gist fa l l 2 0 1 5
The social science magazine of Duke University
6 roommates + 1 common bond = TeachHouse
fa l l 2 0 1 5
Contents
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Full House: Living and Learning Together
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EHD Bass Connections: Crossing the Disciplines to Enact Change
8 Identical Twins. Different Lives.
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Data-Driven Approaches to Interdisciplinary Challenges
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The Need to Belong
Multigenerational families are common in the settlement that is mostly made up of migrant workers. One Bass Connections team explores the stories behind the settlement as part of the EHD research theme.
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Managing Editor: Courtney P. Orning courtney.orning@duke.edu
Designer: www.bdesign-studio.com
Contributors: Shelbi Fanning Whitney Howell Nancy Oates
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P h oto co u rt esy: J e n n y Jacq u e l i n e St ratto n
The Social Science Research Institute at Duke University is a part of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University
N e c h y b a’ s n i c h e
What’s the latest at SSRI? Duke TeachHouse, E-Risk, Big Data, and more Q: TeachHouse, which brings together experienced and newly-licensed teachers in a co-living environment, has received a lot of positive feedback already. Where do you see this program in the next five years? A: We’re still learning a lot about how to take an idea like this out of start-up mode and onto a sustainable path. SSRI and our Education and Human Development Incubator (EHDi) played an initial convening role and can contribute by bringing research and evaluation into the development of the project. But really, this is being driven now by those who are on the ground every day, including the incredible group of teachers that live in the house. My hope is that the Duke TeachHouse will be a model and we will see similar efforts emerge around the country.
Q: Speaking of EHDi, the Education and Human Development theme of Bass Connections is a vital part of SSRI. Can you explain the relationship between EHD and SSRI? A: When we started building the core of SSRI in Gross Hall a few years ago, our initial focus was on research infrastructure—data and methods support, grants management, real-time education through our Connection Bar, etc. All that we call our research “soil.” We anticipated that faculty energy and university needs would give rise to priority areas that SSRI would intentionally fertilize in addition to faculty projects of all kinds. Two big priority areas have now emerged—Education and Human Development, which includes both Bass and an incubator for EHD communities and partnerships, and collaborations between social scientists and the medical expertise at Duke. D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P h oto g ra p h y
Q: Data from the EnvironmentalRisk Longitudinal Twin Study (“E-Risk”), which follows a 1994 birth cohort of 1,116
British families with twins, is now available through SSRI. What makes this data exciting for researchers at Duke and what is the benefit of it being held in the Protected Research Data Network (PRDN)? A: This is an incredible dataset that follows twins from an early age into emerging adulthood and connects social science data to biological data. There are so many potential questions that can be addressed—it really is a goldmine, particularly for young researchers just starting out. Our PRDN is an ideal place for this work—it is a virtual environment accessible from anywhere that is also highly secure. The secure computing environment makes it easy for researchers to focus on the science that can generate new knowledge.
Q: There are other opportunities to work with data, like the Data+ program, a ten-week summer experience that immerses undergraduate students in client-based big data projects. This past summer, SSRI helped mentor some of the project teams in an effort to help students engage with big data and encourage peer-to-peer interaction. Applications for new projects are now being accepted for 2016— why should undergraduates take advantage of such a program? A: This is a very innovative new program from our partners at the Information Initiative at Duke (iiD). The opportunity for students to intensively focus on a data project for the summer and to engage in the work within a collaborative environment where 50 or so other students are doing the same thing on a variety of topics is quite extraordinary. These projects emerge from real clients with needs in the world, so it combines the intellectual excitement of an academic environment with the link to real world significance. For many students, this becomes a defining experience that shapes their path through Duke and beyond.
Tom Nechyba Director, SSRI
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f e at u r e
Full house
Living and learning together
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T e ac h h o u s e e xt e r i o r : J u l i e S c h o o n m a k e r, D u k e U n i v e r s i t y; r e m a i n i n g p h otos : D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P h oto g ra p h y
O
n Durham’s East Side, in the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood, stands a 4,500-square-foot, 115-year-old Victorian House filled with six roommates. Their common bond: enhancing their own teaching practices and early career experiences to support the local public education system. Together, these housemates compose Duke TeachHouse, a first-of-itskind initiative designed to give new teachers the ongoing support, resources, and encouragement to help them navigate their first and many times challenging years as an early career teacher. It brings together experienced and newly-licensed teachers in a co-living environment where young educators support and learn from each other.
“As a former school administrator and teacher, I vividly remember the challenges of my first years of teaching, and as a school principal, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t observe and worry about the daily and ongoing stressors that impact all teachers, especially the early career teachers,” said Jan Riggsbee, Duke TeachHouse Director From left (pages 2-3): and faculty member President Brodhead in Duke’s Program in speaks with the residents Education. “I think of TeachHouse; The welcoming front entrance a program like Duke of the Duke TeachHouse; TeachHouse is critical Fellows Benton Wise, because it provides Mary Margaret Mills, new teachers with the Erin McInerney, Shannon Potter, and Ashley Pollard; support, resources, Visitors explore the Duke and professional TeachHouse during the and personal growth open house reception.
opportunities needed to build confidence and competence as developing teacher leaders within their school communities.” With backing from Duke’s Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and Education and Human Development Incubator (EHDi), Duke’s Program in Education, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke’s Office of Durham and Regional Affairs (DARA), Durham Public Schools (DPS), and Forward Impact, Duke TeachHouse is designed to bolster teacher recruitment and retention efforts within the local public education system. The concept behind the initiative is simple. First-year teachers and experienced teachers— all graduates of Duke and licensed teachers— live and learn together in the same house for a two-year fellowship.
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Undergraduate and graduate students who complete Duke’s teacher preparation programs and earn their professional teaching license are eligible to apply as Duke TeachHouse Fellows. Participants are selected based on their professional goals, as well as their passions about leadership and innovation. Selected graduates commit to teaching in the local schools and living in the house for their two-year fellowship. The Birth of TeachHouse Duke TeachHouse might not have been an idea sketched on a cocktail napkin, but it was borne out of a dinner conversation hosted by EHDi, part of SSRI. At the end of the 2015 spring semester, Riggsbee attended the SSRI dinner with members of the University and local community, including Forward Impact CEO Christopher Gergen, to discuss new initiatives and partnerships supporting K-12 education. The result was the framework for a group living-learning environment based on a similar and existing project in Raleigh—ThinkHouse, a co-living environment for young entrepreneurs. Gergen and Riggsbee used the concept as a springboard to launch Duke TeachHouse, a supportive, problem-solving, living-learning
community for early career teaching professionals who have chosen to pursue an often time-consuming, thankless job, he said. Nearly half of all first-year teachers abandon the profession within five years. “First-year teaching is hard. These young teachers come home tired, but they really appreciate coming home to a great house with a great support network,” he said. “They can come home and be connected to a teacher who can provide perspective that’s invaluable.” But Duke TeachHouse is more than merely a comforting place to retreat after a long day in the classroom. It’s also an incubator for enhanced teaching skills that will create stronger teachers and strengthen the local school system overall. In fulfilling that charge, the program aims to effectively coach and mentor new teachers, be a catalyst for fresh thinking in the classroom, and make a tangible impact on the Durham community by attracting and holding on to quality educators. Providing Teacher Support Attaining those goals requires a plan and significant communication, Riggsbee said, and Duke TeachHouse has a number of unique components that converge to give new teachers a needed balance of ongoing support, growth opportunities, reflection,
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and challenges to build and enhance their own practices and productivity. Individual and small group conversations about teaching and learning happen often and informally as part of the Duke TeachHouse environment. Group dinners typically occur on Tuesdays when housemates gather to discuss their workweek and reflect about their own practice, said Scott Ellis, an experienced teacher and Duke graduate who serves as a TeachHouse mentor. These dinners include a segment called “Roses, Thorns, and Buds” where individuals mention positives from the week (roses), challenges (thorns), and buds (situations that could develop either way). It’s an opportunity to support each other, discuss issues and challenges, and problem solve in an organized and supportive way. “Duke TeachHouse is important because it’s a continuation of an investment in children, a continuation of the investment in educators, and an investment in the future,” said Ellis, Trinity ’93, a 3rd- and 4th-grade blendedclass teacher at Hillsborough’s Expedition School. “Nothing is more important than the investment in our prosperity, and I hope Duke TeachHouse will be a model for other schools to follow.” In addition, Riggsbee said, through support from SSRI and Duke partners, Duke
c l ass ro o m : J u l i e S c h o o n m a k e r, D u k e u n i v e r s i t y; r e m a i n i n g p h otos : D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P h oto g ra p h y
TeachHouse provides fellows with opportunities to network and engage with educators and policymakers from the local, state, and national communities. In October, fellows traveled to D.C. for dinner discussions and meetings with Laurie Calvert, Teacher Liaison at the U.S. Department of Education and Nikki Diamantes, Regional Director of Leading Educators. Fellows also meet with state and national policymakers for discussions focused around K-12 schools, reform, teacher retention, and policy. They toured D.C. classrooms to observe reforms and innovations in practice, as well as met with school faculty and administrators. Plans were in motion to solidify mentor-mentee relationships with D.C. teachers who are recognized leaders and innovators in the field. Alongside these professional enrichment efforts, Duke TeachHouse is committed to fostering personal growth and encouraging a healthy work-life balance. Through support from the Office of Durham and Regional Affairs, fellows are provided a stipend to develop their own individualized personal growth plan that can include activities such as attending community events and performances, dinners with colleagues, and special interest classes, workshops, and conferences. An Impact in the Classroom While Duke TeachHouse has already positively reinforced the relationship between Duke and the local schools with its focus on recruitment and retention, the program has made an impact on individual classrooms and students. For Ashley Pollard, a 2nd-grade teacher at Pearsontown Magnet Elementary School, living in Duke TeachHouse has helped her feel more connected to the Durham community— the city now feels like a place where she can establish roots. She doesn’t feel like an outsider
Duke TeachHouse is more than merely a comforting place to retreat after a long day in the classroom. It’s also an incubator for enhanced teaching skills that will create stronger teachers and strengthen the local school system overall. in a new location, trying to navigate her first teaching year alone. And having mentors in the house has already proven advantageous, she said. Based on state curriculum standards, she created literacy centers, known as the Daily Five. But, student interest lagged, so she turned to Ellis for advice. “My literacy centers were set up and kind of working, but not effectively. My students haven’t been very engaged,” said Pollard, Trinity ’15. “[Ellis] and I re-worked my Daily Five and created new centers and rotations. I’m excited to see the results as they’re implemented.” Without Duke TeachHouse, she said, this type of constructive advice wouldn’t be possible. Conversations arise organically at the end of the day and often offer incredible solutions to vexing problems or teaching tips that can be implemented in the classroom. Plans for the Future Interest in Duke TeachHouse is spreading rapidly, Gergen said. Conversations are already ongoing to launch a sister house for education students at Durham’s North Carolina Central University, as well as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Education. Ultimately, he said, the aim is for the number of TeachHouses to continue to grow. “Our goal is to build partnerships with universities and connect them through living and learning to the communities they love, proliferating those relationships,” he said.
“We hope to grow these types of houses many times over, creating more innovators and problem-solvers in the classroom, filling our communities with thriving thinkers who can take on the world’s complex challenges.”
From left (pages 4-5): Professor Jan Riggsbee and SSRI Director Tom Nechyba; Mayor Bill Bell, President Richard H. Brodhead, DPS Superintendent Bert L’Homme, Christopher Gergen, Jan Riggsbee, DARA Vice President Phail Wynn, Jr., Provost Sally Kornbluth, and the Duke TeachHouse Fellows; TeachHouse mentor Scott Ellis with students in his classroom at Hillsborough’s Expedition School; TeachHouse Fellow Shannon Potter talks with Vice President for Durham and Regional Affairs Phaill Wynn, Jr.
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EHD
Bass Connections: Crossing the Disciplines to Enact Change
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have emerged without Bass Connections [and] provides a unique opportunity for students to get involved in research that is focused on solving real world problems.” A quick glance at some of the individuals involved with EHD Bass, led by SSRI Director Thomas Nechyba, reveals economists, engineers, computer scientists, photographers, and ethnographers all working together on challenges related to education and human development. This interdisciplinary reach also encourages different interpretations of its key terms, hosting projects that explore issues ranging from early childhood through adulthood. Education extends beyond formal K-12 schooling to include learning in families and through social channels. Human development, likewise, is broadly defined as encompassing life outcomes across ages including health, social and familial connections, happiness, income, and employment. EHD Bass encourages projects that are within at least one of four project priority areas. They are state and local community engagement; higher education and the transition to adulthood; educational inequality; and child mental health, physical health and social adjustment.
The eleven EHD Bass teams currently include Responding to the Educational and Psychological Needs of Children and Families in Durham’s Transitional Housing, Nutrition and Cognition, and Studying the Real Slums of Bangalore, to name but a few. Fostering Research with EHDi The Education and Human Development Incubator (EHDi) exists within SSRI and is home to EHD Bass. EHDi supports EHD Bass by connecting with project teams, providing additional funding for projects within the four priority areas, and offering research support to teams. EHDi also promotes EHD scholarship through its new EHD graduate scholars program and by providing resources to researchers beyond Bass Connections. Another key focus is to connect researchers at Duke with one another and with partners beyond Duke. “There is so much expertise in education and human development across disciplines at Duke,” said SSRI’s Associate Director for Education Research and Engagement Carol Ripple. “Our purpose is to spark new and grow existing collaborations among researchers and find ways to support and extend their work to benefit the larger community.”
P h otos co u rt esy: J e n n y Jacq u e l i n e St ratto n a n d Ta ra Ba n sa l
he Bass Connections experience is not a traditional research experience. Its vision—to create a distinctive model for education by exploring societal and cultural challenges through collaborative, problem-centered learning—invites the kind of interdisciplinary investigation that connects students at all levels with faculty around applied research. Undergraduate students participate in all aspects of a project alongside graduate students, professional students, and faculty members. As a result, they are able to help shape their research team in ways they otherwise might not be able to. For instance, students may interview study participants, conduct statistical analysis, and help write research papers. For the Education and Human Development (EHD) theme, one of five research themes within Bass Connections, participants come from a variety of backgrounds across campus and contribute to the vitality of the projects through their diverse approaches. “Bass Connections in Education and Human Development plays an important role in fostering interdisciplinary research collaborations across campus,” said EHD Theme Administrator Cecily Hardaway. “It gives faculty the chance to engage in innovative projects that may not
In addition to fostering scholarship, EHDi offers program evaluation and data management services. “Our data management and analytics team provides expertise to support EHD research and our evaluation projects. Because we’re part of SSRI we’re especially well positioned to work with sensitive data in SSRI’s Protected Research Data Network,” Ripple explained. Navigating the many resources available to EHD Bass teams can be a daunting task at times, but Ripple’s team aims to be a resource for students doing just that. The Real Slums of Bangalore With its global footprint, the Real Slums of Bangalore team exemplifies the EHD Bass vision of translating human development research into positive life outcomes. Led by Professor of Public Policy and Political Science Anirudh Krishna and Professor of Political Science Erik Wibbels, the team has two objectives. The first is “to refine a satellite-based methodology for identifying slums and slum types,” according to the project’s literature. The second is “to understand how political networks and distributive politics impact the security of property rights, access to public services and human well-being in slums.” With nearly twenty student researchers in the field in the last five
years, this project’s work highlights the ways EHD Bass Connections teams confront societal challenges head on. Team member Tara Bansal spent the summer working in Bangalore, India conducting research and speaking—with the help of translators—to members of the communities there. Over the summer the team conducted thousands of surveys, but not without some friction. “In many of these communities, my presence was, at best, a spectacle and at worst, highly suspicious,” Bansal said in a recent interview. Named the grand prize winner of the Sanford School of Public Policy’s #PolicyInAction photography contest in late September, her photo was chosen because it “candidly captures the messy reality of public policy research,” according to the contest judges. This messy reality is something the team embraces, with the full understanding that their research is sensitively positioned. The fieldwork, while not for the feint of heart, exposes students to a part of society that needs to be confronted and confronted with research-backed solutions. “Ultimately, this research will be used to better identify the political network that controls how government goods and services are distributed in the slums of Bangalore,” Bansal said.
From left: Mounesh, Hemanth, Mariyamma (with her baby), and Bhimarao are residents of the Srinivasa settlement who migrated from a rural village in order to move closer to a hospital; The Srinivasa Colony is composed of migrant workers like them who provide cheap labor for real estate investors responding to rapid urbanization. Residents inhabit very different buildings made from found materials, and face growing threats of eviction from the surrounding neighborhood, neighbors who often restrict their access to public services like water and electricity; Tara Bansal interviews a community leader as members of his political entourage look on warily.
Through EHD Bass Connections, fieldwork like Bansal’s can affect real change. While slums continue to expand across the developing world, her team’s work can help illuminate why they spread so rapidly, and, more importantly, what can be done to prevent it. “Each and every student has contributed so much in their own particular way, whether it be through photo narratives, field work, statistical modeling, or human management,” said Professor Wibbels. “Without Bass Connections, we would be years behind in this project.”
Learn more: sites.duke.edu/ehdbassconnections/
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Identical Twins.
Different
W
hen identical twins take different paths in life, researchers take notice. And when foresighted and tenacious researchers have collected data on those twins, tracking measurements from birth through
adolescence, the dataset serves as a treasure trove for geneticists and social scientists.
The husband-and-wife team of Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt set up such a study on identical and fraternal twins after moving to the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s. Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on human development
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and mental health. Moffitt, the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, is a clinical psychologist specializing in the development of antisocial behavior. Their study, known as the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, or E-Risk, drew a sample of 1,116 families of same-sex twins born
in England and Wales in 1994 and ’95 from all walks of life. They collected data on the twins at ages 5, 7, 12, and 18 to investigate how genetic and environmental factors shape children’s disruptive behavior. Now Caspi and Moffitt are offering Duke faculty the opportunity to draw from the data at no charge. The data are housed at SSRI, which has the capability to archive, curate, and disseminate the data in a secure computational environment. “Our study provides SSRI with a model project to share with the wider community of researchers who will be able to work with the data in an ethically responsible way to generate
new knowledge,” Caspi said. “Our hope is that the data will be used for teaching purposes as well as discovery.” Caspi and Moffitt have been in the business of constructing longitudinal data for most of their careers. Measuring data from twins allows researchers to study the interplay of nature and nurture. “When you have monozygotic twins who are different from one another, you can look closely at what environmental factors may have created differences between them,” Caspi said. Sharing the data with other Duke faculty
Caspi and Moffitt pulled together a team of psychologists, public health researchers, psychiatrists, and criminologists to collect the data. The process involved home visits with parents and their twins and teacher questionnaires to note factors in the home, family, school, and neighborhood that influence children’s development and health. Duke faculty may be interested in tapping the data to answer questions about mental health, social development, experience in school and characteristics of students’ environment. E-Risk also has worked hard to track exposure to violence in children. Caspi and Moffitt have used the data in studies about the effects of childhood maltreatment on cognitive development; how early-developing psychological problems and psychiatric conditions impair children’s ability to integrate into the labor force; and the effect of absent fathers on children’s educational behavioral and cognitive development. Working out the details of what would be shared and how took about a year, Belsky said, “which in science collaboration time is really fast.” A significant proportion of the research data social scientists work with are considered sensitive. SSRI partnered with Duke’s Office of Information Technology and the IT Security Office to create a protected network exclusively for sensitive research data. Rachel Franke, associate director of research data security at SSRI, said data security at SSRI has expanded to include an IRB specialist, a grants team, communications assistance, and a range of resources to support researchers. “Rather than offer a locked safe,” she said, using an analogy, “it’s more like offering a bank with a range of services and a staff that understand why the security controls are in place and how to work with researchers.” Duke faculty interested in delving into the E-Risk study for research should become
Lives.
P h oto co u rt esy ( t h i s pag e ) : Jaco b s Fo u n dat i o n
began with a suggestion from Dan Belsky, an assistant professor in the medical school and SSRI. Belsky had drawn on E-Risk data for his studies on food insecurity and on mental health, so he knew that this unique resource existed. He also knew that SSRI at the time, early in 2014, was assembling the capacity for secure computing with sensitive data. He served as a catalyst for making the E-Risk data available to the Duke community. SSRI wanted to support integrative cross-disciplinary collaboration; at the same time, the E-Risk data were maturing, and Caspi and Moffitt wanted to get more users involved in it. “I saw sharing data as a way to bring these two sides together,” Belsky said. “Integrating genetics and social science research is a major objective of my own research and something I want to work to cultivate at Duke. Something I’ve realized from my own experience is that serious integration across disciplines depends on seriously integrative data. A twin study that was both representative of the general population and that had really first-class social and behavioral measurements seemed like a perfect vehicle.”
Husband-and-wife team Professors Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, owners of the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study dataset.
familiar with the codebooks and descriptions to learn what is and isn’t available in the data and get a sense of what other researchers have done. The faculty member should submit a brief concept paper to Caspi, outlining the study idea and the kind of variables required. Caspi will be able to help researchers focus their ideas to make the best use of the data. “It’s very easy to get lost in data,” he said, “especially when you have a lot of data and multiple waves and measurements and occasions.” Caspi and Moffitt continue to mine the data. By sharing their data with the wider Duke community, Caspi said, “other researchers, maybe an economist or sociologist, might use the data in ways we had not foreseen.” Duke researchers could shape the study into the future, he said. “By suggesting new measurements, and introducing new ideas and technologies and follow-ups, they keep the study fresh and interesting.”
For more information on making use of the E-Risk data: Lorrie Schmid, EHDi schmid@duke.edu
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Data-driven approaches
to interdisciplinary challenges
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ata+ is a ten-week summer research experience that immerses undergraduate students in client-based big data projects. With approximately forty undergraduate participants making up fourteen project teams, the program offers a structured setting for students to engage with big data while encouraging peer-to-peer interaction. The teams themselves are small. Three or four undergraduates form each project team in addition to a supervising mentor and a faculty sponsor. Participation in the program is open to Duke undergraduates interested in exploring new data-driven approaches to interdisciplinary challenges. While fields like mathematics, economics, and statistics are typically well represented in data science exploration, participants this past summer represented a wide range of fields including biophysics, earth and ocean sciences, evolutionary anthropology, and public policy.
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The goal, Bendich said, is not just for participants to understand the research, but also for them to communicate that understanding clearly with others. The program’s design provides students with opportunities to practice communicating prior to high-pressure situations, practice Bendich described as necessary for success inside and outside the academy. A Client-Based Approach At the end of the ten weeks, participants present their findings to the client, either a Duke faculty member or a corporation or company, who sponsored the project team’s work. “The idea is that in the ‘real world’ you come in for a period of time and you have a client that has a problem involving data and you have to figure out how to solve it. Far more importantly, you have to present your solution to them and give them advice, interact with them, dialogue with them. We want to recreate an example of that for students. Some of the clients were actual clients, companies, and corporations,” Bendich explained. Data+ is funded by a research training grant issued by the National Science Foundation, with matching funds from the Information Initiative
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Creating an Engaged Research Community Housed in the Information Initiative at Duke (iiD) in Gross Hall, the program teams meet biweekly to discuss their progress and the challenges they encounter during their work. Students can exchange ideas, ask one another questions, and practice relationship building and communication skills. The program’s design is meant to maximize student engagement both with the data and with others according to Paul Bendich, director of Data+ and associate director of undergraduate research at iiD. “If you give them one project to do, you give them a deep understanding of some of it—so it’s a really good idea to have them immersed in thirteen or fourteen other teams doing similar but different projects. That way they see the whole range of what data science can be.” Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative skillsets, students learn to marshal, analyze, visualize, and explain their data to individuals with different comprehension levels—from knowledgeable peers with a detailed understanding of data science to clients with only the broadest knowledge.
at Duke (iiD) and the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI). Infrastructure, staff, and faculty from both centers contribute to the program, furthering the interdisciplinary nature of it. Constructing Challenges from Duke MOOC Data As one Data+ team found, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a rich source of data. Using Duke’s Coursera data, team members analyzed six courses for elements like student intentions versus student behaviors and student retention across time in a single course. “[The team] provided interesting proofs of concept that showed that the Coursera data is a fruitful arena for research projects. One of the students, Yijun (Jenny) Li, continues to work on a project to better predict who will complete and who will not complete Coursera classes and what factors impact completion,” said Lorrie Schmid, the team’s mentor and Research Data Infrastructure Manager of EHDi. “The key assumption by the client and other Coursera users was that the Coursera data might be used for a Datafest,” Schmid explained. While confidentiality issues around the data complicated plans for Datafest, Schmid said students learned a valuable research lesson in the process—namely, that research outcomes cannot always be predicted. And while outcomes may not fall in line with expectations, other key components of the project, like learning how to prepare a proposal for IRB approval, offered valuable skills for further research endeavors. “The project was a great learning experience for me,” said Andy Cooper, a student on the Data+ MOOC team.
“Since I had never completed a research project like this before, I didn’t have any clear expectations for the summer. I did expect to learn about statistical research and analysis, and that was certainly the case for me. I learned about researching in the social sciences, I became much more comfortable with the program SAS, and I gained useful experience in writing a formal research paper.” Food Choices and Behavioral Economics The Duke-UNC USDA Center For Behavioral Economics And Healthy Food Choice Research (BECR) exemplifies interinstitutional collaboration, and their Data+ sponsored team continued that collaborative spirit with interdisciplinary research into food choices within the WIC program. Undergraduates Alex Hong, Kehan Zhang, and Kang Ni worked with their client Matthew Harding, director of BECR, to investigate grocery store transaction data as a first step toward developing a customer preference index for the products available through WIC. By bringing together students from statistics, economics, and public health, the project was able to gain a deeper and more complex understanding of the data than if one approach had been applied to it. “That’s the magic of putting [students] together,” Bendich said. “The analytical questions are different but the skills that are needed to develop are the same.”
Workforce Incentives Luke Raskopf, a political science major and Xinyi (Lucy) Lu, a statistics and computer science major, teamed up to investigate the effectiveness of policies to combat wage stagnation and unemployment in working and middle-class families in North Carolina. Their client, Director Allan Freyer of the North Carolina Justice Center, worked closely with them throughout the ten weeks as they studied the effects of different types of incentives programs in certain counties in the state. At the end of the program, Raskopf and Lu presented their findings, along with data-driven policy recommendations, to the Justice Center in Raleigh. Excited for his partnership with Data+, Freyer said “[t]he students provided a significant amount of highly sophisticated data analysis in support of an important project on the ways in which economic development professionals can fight wage stagnation at the state and local levels. I strongly recommend professional organizations to consider Data+ for statistical analyses they don’t have the capacity to do in house—the students are highly adaptable, learn quickly, and perform high quality work.”
Learn more: bigdata.duke.edu
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The Need to
Belong
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T
he 51 st annual meeting of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) convened in Denver at the
end of September and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Mark Leary was named co-recipient of this year’s prestigious Scientific Impact Award. Leary shares the honor with co-author Roy Baumeister for their influential paper “The Need to Belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.”
Director of the Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center and Garonzik Family Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Mark R. Leary.
P h oto Co u rt esy ( l e a ry ) : D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P h oto g ra p h y
“We saw social acceptance and belonging concerns everywhere we looked as a metaframework, but no one had really talked about it” Leary said. “Very few of the references dealt explicitly with acceptance and rejection. We had to piece the argument together from scraps of things since nobody had really studied it.” SESP defines the Scientific Impact Award as honoring “the author(s) of a specific article or chapter offering a theoretical, empirical, and/ or methodological contribution that has proven highly influential over the last 25 years.” Cited thousands of times since its publication in 1995, Leary and Baumeister’s work has indeed helped shape the current dialogue around human behavior and its social motivation. “For decades people have said that we’ve evolved to be social creatures, we have a desire to affiliate with others and join groups […] but that’s different than saying we have a motive to be accepted that drives our behavior, that we’re fundamentally motivated to make sure we’re accepted,” Leary says. Twenty years later, there is no doubt that the landscape of social psychology research has changed. With the paper came a shift away from cognitive perspectives toward more social perspectives. “Not only has it caused researchers to look at topics they never would have looked at otherwise, but I think it has made social psychology more social. Many of the theories that existed in the past explained social behavior in terms of what was going on in people’s heads instead of what was going on in their social worlds” Leary explained. “It resulted in an explosion of interest. That paper had much more of an impact than we could have ever imagined.” Now, Leary points to thousands of references that discuss social acceptance, rejection, and belonging—topics that have popular resonance outside of social psychology. The SESP Scientific Impact Award follows Leary’s 2010 Lifetime Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity. He
is currently serving as President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Leary also serves as director of the Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center (IBRC), an integral part of SSRI. Impacting the Research Community through the IBRC The IBRC is home to many resources for researchers including the ResearchMobile, a mobile laboratory that has been used to collect data at places like the North Carolina State Fair and the Durham Central Park Food Truck Rodeo. Accessible to all faculty, post-doctoral, and student researchers in the social and behavioral sciences at Duke, the IBRC has been used by researchers in psychology, anthropology, behavioral economics, political science, and marketing to name just a few disciplines. For Leary, the IBRC represents a unique resource for social and behavioral scientists on campus working with human subjects. The ResearchMobile allows researchers to access typically underrepresented sample populations. Importantly, it is also available for immediate response research, as with the recent flooding in South Carolina or political events leading up to the 2016 presidential election. On campus, the IBRC’s facilities include 18 rooms for various kinds of behavioral research, including four audio-video recording rooms with high-quality cameras and microphones and two psychophysiology recording rooms equipped for the measurement of heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, and other biofeedback. Other resources include an actively updated participant pool and networked desktop systems with keyboards for reaction time measurement.
Interested in using the ResearchMobile for a project covering the recent flooding in SC? Contact Alexandra Cooper, alexandra.cooper@duke.edu
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