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THE SOCIAL SCIENCE MAGAZINE OF DUKE UNIVERSITY
BASS CONNECTIONS IN BRAZIL Exploring Afro-Brazilian History in Rio’s Historic Slave Port
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Contents
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Bass Connections in Baixada Fluminense
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Testimonials from the Connection Bar
8 EHDx Talks: A New Tradition
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In the Classroom, In the Community
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Study: Should Shotgun Weddings Take Place?
Bass Connections students at Pedra do Sal, birthplace of samba music in Rio.
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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
The Latest at SSRI Connection Bar, ModU, EHD Bass Teams and more! Q: What educational resources are available at
Q: EHD Bass Connections has grown to include
SSRI this year? A: Our educational resources really come as a package of connecting pieces. We have a help desk, the Connection Bar in Gross Hall, that provides on-demand research support to hundreds of students and faculty 40 hours a week. This is backed up by a growing online infrastructure that is open to anyone anytime. Then we have in-depth bootcamps that dive deep into particular methods or software packages. All this is supported by a vibrant staff, graduate and post-doc community in SSRI, an interdisciplinary group that works on its own research goals while also assisting others with expertise. And SSRI manages the Education and Human Development theme of Bass Connections where we try to bring these general educational offerings to bear on making teambased science work—both within the theme and across other teams in the university. Through our experience with Bass, we have also learned how the same resources that support our Duke community can become critical catalysts for launching community partnerships that benefit from research.
even more project teams this year. What do you envision for the theme’s future? A: These project teams are the core of Bass Connections, and we have learned a lot about what makes them successful. I think there are two next steps for the theme: First, we want to continue to work on leveraging SSRI’s educational infrastructure to support these teams, and in the process learn more about how we can become increasingly effective at supporting interdisciplinary, team-based projects. Second, we are exploring creative new ways of providing EHD-focused educational pathways, leveraging the ModU infrastructure to provide support for students and faculty to explore areas of EHD that strengthen Bass teams from their start.
Q: What’s ModU and who might find it useful? A: ModU is a new initiative that is part of our
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online presence to support interdisciplinary, team-based science. It is still in its beta phase, but the idea is to provide modular paths for student and faculty researchers to understand the essence of different approaches to social science. Matt Masten, a faculty member in economics and an expert in causal inference, has so far produced over 100 short modules that provide conceptually deep but technically accessible ways for researchers across disciplines to engage with some of the most difficult questions social science wrestles with. We are expanding into other topics, and all the modules are discoverable on YouTube which then points you to our ModU interface to see the connections between the modules. The surprise so far has been how much external interest there seems to be. We are being approached by big companies to enter partnerships to deepen what we offer.
Q: Podcasts, like NPR’s Hidden Brain and Brian Southwell’s The Measure of Everyday Life, are bringing social science issues into the mainstream. How can Duke students participate in this movement? A: Brian’s show is really terrific, and right in the sweet spot of where SSRI sits. It aims to not just talk about social science research but also to expose the public to the challenges such research faces and the ways we overcome these challenges. So I am thrilled about a growing partnership we have started with Brian and with his WNCU program. We are supporting a new class Brian is teaching this year, a class where students learn to talk about social science in the way that he does on his show, and we are collaborating on featuring Duke social science on the show. I think we’ll see students producing short pieces that may well end up on the show, and I hope all sorts of new ways of bringing social science insights to the public will emerge.
Tom Nechyba Director, SSRI
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BASS CONNECTIONS IN BAIXADA FLUMINENSE
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bout a decade ago, the political party in power in Brazil launched a massive initiative to make high-quality, affordable university degrees accessible to students from low-income families. This past summer, the president of that party faced impeachment, and Brazil’s economy was on the brink of collapse. A group of eight students on a Duke-sponsored research visit had front row seats as the drama played out. The students spent three weeks in the Baixada Fluminense, a low-income district on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, interviewing university students, their parents and faculty at the Multidisciplinary Institute of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Their goal was to learn more about the impact of higher education on communities where few people continue studying beyond high school.
The Duke Bass field team: FHI Global Brazil Director Christine Folch and Brazilian project director Alexandre Fortes talking with students and top leadership of the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro.
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While the benefit of a high-quality university degree in the U.S. might be that it changes a student’s world view or opens more career doors, in Brazil the impact is more like a badge that elevates its holder from the rest of society.
Bass Connections and Duke’s Global Brazil Humanities Lab collaborated to make the open-ended research trip possible with additional support from the Duke Brazil Initiative. Led by Duke history professor John French, along with Katya Wesolowski, a visiting professor of cultural anthropology, the mix of undergraduate and graduate students gathered data through one-on-one interviews expected to generate a wide variety of research projects. Nearly 30 Duke students applied to the Bass Connections course that required students to be at least somewhat conversant in Portuguese and French. The intent was to select only five or six students, but upon seeing the diverse skill sets and passionate interest among the applicants— statistics, higher education, classics, learning a second language—French increased the number he had planned to accept. “We’re really glad we did,” French said. “So many good people had applied, and it would be a shame not to try to do this trip in a more ambitious way.” The international study opportunity differed from traditional research excursions, in which students know their research framework before embarking, or study-abroad opportunities that allow time for visiting tourist attractions. Duke senior and economics major John Victor Alencar, who is turning his Baixada experience into an independent study project, expected to gather more quantitative data. Instead, the emphasis was on qualitative material. “It almost felt like we were exchange students,” Alencar said. “We were immersed in
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the local university politics and everything else going on in the country, which is at a pivotal moment in Brazil’s history. It was impactful to be there when there was so much change going on.” Before taking off for Brazil, the students in the group learned about the culture and history of Brazil’s higher education system. Brazil’s public universities are of much higher caliber than private schools, many of which are more akin to for-profit colleges in the U.S. Though public universities always have been tuitionfree, historically only the financially well-off attend because public universities are located far from rural, low-income areas, and the public transportation system is not geared toward bringing people from the outskirts of town into the city center. While the benefit of a high-quality university degree in the U.S. might be that it changes a student’s world view or opens more career doors, in Brazil the impact is more like a badge that elevates its holder from the rest of society. In Brazil, for instance, those with a college degree can’t be held in a common jail if arrested. The Brazilian government initiative that began in 2006 included opening universities in rural areas and providing scholarships so that more students could step away from an incomeearning role while they are students. Though the number of students enrolled in public universities has tripled in the past decade, still only about 3,500 of the 400,000 young people in the Baixada who have finished high school attend a public university.
“There’s a lot of debate about whether the initiative is worthwhile,” French said. “There are policy questions that are precisely what we wanted to talk about. Is it a waste of money on students who don’t complete the course because they have to work or they don’t have what it takes to be successful? In the context of the economic crisis and austerity measures, should the government lower investment in this initiative? Or would restricting opportunity be detrimental? Is there a cost to not offering opportunity? This is a debate that will go on for a long time.” And Duke students will be a part of it. French and Wesolowski taught their research students the fine art of conducting interviews and taking field notes, then set them loose to gather data. All told, the students conducted 27 interviews, plus another 10 hours of video interviews, including four Brazilian students with their parents. Alencar, who was interested in the impact higher education would have in low-income communities and the different conceptions economists have on the best strategy for developing an education system, said the best part of the trip was the connections he made with the Brazilian students and the deeper understanding he gained about the challenges they must overcome to pursue a degree. “They’re so inspiring,” he said. “They’re on the frontlines, fighting for their rights in this difficult moment in Brazil’s history. Their research and the fields they’ve chosen, they’re looking to give back to their community.”
“The trip ignited my passion for Brazil,” he continued. “It made me realize I want to either work in Brazil or work on issues that impact Brazil and Latin America.” French said the bonds formed between the Brazilian and Duke students intrigued him. “It was almost like a laboratory of how students of mostly different backgrounds came together and merged as a group. They became quite tight,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like a research finding, but it is. How do you do collaborative work across international boundaries and create something egalitarian, unmarked by boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’? That’s something researchers try to achieve, and we feel really good about it.” Since returning, each student has met individually with French to debrief and talk about next steps. Some students are working on short films about their experience that will be posted on the Global Brazil Lab website. Others are working up grant proposals. The Southeast Council for Latin American Studies will meet in the Triangle this year, offering an opportunity for students to deliver academic papers on their experience. A few students are working on an exhibit to be displayed in the Franklin Humanities Institute. One group is working on a 20-minute film about the experience that will debut in February when some of the Brazilian students and faculty come to Duke for a two-day conference to keep the collaboration alive, followed immediately by a wider conference on developments in Brazil. Gray Kidd, who is French’s co-instructor of the Bass Connections course, said that the course deliverables—in lieu of, say, a final paper—reflect a project in which “everyone brings their personal strengths and interests to the table.” Kidd said the Bass course and research trip met his goal of looking at different models for interdisciplinary study. “We wanted to put something together that generated a great deal of energy and was outside of the traditional course format,” he said. “We’ve been successful. Personalized pathways of research have emerged from this.”
RIGHT COLUMN FROM TOP: Jessica Lee’s drawing of the Bass Team; Elizabeth Hodge-Freeman and part of the Bass Team; Duke and IM students on a tour of important Afro-Brazilian sites in Rio’s Port Zone.
LEFT COLUMN FROM TOP: Students Visit FIOCRUZ, Brazil’s premiere public health research institute; Farewell churrasco (Brazilian Barbecue); Entrance to the Instituto Multidisciplinar Campus of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ).
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Testimonials FROM THE CONNECTION BAR Laura Caputo, MD
Carla Rodriguez
FACULTY MEMBER HOSPITAL MEDICINE, DURHAM VA MEDICAL CENTER MEDICAL INSTRUCTOR AT DUKE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
GRADUATE STUDENT ECONOMICS
What was your project? The hospitalists at the VA are developing an education seminar for teaching physicians on the inpatient wards. Our goal is to improve the quality of teaching delivered to medicine trainees on their VA inpatient medicine rotation.
What was your project? I’m a graduate student in the Economics Department and I’m also a research assistant in the department working with diagnosis codes. Specifically, I’m working with codes following the ICD-9 coding scheme.
What brought you to the Connection Bar? We plan to assess our participants’ teaching attitudes and frequency of teaching behaviors using surveys. How did the consultant help? Kyle was incredibly helpful both in structuring the survey and in tailoring the questions to our desired outcome. I met with Kyle and his supervisor for about 30 minutes, and learned more about survey methodology in that time than I had in all of residency! I was incredibly impressed with how eager Kyle and his team were to help me with my project, and I’m excited to refer my colleagues to him when they do similar work. The Connection Bar is a great resource for survey development!
What brought you to the Connection Bar? I’m working with more than a million observations, so the probability of encountering errors is not zero. I went to the Connection Bar because I was having difficulties matching data within observations. The data I’m working with uses string and byte characters so I needed help from someone fluent in coding. How did the consultant help? Luckily Yunbo was there to help. He helped me destring information and later transform it into values I could actually work with. He also helped me clean the variables with loops since errors appear within years and throughout the whole sample.
THE CONSULTANTS
Allison Black-Maier
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Jennifer Bowles
Noa Cnaan-On
Ting Dai
Kyle Endres
Yimin Ge
Eden Huang
Thamina J. Stoll
Sunny Zhang
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT POLITICAL SCIENCE POLICY JOURNALISM & MEDIA STUDIES
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, PUBLIC POLICY
What was your project? I’m currently working on my Political Science honors thesis titled “Humanitarian Interventions and Gender.” For my project, I executed a huge survey experiment in collaboration with PhD candidate Won Steinbach. Now I have to conduct a couple of difference of means tests and run a few regressions.
What was your project? My project is focused on how summarized news is understood and retained by young adults, as compared to traditional formats of news like articles and video. Increasingly, readers are obtaining their news through summarized news formats, such as theSkimm and Need2Know. News outlets are also delivering information in abbreviated formats, such as The New York Times’ Morning Briefing. My thesis included an experiment that allowed me to compare knowledge gain through these different formats.
What brought you to the Connection Bar? Unfortunately, I’m not very proficient in R, or any statistical software for that matter. The Connection Bar consultants helped me on a different project last year, so I approached them again. How did the consultant help? Yimin and Alex helped me write my code to create subsets of my original data sets, calculate means and create visually appealing charts for my honors thesis. P H OTOS CO U RT ESY O F S H E L B I FA N N I N G, T H A M I N A J. STO L L , S U N N Y Z H A N G
Jason Li
Xichu Liu
Yunbo Liu
Liu Lu
What brought you to the Connection Bar? I came to the Connection Bar for assistance with Qualtrics and the data that I gathered through it for my senior thesis. How did the consultant help? Jason Li, the Connection Bar consultant, helped me with Excel functions that allowed me to format my spreadsheet in a way that let me better analyze my data. It was also helpful to just talk to someone about what information I needed, and to brainstorm how best to create visualizations of my results.
Tyler Ransom
Alex Robinson
Mara Sedlins
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EHDx TALKS: A NEW TRADITION Culminating Event Celebrates Student Achievement
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ndergraduate research is central to Bass Connections. So to recognize the students’ hard work and dedication, the Education and Human Development (EHD) Bass Connections theme gathered for the first annual EHDx Talks on April 13, 2016 at the Nasher Museum of Art. The culminating event celebrated the achievement of students who had been working on interdisciplinary research teams within the EHD Bass Connections theme and provided an opportunity for students to discuss the research projects and their work. The event, in the style of TED Talks, involved students from each team presenting a five-minute talk on his or her team’s work. A reception and poster session immediately followed the talks, giving guests the opportunity to mingle and learn more about the projects, EHD as a theme within Bass Connections and the students who comprised the 2015–16 teams. “We heard from students that they wanted more opportunities to present their work and that they were looking for some type of culminating event that would recognize and highlight their achievements throughout the year,” said last year’s EHD Theme Administrator Cecily Hardaway.
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“We were happy to create this opportunity, so that students have a sense of accomplishment and can share their work with other Bass teams and the Duke community more broadly,” she said. Research Projects from Local to International Team members from all walks of academic life gathered at the Nasher, including members of the social sciences, humanities, engineering and the medical center. Because education and human development are somewhat open to interpretation, presentation topics were as diverse as team members’ backgrounds, ranging from local to international research projects.
For Nikita Gawande and Saumya Jain, human development research involved studying slums in Bangalore in an effort to help fill in gaps in scholarly knowledge on poverty in the developing world. Using survey research methods, they spoke with residents in Bangalore about their lives and living conditions. “Our hope is that by clustering slums on their physical features, it will be easier to discover what underlying factors are most important in shaping different trajectories of development over time,” Jain said. Members of 2015–16 EHD Bass Connections project teams gathered after EHDx Talks on the lecture hall stage at the Nasher Museum.
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In time, their work could be used to make policy recommendations on poverty, health, education, housing and other related issues. And with a 2016–17 Bass Connections team continuing their work, they could be well on their way to helping NGOs and governments make informed policy changes. For Brigid Burroughs, Jennifer Ling, Camila Vargas and Jaslyn Zhang, education and human development meant exploring gender discrepancies in STEM education. Their team, titled STEM for All, modeled their data analysis off the National Girls’ Collaborative Project. They tracked how women and men handled academic obstacles differently in an effort to understand why women are more likely to switch out of a STEM major, even when controlling for academic ability. In fact, Burroughs said, women are 50 percent more likely to switch out of a STEM major. It’s a startlingly high percentage that her team worked to help lower through active learning and self-efficacy techniques. With a 2016–17 STEM for All team picking up the baton, their research will be expanded to also include theories regarding how race and ethnicity relate to active learning and self-efficacy. For Giselle Graham and Xin Tong Lim’s project, education and human development meant working with the local nonprofit Voices
Together. The organization offers therapeutic interventions for children with autism, particularly children with communication and social interaction deficits. Last year, the EHD Voices Together team evaluated these therapeutic interventions. The 2016–17 team is expanding on the previous team’s efforts by developing a teacher-training model for special-education classrooms in North Carolina public schools. The teacher toolbox will help classrooms that would otherwise not be able to host a certified music therapist. Led by SSRI staff Lorrie Schmid and Jessica Sperling, the team exemplifies the ways in which EHD Bass Connections can positively contribute to the community through research partnerships. A New Tradition While some teams are continuing their work from last year and expanding on it, still more education and human development research projects have formed project teams this year. It’s just one reason why the EHDx Talks culminating event is so important, as it provides a platform for teams to share their findings, successes and goals for future work. “I’m really looking forward to this year’s EHDx talks and poster session,” said Amy Finnegan, current EHD Bass theme administrator. “It’ll be a great opportunity for our teams to take a step back, put their year-long EHD work in
Brigid Burroughs, Camila Vargas, Jennifer Ling and Jaslyn Zhang shared their five minute talk about their year-long work on the STEM for All EHD project team.
perspective and share what they’ve achieved with their peers in the Bass Connections community.” As one of the newest traditions at SSRI, it promises to pack the house again this year, with members of the university and medical center as well as community partners and even, as was the case last year, some parents of EHD Bass participants in the audience. For many, the culminating event is a time to both look back on the year’s work and ahead to what other work can be done. “I hope that attending the event can be an energizing experience for project teams as they share their enthusiasm with each other,” Finnegan concluded. With more Bass teams this year than ever before, the EHD Bass Connections theme is brimming with energy. Save the date for the 2nd annual EHDx Talks on April 19, 2017 in the newly renovated Penn Pavilion on Duke’s West Campus. For more information about EHD Bass Connections and updates about EHDx Talks, visit sites.duke.edu/ehdbassconnections.
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IN THE CLASSROOM, IN THE COMMUNITY THE EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND EVALUATION TEAM AT SSRI
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ducation is at the heart of SSRI’s mission, and no team better reflects this than the Education, Research and Evaluation team. With a threepronged focus, the team is stacked with expertise in the social sciences. Comprising data scientists, sociologists and qualitative research experts, their specific academic interests may differ but their work often intertwines. Tasked with providing educational opportunities and resources on campus as well as research and evaluation partnerships in the community, the team’s work is dynamic, involving undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and faculty as well as community partners like Voices Together, Kidznotes and Durham Public Schools. Alexandra Cooper, who helms the team as associate director, recognized that there are no hard and fast boundaries between these three areas of focus, so it’s a natural fit that they work closely together under one team umbrella. “Although distinct, these three activities are inextricably intertwined,” she said. “Bringing them together eliminates the artificial administrative boundaries that, when present, risk reducing our opportunities to collaborate and learn from one another.” Collaborating on Current Projects Projects like the team’s recent work with Voices Together exemplify this cooperative spirit. Manager of Data Analytics Lorrie Schmid and Manager of Evaluation and Engagement Jessica Sperling may have different areas of focus on the
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It’s not just about studying within the social sciences, but also giving students a taste of the social sciences through the sort of work that builds on something they’re already interested in, incorporated within this disciplinary context. team, but their work on Voices Together corresponds in many ways. For instance, both serve as project leads for the Bass Connections team working with Voices Together, a music therapy program that helps students with autism reach their full potential and is currently working with seven different school districts. “A big part of the role that we play is making sense of the results,” Schmid said of their work with Voices Together, though it also applies more broadly to their community partnerships. “The program’s staff just doesn’t have the time or resources to analyze and answer questions about their program’s success and opportunities for growth. They’re far too busy doing the crucial, everyday work of helping students,” Sperling added. Data and Evaluation While programs like Voices Together and Kidznotes are doing the boots on the ground work with their program participants, the Education, Research and Evaluation team members are strategically formulating ways of building on the program’s strengths.
Admittedly, evaluations rely on data for their findings and likewise, data demands analysis and context. Schmid and Sperling, as well as Project Associate in Evaluation and Engagement Megan Gray, work closely with a team of undergraduates, graduate students and faculty to provide the program with data-backed insights that can then shape the strategic plan for the program’s future. For Voices Together, one of the team’s most interconnected projects, Sperling and Schmid also interface as the research arm to the school system. “There are data, research management, evaluation and communication elements to this partnership that make it really exciting,” Sperling said. Undergraduate and graduate students are getting a taste for this work as part of the Bass Connections in Education and Human Development Voices Together team. Student backgrounds have been surprisingly diverse, with everything from engineering to art history represented. The appeal, Sperling said, is the applied training and experience. “It’s part of the interdisciplinary nature of SSRI,” she continued. “It’s not just about
studying within the social sciences, but also giving students a taste of the social sciences through the sort of work that builds on something they’re already interested in, incorporated within this disciplinary context.” Education, Research and Resources Outreach and research support is a major aspect of the team’s work. In addition to Bass Connections and student intern opportunities, Cooper’s team runs day-to-day support and training that’s available for researchers at all levels. Workshops like Visualizing Qualitative Data, SAS for Data Management and Effective Survey Design for Online, Paper and Mixed-mode Questionnaires offer guided learning for Duke affiliates, whether they are staff, faculty or students. The Connection Bar at SSRI also offers one-on-one support for researchers with specific needs. Consultants staff the Connection Bar from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and offer a variety of expertise from research design and ethics to data collection and analysis. Consultants can provide guidance with HTML, Javascript, Stata, R, Python, Qualtrics, Excel and countless other programs, codes and skills. For Cooper, her team’s work providing training and resources is a vital complement to classroom learning. “It’s essential that students learn how to employ within research projects the skills they acquire in the classroom,” she said.
ModU One of the team’s recent projects, ModU, is an open resource for Duke students and researchers interested in learning particular social science concepts or methods. The site, located at modu. ssri.duke.edu, lets students browse and search for the module they need for their specific interest. Because students in courses or projects like a Duke Bass Connections team may only need a few minutes of explanation about an idea to be immediately more productive, ModU breaks topics into smaller videos, i.e. modules, which cover a very small topic within a research concept or method. Often, it’s these small, memorable insights that really make a difference and therefore forms the core of the site. James Speckart, program manager for instructional design, leads the effort with input from Cooper and other staff and faculty around campus. He’s brought together some of Duke’s best researchers and faculty sharing their expert
Lorrie Schmid and Jessica Sperling discuss the Kidznotes evaluation.
knowledge in one searchable resource. It’s the latest in Speckart’s efforts to provide innovative educational resources to the interdisciplinary research community at Duke. “Not everything we teach in college requires a full semester course to learn,” he said. “So we created ModU as a flexible and easily accessible way for students to find out about the core methods and techniques of social science in small pieces and at their own pace.” Users can also view the concepts in the context of increasingly broader collections of modules within a field of study. This way, users can cater their learning to their own needs, whether they are narrow in scope or broadly curious. “We currently have well over 100 videos on topics from research ethics to experimental design, and we plan to expand that to over 400 in the coming months,” Speckart said. Strengthening the Research Community As Cooper noted, Duke is a leader in interdisciplinary collaboration and investigation and her team’s work strongly reflects that interdisciplinary ethos. With partnerships like Voices Together and Kidznotes as well as public resources like ModU, they are helping strengthen the research community, providing the opportunities and resources for students and innovative research projects to succeed. They exemplify the role that SSRI strives for at Duke and in Durham, providing extensive opportunities for engagement with the social sciences both in and out of the classroom.
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SHOULD Shotgun Weddings TAKE PLACE? EHD BASS TEAM INVESTIGATES
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arriage rates in the US are declining. In fact, marriage rates are lower today than they were during the Great Depression. The last time they were lower? Ulysses S. Grant was President of the United States and the country was still rebuilding from the Civil War. So what’s causing these dramatic changes to this long-held social institution? Anna Gassman-Pines and Christina Gibson-Davis, both associate professors in the Sanford School of Public Policy, formed a Bass Connections team last year to find out. “We were working with this question of job loss in the community, and if that affects the likelihood people get married,” Gibson-Davis said. But social norms are an inherently difficult thing to explore. It simply wouldn’t be possible, let alone ethical or scientifically sound, to ask
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expecting unmarried couples their own beliefs and wait for job loss to occur. So Gibson-Davis and Gassman-Pines turned to a vignette study to present experiment participants with hypothetical couples in two contrasting situations. Working with Undergraduates With a study premise and an idea of how to structure it, they advertised for participants to join their Bass Connections team and found six students eager to get to work on the project. Katherine Eastwood (Economics), Natalie Hall (Public Policy), Maggie Butler (Psychology), Stella Zhang (Fuqua School of Business), Lauren Taylor (Mathematics) and Corey Vernot (Statistics and Public Policy) rounded out the research team. Joining at such an early stage, they were instrumental in developing the study. “From that point on we worked collaboratively
with them to develop the vignettes,” said Gassman-Pines. “We went through a lot of piloting. The students developed the wording and were really integral to developing the vignettes, doing the testing of them, and then they were the ones to go out into the field and collect responses.” In one vignette the team developed, the couple was expecting a baby and lived in a community that had lost jobs. In the other, the same couple was expecting a baby in a community with high levels of employment. Participants were randomly assigned a vignette and then asked two questions: if they thought the couple will get married and if they thought the couple should get married. The team collected information from 400 respondents in Durham ranging from 18 to 82 years old. When there was job loss, some
The two vignettes developed by the EHD Bass team asked participants whether they thought an expectant couple would get married and should get married. In one, the levels of employment were high in the hypothetical community. In the other, there was job loss. participants were less likely to say the couple should get married. But perhaps surprisingly, this didn’t hold true for all of the participants. What seemed to predict this response was the participant’s own socio-economic background. People struggling to make ends meet were more likely to say the couple should wait to get married. As Gibson-Davis suggests, it may be because the respondent’s own job opportunities are limited.
P H OTO CO U RT ESY O F A N N A GASS M A N - P I N ES
Invested from Start to Finish For the students, it was an incredible opportunity to invest in a research project from its very beginning. Gassman-Pines and Gibson-Davis brought faculty expertise, but the students were encouraged to help shape the study with their insights as well. The results, they said, were that much more meaningful because the undergraduates understood all of the small decisions and steps in the process that led to their end result. “We had two group sessions with a Stata consultant at SSRI, where the whole team went over to SSRI and received this training collaboratively,” Gassman-Pines said, beginning an anecdote from their data analysis leg of the process. “Towards the end of the second training, we ran the main result. ‘Does job loss predict what people say about whether the couple will or should get married?’ And when there was a statistically significant result, everyone started cheering,” she said, noting that they felt that invested in the result. “The students actually started clapping because they had really seen the project through and been integrally involved in it from the earliest stages, so they understood exactly how we got there. It was really meaningful,” Gassman-Pines concluded. The results, they both agree, are an exciting culmination of the project. With just a hypothesis to start, Gibson-Davis stressed that it wasn’t clear if the idea would yield results.
Reliant on strangers’ responses for the data set, it took some testing for the students to find the right spaces where people were waiting and therefore receptive to the vignettes as a way to pass the time. Places like public parks, salons and barber shops were especially good places for finding willing volunteers. “We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get responses from even 20 people, let alone this large of a sample,” Gassman-Pines said. “It validated prior work, our own work and the hard work and efforts of the students.” Lasting Mentorships The team’s results were published in the Journal of Marriage and Family under the title “They should say ‘I don’t’: Norms about midpregnancy marriage and job loss.” For their efforts on the research project and helping with the draft, the Bass Connections student team members received authorship credit on the paper. For Corey Vernot, an undergraduate member of the team, authorship credit is a noteworthy achievement, but also not the most rewarding part of the experience. The relationship he’s formed with the faculty members who led the team has been the most rewarding outcome of
his EHD Bass Connections experience. “Dr. Gassman-Pines and Dr. Gibson-Davis were extremely supportive of us during the project. They went out of their way to make the experience educational, and it was clear that our development as researchers was just as much a priority to them as the research project itself,” he said. “After the project, I continued to learn from them as a research assistant on a number of different projects, and now they’re both giving me great guidance as I work on my thesis in public policy.” It’s a legacy that Bass Connections hopes to achieve with all its research teams: lasting mentorships, interdisciplinary collaboration, publishable research and those incredible aha moments that sometimes, though rarely, burst into impromptu cheering and applause.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Lauren Taylor, Stella Zhang, Natalie Hall, Anna Gassman-Pines, Corey Vernot, Kate Eastwood, Christina Gibson-Davis and Maggie Butler formed the EHD Bass project team.
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MEET MARA Working with Duke Libraries and SSRI, Mara can help with best practices for managing a variety of research data in the social sciences. Stop by Gross Hall on Thursdays from 1-3 to chat with her. mps50@duke.edu
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