/19/2009 
Dr. Bill Frey - The Brookings Institute

This IPR & CURA Co-sponsored event has been cancelled

Tuesday, 05/17/2009 
TBA

Dr. Kammi Schmeer, Sociology, Ohio State

Tuesday, 05/12/2009 
Reliability and Validity of Prisoner Self-Reports Gathered Using The Life Event Calendar Method

Dr. Paul Bellair, Associate Professor of Sociology, Ohio State

ABSTRACT:

Data collection using the life event calendar method is growing, but reliability and validity are not well established. We examine test-retest reliability of monthly self-reports of criminal behavior collected using a life event calendar from a random sample of minimum security prisoners. Tabular analysis indicates over eighty percent agreement between self-reports of drug dealing, property, and violent crime during a baseline interview (test) and a follow-up (retest) approximately three weeks later. Hierarchical analysis reveals that criminal activity reported during the initial test is strongly associated with responses given in the retest, and that the relationship varies only by the lag in days between the initial interview and the retest.

Analysis of validity reveals that self-reported criminal history is strongly predictive of official criminal history, that African American's provide more valid responses relative to other groups, and that subjects reporting higher illegal earnings provide less valid responses. However, in practical terms the differences are not large, suggesting that self-reports of criminal behavior collected in criminal justice settings using a life event calendar are acceptably reliable and valid.

Co-Sponsored by IPR and the CJRC.

Tuesday, 05/10/2009 
TBA

Dr. Mark Moritz, Anthropology, Ohio State

Tuesday, 05/05/2009 
Nonparametric Methods for Modeling Nonlinearity in Regression Analysis

Dr. Robert Andersen- University of Toronto

ABSTRACT:

The linear model and related generalized linear model (GLM) are important tools for sociologists. If the relationships between y (or in the case of the GLM, the linear predictor) and the xs are linear, these methods provide elegant summaries of the data. On the other hand, these methods fail to adequately model underlying relationships if they are characterized by complex nonlinear patterns. In such cases nonparametric regression, which allows the functional form between y and x to be determined by the data themselves, is more suitable.

There are many types of nonparametric simple regression. I focus on locally weighted scatterplot smoothing(lowess or loess) and smoothing splines because they are the most widely used. I also describe additive and generalized additive models (GAM), which allow modeling of categorical dependent variables, and explain how these methods can handle both parametric and nonparametric (i.e., lowess and smoothing splines) effects for many predictors. Finally, I briefly introduce the more recent development of the vector generalized additive model (VGAM), which further extends the GAM to handle multivariate dependent variables, and the generalized additive mixed model, which allows specification of smooth functions within the mixed model framework.

Tuesday, 04/28/2009 
PAA Practice Session

IPR Student Affiliates

ABSTRACT:

Matthew Painter II and Jonathan Vespa: "Race/Ethnicity, Cohabitation and Marital Wealth Accumulation"

John B. Casterline and Jennifer Mendoza: "Unintended Pregnancy in Latin America: Historical Trends, Recent Patterns"

Rhiannon D'Souza and Christopher Browning: "The Effect of Neighborhood-Level Poverty on Perceptions of Weight among Adolescents"

Tuesday, 04/21/2009 
Fertility Desires and The Prospects for Fertility Decline in Africa

Dr. John Casterline, Lazarus Professor of Sociology, Ohio State

Tuesday, 04/20/2009 
TBA

Dr. Elliot Friedman, Associate Scientist, Institute on Aging

Tuesday, 04/19/2009 
TBA

Dr. Trevon Logan, Dept of Economics, Ohio State

Tuesday, 04/14/2009 
Do Changes in Job Mobility Explain the Growth of Wage Inequality among Men in the United States, 1977-2005?

Dr. Ted Mouw, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina

ABSTRACT:

To what extent did the increase in wage inequality among men in the United States over the past three decades result from job loss and/or employment instability? We propose a simple method for decomposing the change in wage inequality into components due to upward and downward employer mobility and within-employer wage changes using data on men’s wages and job mobility from the 1977-2005 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find that downward employer mobility—a proxy for job displacement based on movement to a lower paid job with a new employer—has the largest effect on inequality over a two-year period. However, as the time since job displacement increases, the effect declines. Adding up the short and medium term effects over overlapping eight year periods, we find that the effect of job loss over accounts for 39% of the increase in inequality during the average eight year period between 1977 and 2005, compared to 52% attributable to wage changes for workers who stay with the same employer.

Tuesday, 04/12/2009 
TBA

Claire Kamp Dush, HDFS, Ohio State

Tuesday, 04/07/2009 
How Complete Are Men's Reports of Fertility In Surveys?

Dr. Kara Joyner - Bowling Green State

ABSTRACT: Researchers continue to question men’s willingness and ability to report their biological children in surveys. This study evaluates the quality of men’s fertility reports in the NLSY79, NLSY97, and NSFG 2002 by comparing male fertility rates in these surveys to those estimated for the population using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Calculating the ratio of survey rates to population rates, we document how the undercount of births to men in surveys differs according to several factors (e.g., the inclusion of incarcerated men in the survey sample). We use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate how, exactly, the birth undercount biases associations between early parenthood and other variables in conventional models. Finally, we reveal how age-specific fertility rates differ for men and women.

Tuesday, 03/31/2009 
Revisiting the Leisure Class: How do Resources affect U.S. Women’s Leisure Time?

Liana Sayer, Associate Professor of Sociology, Ohio State

ABSTRACT: Time allocation patterns have consequences for individual physiological and mental well-being, as well as investments in personal, social, and civic capital (Bittman 1999; Bourdieu 1984). Variation among women in their time spent on leisure, especially as it relates to their economic resources, is an important but understudied aspect of social stratification. Previous research suggests three key dimensions along which there could be socioeconomic variation in women’s leisure: future orientation; social engagement; and affect or pleasure (Bittman 2002; Kahneman et al 2006). Higher earnings and education may permit greater freedom for women to allocate leisure to activities that yield greater health, interpersonal, and affective benefits. They may also imply a greater ability to invest time in activities, such as physical exercise, that yield desirable outcomes in the future instead of, or in addition to, the present. Using data from the pooled 2003-2007 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we document substantial differences among women with low and high earnings and education in time spent on health related leisure. Women with the highest 10 percent of earnings are twice as likely as women with the lowest 10 percent to spend any time on health related leisure activities, and spend more time on them per day. Our preliminary results indicate that women’s greater economic resources enable more time on future-oriented activities, suggesting time use may be a salient mechanism through which social class influences women’s well-being. Co-authors: Sanjiv Gupta, Sociology and Social and Demographic Research Institute University of Massachusetts at Amherst, sangupta@soc.umass.edu; Philip N. Cohen, Sociology, UNC at Chapel Hill, pnc@unc.edu

Tuesday, 03/29/2009 
PAA Practice Session

IPR graduate student affiliates

Tuesday, 03/10/2009 
Governing the Commons in Lab and Field Experiments

Dr. Marco Janssen, Arizona State University

ABSTRACT:

In order to effectively govern our common resources we need to understand how institutions, rules and norms that shape human behavior, fit with ecological context. In this talk I present results from a series of lab and field experiments where we study how groups craft institutional arrangements for different ecologies. Traditional commons experiments have shown that people conditionally cooperate, especially if they can communicate and/or can use costly punishment. We include in our experiments more relevant (and complex) dynamics of resource dynamics of various types of ecologies, such as forestry, fishery and irrigation.

In the lab experiments we use real-time virtual resources, where we find that communication is very effective in improving the group performance, in contrast to costly punishment. In field experiments in rural villagers in Thailand and Colombia we find that trust in the community is a more important factor compared to relevant experience with resource management, in explaining the group performance in the experiments.

Co-sponsored with Environmental and Development Economics.

Tuesday, 03/09/2009 
Rebecca Thornton

University of Michigan, Department of Economics

Tuesday, 03/08/2009 
TBA

Dr. Ken Chay, Brown University

Tuesday, 03/03/2009 
Status Exchange?: Marriage to a U.S. Citizen (and Access to Green Card)

Zhenchao Qian, Ohio State University

ABSTRACT: For temporary immigrants, access to green card is an important key to success in the United States. Some receive the green card through employment while others are sponsored by U.S. citizens through marriage. In this paper, analyzing data of legal permanent resident immigrants (LPR) and their spouses from 2003 New Immigrant Survey, we attempt to understand how mate selection patterns between citizen/immigrant marriages and immigrant/immigrant marriages differ by gender of the citizen spouse and racial, educational, age, and skin color pairing. We formulate hypotheses based on status exchange theories and make distinctions between whether the citizen spouse is male or female and whether the citizen spouse is U.S. born or naturalized.

Tuesday, 02/24/2009 
No Seminar Today

Cancelled

Tuesday, 02/22/2009 
TBA

Rick Steckel, Dept. of Economics, Ohio State

Tuesday, 02/17/2009 
How Can Genetic Data Contribute To Social Science?

Dr. Jeremy Freese, Prof. of Sociology & Faculty Fellow, IPR, Northwestern

ABSTRACT: Abundant evidence from behavioral genetics indicates that the vast majority of individual-level outcomes of abiding sociological interest are heritable to a substantial degree. That genetic differences are important for individual variation in social science outcomes, however, does not explain how genetic differences can contribute to social science. Much recent attention has focused on studying gene-environment interaction, or exploring the possible role of genetic differences in explaining why the same social environmental cause affects different people differently. Gene-environment interaction is both conceptually and methodologically more difficult than is often recognized, and the importance of replication in studies of gene-environment interaction cannot be emphasized enough. I will consider three recent findings of gene-environment interactions­ in the domains of educational attainment, antisocial behavior, and voting­and I will discuss the ongoing effort to integrate genetic data into the Wisconsin Longitudinal Data, which will offer the opportunity to study outcomes in a population of older adults.

Tuesday, 02/10/2009 
Age-Period-Cohort Analysis in Social Research: What's New?

Dr. Yang Yang, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago 
ABSTRACT: Dr. Yang provides a summary and synthesis of various new developments in cohort analysis, including new models,methods, and empirical applications for three common research designs in social research: 1) Age-by-time period population data in the form of tables of rates; 2) Mircrodata from repeated cross-section surveys; and 3)accelerated longitudinal designs.

Tuesday, 02/08/2009 
TBA

Dr. Jenny Van Hook, Penn State

Tuesday, 02/03/2009 
Is IQ Increasing among American Children? Investigating the Flynn Effect Using PIAT-Math Data from the NLSY

Dr. Joe Rodgers, Professor of Psychology, University of Oklahoma

ABSTRACT:

The Flynn Effect refers to increasing IQ scores over time among children in many developed countries around the world. The effect was first identified in the early 1980's, and has now been replicated in dozens of databases from different ages and geographic settings. A number of theories have been proposed to explain the effect. However, none of the theories are widely accepted as the single correcct explanation for the effect, and many features of the effect have not been specified. Rodgers and Wanstrom (2007) recently identified the Flynn Effect in PIAT-Math scores from the NLSY-Children database. In this presentation, I present two separate studies that follow from the earlier results. First, the Rodgers and Wanstrom analyses are replicated within demographic subgroups, to investigate the potential for gender, race, education, and urban/rural differences. Second, item-level information is used to identify the types of items that most strongly show the Flynn Effect, and these patterns are correlated with expert ratings of item content. A great deal of new information about the Flynn Effect and its causes in the U.S. emerges from these two investigations.

Tuesday, 01/20/2009 
Agent-based Models as a Tool and Challenge for Social Science

Dr. Keith Warren, Assoc. Prof, College of Social Work, OSU

ABSTRACT: Agent-based models are increasingly popular in fields as diverse as sociology, public health, archaeology, economics and ethnography. These models offer new tools for understanding interpersonal interactions on a wide range of scales. This talk will discuss the use of agent-based models in social science, with illustrations drawn from two ongoing projects. In the first, a simple agent-based model of residential segregation yields two forms of bistability. The model is sensitive to variations in the initial centralization of the agents, and in some cases yields two differing end states for identical initial conditions. In the second, agent interactions in a model therapeutic community (TC) are determined either by direct or indirect reciprocity rules. The interactions are saved as a social network, which is then compared to an empirical network of interactions in a corrections-based therapeutic community using reciprocity and transitivity statistics. The results suggest that direct reciprocity is inadequate to explain the empirical network.

Tuesday, 01/18/2009 
Proxy Pattern-Mixture Analysis for Survey Nonresponse

Rebecca R. Andridge, Biostatistics, CPH, Ohio State

Tuesday, 01/13/2009 
The Desirability of Partner Traits: A One-and-a-Half Sex Model of Marriage

Dr. Randall J. Olsen, Economics, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: We estimate the weights on various hedonic attributes of potential spouses relative to a person's own characteristics to compute the number of persons who are "acceptable" matches, taking into account that men and women may attach different values to each trait. The number of potential matches is then used to explain marriage probability. This is not a full two-sex model as it does not take into account that the matching process involves the more or less simultaneous bi-lateral acceptance of mates and their joint withdrawal from the pool of matches.

While we assume homogamy is always conducive to a match, we also find that there are significant differences in how men and women value some traits leading to heterogamy on such traits.

Tuesday, 01/06/2009 
Spatial, Environmental, and Social Network Analysis in Vaccine Trials

Michael Emch - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

ABSTRACT: The utility of conventional vaccine trial methods has recently been questioned. It is difficult for public health practitioners to use traditional protective efficacy measures to make decisions about whether or not to vaccinate diverse populations. Traditional vaccine trial methods have an underlying assumption that the effect of the vaccine is the same throughout the trial area. This paper tests whether this assumption is true for one vaccine trial using a spatially referenced database.

The results illustrate that the protective efficacy of oral cholera vaccines varies across neighborhoods and that the variation is inversely related to vaccine coverage (i.e., % of people vaccinated in an area) after adjusting for several ecological factors. Also, higher levels of neighborhood vaccine coverage are linked to lower risk of cholera among residents, both in placebo recipients, for whom a strong inverse relationship was observed, and in vaccines, for whom a suggestive relationship is evident. These findings suggest that progressively higher levels of vaccine coverage can lead to higher levels of indirect protection of non-vaccines, and may also lead to progressively higher levels of indirect protection that add to the direct protection of vaccines. The term used for this new approach is “ecological vaccine trials” because efficacy values are stratified by neighborhood-level variables in addition to conventional individual-level variables. The concept of ecological vaccine trials is now being extended by considering both environmental and social contexts of vaccine evaluation using a spatially explicit approach.

Tuesday, 12/02/2008 
Do Rising Tides Lift All Boats Equally? Lifetime Socioeconomic Status and Health Outcomes among Blacks and Whites in the U.S.

Dr. Cynthia Colen - Dept. of Sociology, Ohio State

ABSTRACT: Minority populations in the United States often face stark inequalities in health. The lifecourse perspective offers a unique viewpoint through which racial disparities in morbidity and mortality may be understood as the result of repeated exposures to risk factors during both childhood and adulthood. However, the utility of this approach is limited by its failure to investigate the degree to which minority populations are able to translate gains in socioeconomic status (SES) into favorable health outcomes. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I employ growth curve models with both fixed and random effects to estimate the association between fluctuations in lifetime SES and two measures of physical wellbeing - self-reported health and disability status. Additionally, I assess the extent to which structural level racial inequalities, such as labor market segmentation, differential wealth accumulation, and residential segregation account for Black/White disparities in this association.

Tuesday, 11/25/2008 
Methodology Workshop: An Introduction to Factor Analysis and Item Response Theory

Dr. Michael C. Edwards, Psychology, Ohio State

ABSTRACT: Latent variable measurement models are steadily replacing classical test theory (CTT) measurement models. Two very popular latent variable measurement models are factor analysis and item response theory. We'll begin with a brief discussion of latent variables generally before discussing in some detail exploratory factor analysis (EFA). I'll next describe confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)and some of the many variations on the standard CFA models that are commonly seen. Building on the base of factor analysis, we will explore item response theory (IRT) with special attention to how IRT improves on CTT.

Tuesday, 11/18/2008 
Status Exchange?: Marriage to a U.S. Citizen (and Access to Green Card)

Dr. Zhenchao Qian, Sociology, Ohio State

ABSTRACT: CANCELLED

Thursday, 11/06/2008 
Living in America May be Bad for Your Health:Toxic Waste From US Health Care Policy?

Dr. David Low

ABSTRACT: There are three principal factors acting over the life course that determine the health of any population:

1. Who you are, or your biology including genetic inheritance.

2. Where you live, or all of your living environments through a lifetime

3. How you live, or the social and economic environments that affect behavior and life choices.

While medical care may be helpful and even necessary at times, more doctors, more hospitals or more liberal access to the ones we already have will not equate to more health, and indeed may be harmful.

In spite of these well demonstrated facts, health policy debates in this country tend to focus exclusively on access to medical care and ways of paying for it. Our policymakers persist in ignoring the contextual factors within which all good and bad health develops; even worse, they fail to appreciate the opportunity costs that are a part of our enormous and increasingly unaffordable expenditures on medical care. By all measures, we spend vastly more than any other country in the world, and yet average life expectancy in the US is shorter than in 45 other nations. We are ranked only 12th among developed countries by the UN Human Development Index.

This seminar presentation will examine what we know about health, and what medical care can reasonably be expected to contribute to that state. It will review issues that follow from the dominance of medical models of health which include: confusion over the proven capabilities and best roles of medical care and our lack of knowledge of outcomes, cost-effectiveness and quality. It will look at medical care in the American social, cultural and economic context and the limits that context places on the effectiveness of those interventions.

It will review what we know with certainty about the non-medical determinants of health, i.e., social and economic circumstances affect health throughout life; stress harms health; the effects of early life experiences last a lifetime; genes are not necessarily destiny; context, especially family SES, affects everything; and social exclusion, discrimination and racism create misery and cost lives, to specify a few.

Finally the presentation will suggest guidelines for reframing the health policy question and will outline a proposal for creation of a society and health “superfund” to support action to deal with the toxic consequences of the present non-system.

*Co-sponsored by IPR and Public Health*

Tuesday, 11/04/2008 
Election Day

No Seminar Today

Tuesday, 10/28/2008 
Racial Segregation and Impoverished Neighborhood Environments: A Population Model

Dr. Lincoln Quillian - Sociology, Northwestern University

ABSTRACT: This talk discusses a formal demographic mixing model of how racial segregation (or any other poverty-correlated characteristic that is a basis for neighborhood segregation) contributes to the formation of high-poverty neighborhoods and to differential neighborhood poverty exposure across segregated groups. The formal model extends and refines simple simulation models in Massey's seminal "American Apartheid" (1990) paper, which demonstrated how racial segregation contributes to forming high-poverty neighborhoods.

Using data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses of population and housing, parameters for the analytic model are estimated for many large American cities. The model demonstrates that past efforts to statistically model how economic changes and segregation interact to form high poverty neighborhoods have been mis-specified in several respects. The model is also able to explain certain empirical modeling results that appeared to contradict Massey's argument regarding the interaction of segregation and economic conditions. Implications for the role of segregation in forming high-poverty neighborhoods are discussed.

Thursday, 10/23/2008 
A Rank-Based Clustering Method for the Analysis of Social Inequality Data

Dr. Tim Liao - Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ABSTRACT: When studying social, economic or health inequality, the analyst must estimate clusters or classes contained in the data. The commonly used methods such as latent class/cluster models or the k-mean method assume the multivariate normal distribution. Most inequality data, however, are non-normal in distribution. This paper proposes a rank-based cluster analysis, which can take the form of a latent class/finite mixture model or a basic cluster method such the k-means algorithm; in either case, the multivariate normal distributional assumption is no longer crucial.

There are two theoretical foundations for the proposed method—relative deprivation theory in sociology and relative income concept in economics on the one hand, and topological distance in mathematical thinking on the other. This method offers an alternative view on inequality, and is nonparametric in essence. A simulation analysis of three-clusters mixtures indicated by two or three variables using three different data-generating mechanisms shows that when data are normal, either the (real) value-based or rank-based method would produce similar results. When data depart from normality, the results are more mixed: finite mixture models do somewhat better for data of real values while the k-means method performs much better for ranked data.

Three empirical data applications further demonstrate the usefulness of the rank-based method: an analysis of the 1991 British Household Panel Survey data with three variables for socioeconomic classification, a re-analysis of the classic diabetes data, and an exploration of fertility inequality using the 2006 U.S. General Social Survey data. All three examples suggest some new substantive insights unobtainable from the parametric analysis of the original data and require much reduced computation time for estimation.

Tuesday, 10/14/2008 
Methods Workshop--Structural Equation Modeling
 

Dr. Pam Paxton, Sociology, Ohio State 
 

Tuesday, 10/07/2008 
Food Insecurity, Health and Wellbeing and the Global Food Crisis
 

Dr. Craig Hadley - Anthropology, Emory University

ABSTRACT: Food insecurity occurs when individuals face unpredictable access to safe and nutritious foods. Although a common public health problem, food insecurity has rarely been a research priority among those studying population heath. This may be changing as food prices soar and many countries face a food crisis. In this talk I will discuss the current global food insecurity situation and highlight studies we have carried out in East Africa examining the impact of food insecurity on social, physical and mental health. I will then use data from our ongoing longitudinal study to examine the impact of the global food crisis on Ethiopian adolescents and specifically test several hypotheses promulgated in the popular media about who is most affected by the food crisis. Our results suggest that youth are not buffered from the negative impacts of the global food crisis. Our results also suggest that the patterns of vulnerability among Ethiopian youth differ considerably from those reported in popular media outlets. These data offer a cautionary tale to broad generalizations about who is being affected by the food crisis and suggest novel hypotheses and new research directions. 

Tuesday, 09/23/2008 
Fall Kick-Off Luncheon ( IPR faculty affiliates)
 

Tuesday, 05/20/2008 
Fundamental Cause Theory and the Social Shaping of Population Health
 

Bruce G. Link - Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University

ABSTRACT: In the last century human beings have greatly expanded their capacity to control disease and death. Any explanation of current health disparities by such factors as socioeconomic position or race must take account of this fact. Indeed we argue that disparities are created by the human capacity to control disease and death-- that when we gain such capacity people with more knowledge, money, power, prestige, and beneficial social connections are better able to harness the benefits of the control we have developed. Health disparities are the result. The talk will provide evidence pertaining to this explanation for health disparities while at the same time providing scope conditions that suggest limits to its explanatory reach. 

Tuesday, 05/06/2008 
Methods Workshop - Modeling Independent Choices
 

Elizabeth Bruch - Robert Wood Johnson Fellow, University of Michigan

ABSTRACT: Trends and causes of residential patterns continue to be a major social issue in the United States. There is a large literature in sociology and demography that uses decennial Census data to describe patterns of race and income segregation over time and across cities. However, it is not clear whether factors driving racial and economic segregation exacerbate or attenuate one another, and how this relationship is conditioned by economic inequalities among race groups. My work combines the theoretical appeal of agent (microsimulation) modeling with empirically based choice models and a realistic neighborhood context. In this talk, I present a dynamic, agent-based model of neighborhood sorting by race and income and use this model to understand how overall trends in inequality and households' mobility behavior interact to produce and maintain segregated neighborhoods. I simulate mobility behavior in Los Angeles County, and examine how segregation outcomes vary under different assumptions about economic inequality within and among race groups. Finally, I discuss a more general class of demographic problems in which the behavior of individuals and features of their environment are dynamically interdependent. I argue that agent-based modeling may help us understand these problems, and provide an overview of tools and software for this approach. 

Tuesday, 04/29/2008 
Methods Workshop - Specification and Estimation of Social Interaction Models with Network Structure, Contextual Factors, Correlation and Fixed Effects
 

Lung-fei Lee - Economics, The Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: This paper considers the specification and estimation of social interaction models with network structures and the presence of endogenous and contextural effects. With macro group settings, group fixed effects are also incorporated. Networks provide information on the identification of endogenous, exogenous and unobserved interactions among specific peers. We consider the identification and estimation of such a model. Empirical applications are provided to illustrate the usefulness of such a model. In addition to asymptotic properties of estimators, Monte Carlo studies provide evidence on finite sample performance of the estimation methods. 

Tuesday, 04/22/2008 
Insights from a Sequential Hazard Model of Sexual Initiation and Premarital First Births
 

Lawrence Wu - Sociology, New York University

ABSTRACT: Demographers have long acknowledged that sexual activity is a key proximate determinant of fertility. Implicit in such accounts is the presumption of fertility within marriage, yet sexual activity is plausibly of even greater relevance for nonmarital births. In this paper, we model premarital first birth risks in terms of a woman's sequential risks of entry into sexual activity and her risk of a premarital first birth conditional on entry into sexual activity. We note that: (1) never-married women have an identifiable period during which their premarital first birth risks are negligible - the period prior to the initiation of sexual activity; (2) never-married women can vary considerably in their ages at onset of sexual activity; and (3) age at onset of sexual activity will vary systematically with observed factors, with these factors also typically influencing the risk of a premarital birth. We exploit this rich empirical structure using techniques developed by Wu and Martin (2008), decomposing the effects of covariates into direct and indirect components. Our empirical results suggest that the direct effects of covariates typically outweigh indirect effects. Exceptions to this pattern provide additional insight into premarital first births. 

Tuesday, 04/15/2008 
PAA Practice Session
 

IPR student affiliates

ABSTRACT: Kate S. Adkins and Claire M. Kamp Dush: “The Implications of Violent and Controlling Unions and Leaving on Mental Health in Fragile Families” 

Anna Cunningham: "Cohabitating Conceptions and Marriage Transitions" 

Jonathan Vespa and Matthew A. Painter II: "The Paths to Marriage: Pre-Marital Cohabitation and Marital Wealth Accumulation" 

Tuesday, 04/08/2008 
Divorce as Risky Behavior
 

Audrey L. Light - Economics, The Ohio State University 

ABSTRACT: We extend the orthodox divorce model by assuming that women are risk averse, marriage is risky, and divorce is even riskier. As long as divorce is location-independent riskier than marriage, our model yields the familiar result that the risk premium that compensates agents for the greater risk associated with divorce decreases monotonically in their level of relative risk tolerance. In short, we predict that the probability of divorce increases in individual risk tolerance. We assess this prediction by using a sample of women from the NLSY79 to estimate a discrete choice model of divorce. We control for a rich array of determinants of the gains to marriage and divorce, plus a measure of relative risk tolerance derived from responses to “income gamble” questions. We find that risk tolerance is an important determinant of divorce: e.g., a 1.5 standard deviation increase in risk tolerance raises the predicted probability of divorce by 11%. 

Tuesday, 04/01/2008 
Rethinking Transnationalism: The Cross-Border Dimension
 

Roger Waldinger - Sociology, UCLA 

ABSTRACT: The activities linking immigrants to their countries of birth -- the sending of remittances; travel; communication; political activity; business investment -- are increasingly important and visible. They are also generating controversy and acclaim in both new and old homes, while eliciting interest among policy makers looking for a way to reap migration’s harvest in ways that might help the stay-at-homes. Although widely studied, the phenomenon remains misunderstood, both by scholars convinced that globalization is leading to a de-territorialized world of unbounded loyalties and flows, and by policy makers hoping to turn migration into an engine of development. Drawing on a broader project designed to show the American experience at once facilitates, competes with, and structures immigrants’ involvements with the countries from which they come, this paper examines a migration universal, namely the associations that bring together migrants displaced from a common hometown. Sociologically interesting, the associations also highlight the convergence of academic preoccupations with the real world, as associational activity has triggered responses from international organizations and sending state actors, seeking to harvest political and economic rewards from these grassroots activities, undertaken by migrants in parallel, but uncoordinated form. As argued in this paper, the upsurge of hometown oriented activity exemplifies the cross-state spillovers generated by migration; however, it also shows how the potential for home country involvement at once derives from and is shaped by the bounded, receiving society resources that give the migrants new leverage not found before. Rather than linking immigrants and stay-at-homes in a single transnational community or social field, the cross-state activities undertaken by hometown associations yield not so much cross-state community, as cross-state conflict, reproducing inequalities between migrants and the stay-at-homes in ways that reflect the inequalities between receiving and sending places. 

Tuesday, 03/30/2008 
TBA
 

Dr. Liana Sayer 

Tuesday, 03/25/2008 
Introduction to Implementing Instrumental Variables Estimators
 

Dr. Patricia Reagan - Economics, The Ohio State University 
ABSTRACT: The technique of instrumental variables will be introduced. The two conditions for an instrument to be valid are relevance and validity. Empirical tests of relevance and validity (the two conditions for an instrument to be valid) will be discussed with emphasis on implementing these tests using STATA. Subsequent discussion will focus on the case of estimating the treatment effect of a dummy endogenous variable. The statistical conditions necessary to estimate the mean effect of treatment on the treated, the mean effect of treatment on randomly selected person and the local average treatment effect will be described. The benefits and pitfalls of IV techniques will be illustrated with classic examples from the economics literature. Participants will get more out of the discussion if they have first familiarized themselves with the IV reg procedures in the STATA manual. The more ambitious could read "Instrumental Variables: A Study of Implicit Behavioral Assumptions Used in Making Program Evaluations" by James Heckman in the Journal of Human Resources available through JSTORE. 

Tuesday, 03/04/2008 
Expectations, Networks and Interventions: Research on HIV/AIDS in Malawi
 

Hans-Peter Kohler - Sociology, University of Pennsylvania 

ABSTRACT: The talk will present three areas of recent research conducted as part of the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project. The first part discusses present a newly-developed interactive elicitation methodology to collect probabilistic expectations in a developing country context with low levels of literacy and numeracy, and we evaluate the feasibility and success of this method for a wide range of outcomes in rural Malawi. We find that respondent's answers about subjective expectations respect basic properties of probabilities, and vary meaningfully with observable characteristics and past experience. From a substantive point of view, the elicited expectations indicate that individuals are generally aware of differential risks. While many expectations---including also the probability of being currently infected with HIV---are well-calibrated compared to actual probabilities, mortality expectations are substantially over-estimated compared to lifetable estimates. This overestimation may lead individuals to underestimate the benefits of adopting HIV risk-reduction strategies. The second part of the talk focuses on a recent sociocentric study of sexual network on Likoma Island (Lake Malawi) that aims at investigating the structure and characteristics of sexual networks among the general population. The study documents the existence of a large and robust sexual network linking a substantial fraction of the island's young adult population: half of all sexually active respondents were connected in a giant network component, and more than a quarter were linked through multiple independent chains of sexual relationships. This high network connectivity emerges within short time frames. The prevalence of HIV also varied significantly across the network, with sparser regions having a higher HIV prevalence than densely connected components. Several risk factors related to sexual mixing patterns help explain differentials in HIV prevalence across network locations. Contrary to claims that sexual networks in rural sub-Saharan Africa are too sparse to sustain generalized HIV epidemics, therefore, the structure of the networks observed in Likoma appears compatible with a broad diffusion of HIV among lower-risk groups. The non-homogeneous distribution of HIV infection within the network suggests that network characteristics are an important determinant of the dynamics of HIV spread within a population. The third part of the talk presents some preliminary analyses of a randomized intervention studying the consequences for learning one's HIV status for subsequent behaviors. 

Tuesday, 02/26/2008 
Do Slums Promote High Urban Fertility?
 

John Weeks - Geography, San Diego State University 

ABSTRACT: There has been a rapid rise in the social sciences in the use of neighborhoods as units of analysis for differentiating behavior, closely linked to the increase in commercial applications of geodemographics. Little agreement exists, however, on what constitutes a neighborhood and about how important neighborhoods are in affecting reproductive behavior. This is especially true in cities of developing countries, where a majority of people are estimated to live in slums, which represent a particular type of neighborhood context. In this research, I use census data within a spatial agglomeration algorithm to define neighborhoods in Accra, Ghana, based on UN-Habitat slum criteria. Those neighborhoods are then classified on the basis of their slum profile and I examine the extent to which the neighborhood context associated with varying levels of “slumness” might promote or retard fertility levels at the neighborhood level. The results suggest that the slumness of a neighborhood has an effect on fertility levels that is independent of other sociodemographic characteristics of the neighborhood and of individuals. 

Tuesday, 02/24/2008 
No Seminar Today
 

Cancelled 

Tuesday, 02/19/2008 
The Growing Female Advantage in U.S. Higher Education: What do we know? What do we need to know?
 

Claudia Buchmann - Sociology, The Ohio State University 

ABSTRACT: One of the most striking recent features of American higher education is the growing education gap between men and women. Young women now outperform young men with respect to high school graduation, college entry, and persistence to a four year college degree. Trend statistics in the United States reflect a striking reversal of a gender gap in college completion that once favored males. This research considers a range of explanations for this trend, including gender differences in academic performance and behaviors, gender differences in the pathways from high school to completing college, and gender-specific changes in the returns to higher education. Analyses of National Educational Longitudinal Survey data indicate that women’s superior academic performance plays a large role in producing the gender gap in college completion, but this effect remains latent until after the transition to college. For NELS cohorts, who were born in the mid 1970s, the female advantage in college completion remains largest in families with a low-educated or absent father but now extends to all family types. In conjunction with women’s growing incentives to attain higher education, gender differences in resources related to family background and academic performance largely explain the growing female advantage in college completion. The study concludes with a discussion of promising avenues for future research. 

Tuesday, 02/12/2008 
Somatic Growth and Age at Menarche
 

Pamela J. Salsberry - Nursing, The Ohio State University 

ABSTRACT: The relation between body fatness over the life course and age of maturation among girls has been the subject of debate for many years. There is evidence from a variety of data sources that accelerated growth in childhood, in terms of height, weight, and measures of fatness, is associated with earlier menarche. Other studies have found that earlier maturing girls are fatter in young adulthood. Neither of these relations is necessarily causal. The same confounding factors, both observed and unobserved, may be associated with both fatness and age of menarche. This study is designed to answer three questions about potential differences in somatic growth curves as a function of age of menarche. First, do somatic growth curves, measured by BMI as a function of chronological age, differ by age of menarche; and if so, at what ages do the differences start to appear. Second, do somatic growth curves, measured by BMI as a function of age in months relative to age of menarche, differ by age of menarche; and if so, are there somatic differences at the time of menarche. Finally, the study examines whether there are race/ethnic differences in these patterns between white, African-American and Hispanic girls in the US. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 Child/Young Adult files, a large U.S. based longitudinal dataset containing information on children from birth through late adolescences, were used to answer these questions. 

Tuesday, 02/05/2008 
Accessing and Using Confidential Census and Public Health Micro-data
 

Margaret Levenstein - Executive Director, Michigan Census Research Data Center 
ABSTRACT: The Michigan Census Research Data Center is a joint project of the University of Michigan and the U.S. Census Bureau. It provides access to confidential U.S. Census Bureau, National Center Health Statistics, and Agency for Health Care Research and Quality micro-data for approved research. Learn about the types of data available in the MCRDC, the process for gaining access to the data, and ongoing research in the MCRDC 

Tuesday, 01/22/2008 
Methods Workshop - Analysis of Recurrent Events with a Terminal Event
 

Zhangsheng Yu - Biostatistics, The Ohio State University 

ABSTRACT: Event history data arise frequently in longitudinal studies. One special type of survival data is the event history with multiple disease events followed by a terminal (death) event subject to right censoring. In family demography, this type of data exists when premarital cohabitation episodes are followed by a first marriage. In this talk, I will introduce marginal hazard models and random effect models to analyze these data. And then I’ll focus on the random effect models for joint analysis of recurrent events followed by a terminal event. Time-dependent coefficient for the recurrent event hazard is introduced to model the covariate effects varying over time. Smoothing spline method using a penalized likelihood is proposed for nonparametric estimation. I’ll use a kidney transplant study to illustrate this method. Hospitalizations of kidney disease patients are the recurrent events and death is the terminal event. The effect of receiving kidney transplant on the risk of hospitalization and death are of the interest. 

Tuesday, 01/15/2008 
The Effect of Early Childhood Stressors on Age of Menarche: A Comparison of White and African-American Girls
 

Patricia B. Reagan - Economics, The Ohio State University 

ABSTRACT: The two most common theories about environmental factors affecting age of menarche focus on the nutrition transition and exposure to psychosocial stress during early childhood. The nutrition transition has been hypothesized to reduce age of menarche through increased in rates of preadolescent overweight (Must, Naumova, Phillips, Blum, Dawson-Hughes and Rand (2005)). The Psychosocial Acceleration Theory proposed that exposure to stress during early childhood signals a reduction in reproductive opportunity, necessitating early maturation for species survival. One suggested pathway is through a heightened stress response that facilitates the deposition of body fat resulting in early menarche (Belsky, Steinberg and Draper (1991) and Ellis and Essex (2007)). Much of the research that supports these hypotheses has been completed on cross sectional samples composed primarily of white girls from middle to upper social classes. However, it is well-established that African-American girls have an earlier mean age of menarche, higher rates of childhood obesity, and are more frequently raised in environments that are economically disadvantaged. Therefore, we can speculate that the theories presented above may not apply to African-American girls. In this study, we extend the current literature on the effects of early childhood stressors in a large population-based cohort of African-American and white adolescent girls. The existing literature has focused on the link between early childhood stressors and age of menarche. We include measures of child health at two additional points in time in the development process. First, we control for observable measures of the intrauterine environment. These controls are important because the psychosocial stressors that occur prior to birth are highly correlated with those found in early childhood. Research has shown that markers for the intrauterine environment are associated with body mass index (BMI) through preadolescence (Salsberry and Reagan (2005)). Failure to control for the intrauterine environment could lead to spurious correlation between early childhood stressors and age of menarche. Second, we examine an important intervening outcome, namely preadolescent BMI, which may mediate the effects of early childhood stressors on age of menarche. We use the method of instrumental variables (IV) and test statistics developed for IV to address the question of how to measure the causal effect of preadolescent BMI on age of menarche. Our major findings are that indicators for early childhood stress have an effect on age of menarche independently of the effect of preadolescent BMI for white girls. Preadolescent BMI mediates the effect of some measures of early childhood stressors on age of menarche for African-American girls. The relation between early childhood stressors, preadolescent BMI and age of menarche appears to be more complex for African-American than white girls. 

Tuesday, 01/08/2008 
Population Aging, Intergenerational Flows, and the Economy: Introducing Age in National Income Accounts
 

Andrew Mason - Economics and Population Studies, University of Hawaii 

ABSTRACT: Intergenerational flows are a pervasive feature of all economies that arise, in part, as a consequence of the economic lifecycle. In all societies, these flows are large but the direction of the flows and their magnitudes vary with demography, institutions, and policies. The flows have potentially important implications for generational equity, macroeconomic performance, and birth rates. National Transfer Accounts (NTA) are being developed and constructed, currently in 23 countries, to provide comprehensive measures of intergenerational flows distinguishing the role of governments, financial markets, and families. The seminar will provide an overview of National Transfer Accounts and present preliminary results based on estimates for both industrialized and developing countries. 

Tuesday, 11/27/2007 
Partial Residential Integration: Suburban Residential Patterns of New Immigrant Groups in a Multiethnic Context
 

Eric Fong - Sociology, University of Toronto 

ABSTRACT: We explore the residential patterns of new immigrant groups in suburban neighborhoods in the multi-ethnic context. Given that suburbanization is viewed from the spatial assimilation perspective as an indicator of residential integration, we argue that immigrant groups experience lower level of segregation in suburban neighborhoods compared to those in city neighborhoods. In addition, we suggest that the pattern of sharing neighborhoods with other groups is less elastic in suburban neighborhoods compared to city neighborhoods. However, drawing from the place stratification perspective, we expect groups to avoid sharing neighborhoods with new immigrant groups. Thus, these factors contribute to the creation of partial residential integration of recent new immigrant groups in suburban areas. Using 1996 Canadian census data for Toronto, we show various levels of support for these patterns for three new immigrant groups included in the study. 

Tuesday, 11/20/2007 
Changes in Contraceptive Method Mix 1980-2005 -What does it matter for international health policy?
 

Eric Seiber - Public Health, Division of Health Services Management and Policy, Ohio State 

ABSTRACT: The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) remain an under-utilized resource for informing international health policy. Collected every five years with core modules interviewing 5,000 to 12,000 women from almost 100 countries, many of these surveys remain untapped by academic researchers. To highlight the potential of the DHS data, Dr. Seiber will present a study examining global changes in contraceptive method mix from 1980 to 2005. Although contraceptives remain a fundamental element of foreign assistance in international health, few studies estimate changes in contraceptive demand across the full range of developing countries. This study utilizes 310 Demographic and Health Surveys, Reproductive Health Surveys and other nationally representative surveys from 104 countries to estimate shifts in method mix among married women of reproductive age from 1980 to 2005. The presentation will examine this application of the DHS surveys to contraceptive method mix, will cover the limitations of how these surveys have traditionally been applied, and will discuss their potential for producing globally representative estimates in development and health policy. Finally, the presentation will cover the challenges deriving from multi-country study designs. 

Tuesday, 11/06/2007 
Patterns of Union Formation and Dissolution in Rural and Urban Areas: A Comparison Across Recent Cohorts of American Women
 

Tasha Synder- Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State 

ABSTRACT: This study examines contemporary patterns of family formation and dissolution among rural and urban American women. Numerous recent studies have examined family structure and formation differences among recent cohorts of rural and urban populations (Snyder & Brown; 2004; Snyder & McLaughlin, 2004; Brown & Snyder, 2006). This study will add to this important research area by providing a more comprehensive overview of family formation and dissolution patterns in rural and urban America in recent decades. Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth will be used to examine union formation and dissolution patterns. Analyses will examine entrance into unions by union type, survival time, exits from unions, and time until recoupling or remarriage. Discrete time event history models will predict transition pathways among American women paying particular attention to rural and urban differences. This study will help us understand contemporary union formation and dissolution patterns, and changes across cohorts and residence areas. 

Tuesday, 10/30/2007 
Neighborhood Context, Time Use, and Children's Health
 

Rachel Dwyer and Liana Sayer- Sociology, Ohio State 

Friday, 10/26/2007 
1st Annual Joan Huber Population Lecture
 

Dr. Judith A. Seltzer 

Tuesday, 10/16/2007 
The Impact of Social and Economic Policy on the Family Structure Experiences
 

David Blau - Economics, Ohio State 
ABSTRACT: We use panel data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to estimate the effects of policy, labor market, and marriage market contextual variables on the fertility, union formation, union dissolution, type of union (cohabiting versus married), and father identity (biological versus step) choices of women born from 1957 to1964. We follow these women from the early 1970s as they enter adolescence through 2004, when they are in their 40s. We specify a model that can be used to trace through the consequences of these demographic behaviors for the family structure experiences of children. We allow the effects of several of the contextual variables to differ for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. The evidence presented suggests that the family structure experiences of the children of the NLSY79 cohorts of women have been influenced by the tax gains associated with childbearing, welfare reform, unilateral divorce laws, and the wage rates available to men and women in the labor market. The results suggest that other contextual variables such as child support enforcement efforts, the level of welfare benefits, the tax gain to marriage, the sex ratio, and the unemployment rate had little impact on the family structure experiences of these children. 

Tuesday, 10/09/2007 
Fare Thee Well: Human Capital and African American Migration Before 1910
 

Trevon Logan - Economics, Ohio State 

Tuesday, 10/02/2007 
Political Instability, Social Crisis and Migration Outcomes in Oaxaca, Mexico
 

Jeffrey Cohen - Anthropology , Ohio State 

Tuesday, 09/25/2007 
Meet and Greet
 

Randy Olsen and Elizabeth Cooksey 

Tuesday, 05/29/2007 
Individual Outcomes with Group Effects: The Impact of Gaming on Employment of American Indians
 

Dr. Lung-fei Lee 

ABSTRACT: American Indians, who live on reservations, have substantially lower levels of employment and income than co-resident non-Indians. Gaming has emerged as an attempt by tribes to improve the socio-economic status of their members. Since passage of Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, the number of tribes opening gaming facilities has increased. This paper develops and implements a maximum likelihood estimator of the effect of the tribal decision to open a gaming facility on the individual employment outcomes of its members. This estimator provides an alternative to the widely used difference-in-differences (DID) estimator as a means to evaluate policy interventions where policy is set at a more aggregate level than the outcomes that it affects. Unlike DID estimators that examine policy effects on aggregate outcomes, the approach described in this paper provides consistent estimates of policy effects on individual outcomes. 

Tuesday, 05/15/2007 
Optimal Propensity Score Matching in Complex Designs
 

Dr. Bo Lu 

Tuesday, 05/08/2007 
Consequences of Unwanted Childbearing: A Study of Child Outcomes in Bangladesh
 

Dr. John Casterline 

ABSTRACT: The prevention of unwanted births has long been a fundamental justification for investment of public and private resources in family planning services. Unwanted childbearing is assumed to have detrimental consequences – for the child and for its family and larger community. There is, however, surprisingly little empirical research that offers a solid scientific basis for this assumption, especially in low-income non-Western societies. We analyze longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh collected in the period 1982-2002 that are unusually well-suited to address the issue of the consequences of unwanted childbearing. Two child outcomes are examined: mortality before age 5; and educational attainment. We employ two analytical strategies to remove confounding effects of unmeasured factors: models with fixed effects for sibset; and a “natural experiment” provided by the random assignment of child sex. Estimation employing both of these strategies yields significant effects of child wantedness. Large effects on infant mortality (both neonatal and post-neonatal) emerge under the fixed effects approach, with odds ratios on the order of 2.0. Corresponding effects on mortality are not evident in the natural experiment analysis, however. The estimated effects on schooling are more consistent across the two approaches: unwanted children attain on average 7%-9% fewer years of schooling than wanted children. 

Tuesday, 04/17/2007 
A Global History of Health: Progress Report on a Research Agenda
 

Dr. Rick Steckel 

ABSTRACT: The vast laboratory of human experience since the Neolithic Revolution has been largely ignored by social scientists, in part because they know little about the types of evidence that are available and methods suitable for its study. Over the past 15 years a widening circle of collaborators have undertaken a sequence of comparative studies to measure and analyze health as can be learned from skeletal remains of people who lived across the globe over the past 10 millennia. Dr. Steckel will provide background on studies completed, those in progress and design aspects of the one on the drawing board. 

Tuesday, 04/10/2007 
The Role of Population in Integrated Environmental Modeling and Decision Support
 

Dr. Patricia Gober 
ABSTRACT: 

Demographic data and modeling are essential components of integrated environmental modeling and decision support. New knowledge is created as sciences are linked with one another in new ways and with decision makers. The Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) was founded in 2004 to develop scientifically-credible support tools to improve water management decisions in the face of growing climatic uncertainty and rapid population growth in metropolitan Phoenix. At the center of DCDC’s effort is WaterSim, a systems dynamic model that integrates sub-models dealing with population, land use, and climate to simulate future water supply and demand conditions. Decision levers enable users to experiment with different climate futures, population growth rates, land use changes, and policy conditions. This paper provides a conceptual framework for the process of linking science and policy and discusses WaterSim as a vehicle for integrating sciences, as a decision support tool, and experimental environment in which to study decision making. Also included is a brief discussion of larger lessons learned from integrated modeling and decision support from the perspective of population and urban geography. 

Tuesday, 03/27/2007 
PAA Practice Presentations
 

IPR Graduate Students

Tuesday, 02/13/2007 
Testing a Structural Model of Credit Constraints Using a Large-Scale Quasi-Experimental Microfinance Initiative
 

Dr. Joe Kaboski

ABSTRACT: This paper develops a structural model of credit constrained household consumption, indivisible investment, and savings behavior, andtests the model using a major government microfinance program as an exogenous quasi-experimental injection of credit. After estimating using pre-program data, the estimated model is evaluated using the Thai Million Baht Village Fund Program. Simulated predictions from the model mirror actual data in reproducing a greater increase in consumption than credit, which is interpreted as evidence of credit contraints. A cost-benefit analysis using the model indicates that the program cost just 66 percent what a transfer program providing an equivalent benefit would cost. 

Tuesday, 01/16/2007 
Harmonizing Aging Surveys and Cross-National Studies on Aging
 

Dr. Jinkook Lee 
ABSTRACT: A great deal of harmonization efforts have occurred among the existing aging data sets; however, the comparability of these aging surveys has not been fully articulated, calling for more deliberate efforts to establish the ex post comparability of existing aging surveys. Moreover, several countries are currently in the process of developing similar aging data sets, which creates urgency in the discussion of harmonization-what should be harmonized at the international and/or regional levels and what needs to be localized. It is increasingly recognized that cross-national comparative studies will bring new insights to our understanding of the impact of policy and institution on aging, yet only few such studies have been conducted. Therefore, Dr. Lee proposed (1) a scientific meeting to enhance the ex ante comparability by bringing together the principal investigators of aging surveys who are directly connected to the creation of these data; (2) a special issue of Population Development Review to facilitate cross-national comparative studies on aging; and (3) a library of resources integrating information about aging surveys. Two grants, U13 and R01, were awarded in support of (1) and (3), and an arrangement was made with Population Council for (2). 

Tuesday, 01/09/2007 
When Father Doesn't Know Best: Parent's Management and Control of Money and Children's Food Insecurity
 

Dr. Catherine Kenney 
ABSTRACT: Department of Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies, The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign 

Tuesday, 11/28/2006 
Dr. Pat Reagan
 

Department of Economics, Ohio State University 
 

Tuesday, 11/21/2006 
Dr. David Weir
 

"Putting More Health into the Health and Retirement Study" 
 

Tuesday, 11/14/2006 
Dr. David Barker
 

University of Southampton, Epidemiology 
ABSTRACT: **Please note this seminar will be taking place at Pfahl Hall, in the Fisher College of Business. 

Tuesday, 11/07/2006 
Dr. Ibrahim Sirkeci
 

European Business School London

ABSTRACT: "International migration of minority ethnic groups have often been overlooked in the migration studies. However, our understanding will remain incomplete with a national migratory regimes focus. Turkish and Kurdish populations have different international migration patterns. The Kurds from Turkey have been more likely to migrate abroad at least during the last few decades. This difference is to some extent attributable to the ethnic tensions in Turkey and armed ethnic conflict in parts of the country. Transnationalism of Turkish Kurdish migration is evident in their migration mechanisms, ethno nationalism, and survival through migration. While socioeconomic deprivation played a significant role in triggering migration of the Kurdish, non-material environment of insecurity felt differently by ethnic and religious segments appeared with a sound explanation potential. The environment of insecurity may also serve as an opportunity framework." 

Tuesday, 10/31/2006 
Dr. David Murray
 

Design and Analysis of Group-Randomized Trials 
ABSTRACT: 

Group-randomized trials are comparative studies characterized by the allocation of identifiable groups instead of individuals to study conditions. Members of those groups are then observed to assess the impact of an intervention. Examples include school-, worksite-, and community-based intervention studies. Such studies are increasingly common in public health and medicine, in education, and in sociology and criminology. Group-randomized trials pose a number of design and analytic problems not found in the usual randomized clinical trial and have much in common with surveys based on cluster sampling designs. Dr. Murray will discuss these problems and their solution in his presentation.

Tuesday, 10/24/2006 
Julie Zissimopoulos

RAND Economics 
ABSTRACT: Inter-vivos cash transfers and bequests between family members total hundreds of billions of dollars each year. They may equalize resources within a generation of a family as well as across family generations. Transfers delayed to the end of life may represent a significant motive for saving. Our analysis is motivated by a dynamic, life-cycle model with inter-vivos transfers as an argument in the utility function. We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study on inter-vivos transfers that span up to twelve years to describe financial transfers made by parents to children and their correlation with donor characteristics at a point in time and over time. We examine if age patterns in giving behavior and the effects of mortality risk, risk aversion and economic resources are consistent with the predictions of a life-cycle model.

Tuesday, 10/03/2006 
Human Subject Review Process

Karen Hale and Judith Neidig, Office of Responsible Research Practices, Ohio State University

Tuesday, 09/29/2006 
Social and Behavioral Science Funding from NIH: Perspectives from NICHD

Dr. Rebecca Clark, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Tuesday, 03/27/2006 
PAA Practice Presentations

IPR Graduate Students

Tuesday, 01/30/2006 
TBA

Dr. John Casterline

ABSTRACT: Lazarus Professor, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University