GIST Spring 2014 by Duke SSRI

The social science magazine of Duke University Spring 2014, VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1

gist building on a

decade

BRINGING TOGETHER SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCHERS

Nechyba’s Niche

How Far We’ve Come:

Nechyba Discusses SSRI Then and Now SSRI recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary. How have things changed for the institute over the last decde? Nechyba: I think the institute has gone through phases as it has tried to find the best ways to meet its mission. It began as a school-based center in modest quarters in Trent Hall—back when Trent was known as a student dormatory. Then it expanded dramatically as it became one of the seven signature institutes, and it moved off campus to Erwin Mill. In retrospect, that was a blessing and a curse—a lot of nice space, but disconnected from faculty and students who had been so much at the core of John Aldrich’s original vision. So, SSRI primarily became a “center of centers”, a way to provide some basic infrastructure for a growing number of affiliated centers to more effectively do their work. Part of that infrastructure was a grants operation that expanded to include faculty from the campus— but only in the sense that we were administering their grants. The problem was that, unlike most of the other institutes, SSRI lacked its own intellectual identity. It became what I think it could

become in Erwin Mill, but it lost its connection to the bulk of faculty and students. Then came the opportunity to move into Gross Hall and build a new institute—one focused on faculty and students as originally intended. And so, here we are, in some sense having come full circle but now knowing much more about how to be what we set out to be a decade ago.

The Connection space is becoming known as a great study spot for students and a meeting place for faculty and numerous Bass Connections projects. What do you think is the appeal (besides the coffee and cookies, of course)? Nechyba: It was really designed to be a space that is warm, welcoming and that screams “stay and connect.” Space, location, geography—all these things really matter as we think about how to design environments that get people to cross paths, to change habits and to identify with new places. Our hope had been that devoting as much space to the collborative “Connection” environment would pay off—and it seems to be doing so in spades.

Duke University Photography

It seems like sensitive data is one of the big themes of the “new SSRI.” What services do you all offer to help researchers with such data? Can SSRI help people with large and small projects? Nechyba: We really have invested a lot in this area, and are continuing to invest more. This month, SSRI’s Protected Research Data Network (PRDN) is coming on line— the beginnings of a truly 21st century way of facilitating research and collaboration around sensitive social science data. We’ll be able to help researchers—big and small— with all sorts of confidential data, and we can do it in an environment built for collaboration. We’ll also be able to create data resources for the social sciences there— resources like the Duke Education Data Center built around Duke’s institutional data, or around Duke’s incredible health data. None of this can be done, nor can the social sciences really make the progress they should, without confronting head on how we can protect data privacy while at the same time making research based on sensitive data feasible. So—a year’s worth of planning is now yielding fruit, and our protected data network is open for business. Together with the infrastructure behind it, we also have a highly trained staff to assist with various related issues—issues like IRB approval for research with sensitive data, or developing data use agreements with data providers in government or the private sector.

Throughout the day the Connection Bar sees a steady flow of help requests. What feedback have you received about the Bar from students who have worked with consultants? Nechyba: This has been a real success— and one where location really is a crucial ingredient. We had a help desk back in Erwin Mill, but I used to characterize it as “the loneliest place on earth.” Not so for the Connection Bar in Gross Hall. Students and faculty have raved about how helpful the consultants have been, and how in some instances they have also made important connections to others. But the biggest surprise to me is how well the bar has worked for many of the graduate students and post-docs who staff it. It turns out that they have created their own community— and are learning from each other as they help students and faculty and draw on one another’s expertise. Each is stronger in some social science methods and weaker in others, but they are growing their methods tool kit in ways that truly are producing bottom-up cross-disciplinary engagements.

gist Spring 2014 vo lu m e 8 , i s s u e 1

The new Education and Human Development Incubator (EHDi) will be living at SSRI-West. Why do you think this program is a good fit for researchers and SSRI? Nechyba: When I was first approached about “housing” EHDi in SSRI, I was hesitant. As I mentioned earlier, I think SSRI has been hurt in the past by a lack of identity—by having lots of groups affiliate in ways that work for the groups but don’t add up to an institute. The last thing I wanted to do was to add another “group” and take away from the core identity we are trying to build for SSRI around data, methods and education. But then I came to realize that EHDi could be conceived in a way that does not actually make it something “housed in SSRI”—rather it could be integrally woven into the core of the new SSRI. One goal of EHDi is to build an EHD data infrastructure—but what better way to do that than within the social science data infrastructure we are already building. Another goal is to build innovative new data sets that connect EHD researchers across disciplines—which is also at the core of the SSRI Gross Hall vision. We were already talking about SSRI innovating in the education space at Duke—and once again EHDi fits like a glove. Finally, the EHDi effort will challenge us to incubate cross-disciplinary communities, not only around research, but also around other forms of engagement— something that will help us connect to a larger set of faculty and students. So I hope SSRI, with EHDi as part of its core, will be stronger in what it had already set out to do—and in the process will help to incubage a community around an area of strategic priority for the university. Whatever the future holds, I hope we get a lot of important work done in the meantime—for the EHD community and for the social science community more broadly.

Tom Nechyba Director, SSRI

ssri . d u k e . ed u / gist

A Decade of Bringing Together

Incubate Ideas and

Social Science Researchers

Watch Them Grow

Exploring the Challenges

Helping Improve

in NC’s Rural,

Elementary School

Mountain Communities

Attendance by

Creating Stronger

Renovation Complete.

Bonds Between Parents and Teachers

Let the Collaborations Begin!

Managing Editor: Courtney P. Orning courtney.orning@duke.edu

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Contributors: Whitney Howell Nancy Oates Mary-Russell Roberson Taylor Sisk Designer: Regina Barnhill-Bordo regina@bdesign-studio.com This publication is printed with vegetable-based inks on chlorine-free paper containing 10% postconsumer fiber. Please recycle this magazine.

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The Social Science Research Institute at Duke University is a part of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University

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A DECADE OF

BRINGING TOGETHER SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCHERS A look at where we’ve been and where we’re going…

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“Our idea was to be an incubator, to try out things no one else had ever tried out. People at SSRI would have ideas I would never have imagined in my lifetime.” —John Aldrich

Professor of political science, he invested energy in eliminating some of those departmental barriers. “I wanted to accelerate the ability to interact with smart people doing research relevant to yours that you don’t know about yet,” Aldrich said. Promoting interdisciplinarit y

ohn Aldrich, embarking on his

BWPW Photography

first teaching position at Michigan State University, thought the only thing impeding interdisciplinarity was the physical distances between academic departments. After an undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts college and graduate degrees at the first school to teach mathematical political science theory, it never occurred to him to not look at other disciplines in thinking about his research. But after leaving Michigan and going on to teach at the equally large University of Minnesota, Aldrich realized that physical distance wasn’t the only obstacle to interdisciplinary research. It is no wonder, then, that after Aldrich came to Duke as the Pfizer-Pratt University

Ten years ago, his vision for cross-silo collaborative research that tries to answer questions pertinent to our lives, crystallized in what began as the Social Science Research Center. Two years later, it achieved “institute” status. “Our idea was to be an incubator, to try out things no one else had ever tried out,” Aldrich said. “People at SSRI would have ideas I could never have imagined in my lifetime.” When he birthed what would become the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), Aldrich hedged his bets by creating what he called the Program for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences (PARISS)—offering Duke graduate students an interdisciplinary context in which to develop and apply their methodological skills. That way he could say with a big grin, “I didn’t know whether SSRI would make it, but I’d always have PARISS.” Behind the scenes

In 2003, Provost Peter Lange unveiled a strategic plan for Duke that his longtime friend Aldrich found to be light on social sciences. When Aldrich pointed this out, Lange urged him to appoint a committee and rectify it. Aldrich created his interdisciplinary dream team by pulling in Ken Dodge,

Tom Nechyba and John Aldrich on the steps of Gross Hall.

founding director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, political science professor Scott de Marchi, and Jay Hamilton, former director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, to figure out what social sciences had in common: methodology and the quest to learn how to study politics, economics and society collaboratively. As Duke squeezed the nascent center into its budget, Aldrich secured hard money support for SSRI, rather than having to rely on soft money through grants. And the initial budget was spare. Aldrich had just enough money to hire Alexandra Cooper as administrative director and buy a computer, but not a printer. The following year, Duke hired Wendy Wood for a long-vacant social psychology position. She and Aldrich hit it off professionally, and he invited her to be SSRI’s co-director. w w w. s s r i . d u k e . e d u 3

“ Great research comes as teams cross-fertilize. We created a physical space and a virtual space where researchers can run into one another.” —Tom Nechyba

“The awkward period of adjustment lasted maybe 38 seconds,” Aldrich said. “From Day 1, our vision was very much the same.” The two combined her research on habits with his interest in governance to collaborate on a project about the role of habit in turning out to vote; exactly what Aldrich had hoped would emerge out of an interdisciplinary social science research setting. And together they built SSRI’s mission on training superior doctoral students, enabling younger faculty and grad students to access resources—labs, computer systems and assistance in obtaining grants—and finding mechanisms to generate ideas across social sciences that researcher had not yet been able to put together.

but recently renamed the Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center (IBRC). The off campus location did, however, introduce the challenge of attracting faculty and students— and resulted in SSRI becoming primarily focused on supporting affiliated centers. In 2008, Philip Morgan, then the Norb F. Schaefer Professor of International Studies, took over as director and made it his mission to extend SSRI’s reach to the faculty by building a grant infrastructure to handle the bulk of all social science grants at Duke—a big undertaking. Morgan’s tenure was further characterized by a growing number of affiliated groups at Erwin Mill, including Dan Ariely’s Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Finding a home

Updating the original vision

Trent Hall reopened around that time, transitioning from a dorm to offices, and Aldrich grabbed space there for SSRI. Wood made a point of reaching out to anyone on campus who conducted social psychology, regardless of department. SSRI scraped together some seed money to give researchers a year to find interested collaborators and set up research projects that had never been done before. “We were an incubator without borders,” Aldrich said, “open to undergraduates, graduate students, and junior faculty. We wanted to provide resources to them, rather than having them be generators of grants to the university.” If ideas can catch fire and get off the ground, the theory went, the grants would ultimately come. In short order, SSRI outgrew the Trent Hall space and moved to Erwin Mill into a facility showcasing a state-of-the-art social psychology lab, originally known as the Duke Initiative in Social Psychology (DIISP)

Around the time Morgan announced that he planned to leave the directorship and head to UNC, Tom Nechyba was returning from a leave he took after stepping down as chair of the economics department. He got involved in discussions of where SSRI was going, literally, given the potential of more central space, and he became SSRI’s next director with a mandate to conceptualize possibilities for the research institute at a new location. “Space matters a lot,” Nechyba said. “We initially had grand ideas about building a building, but there wasn’t any money for that. At least not yet.” But Duke had unallocated space in the newly renovated (former) Gross Chem building. Nechyba got to thinking about what SSRI could do with 15,000 square feet of blank space in the heart of campus. In many ways, he went back to Aldrich’s original vision—but the details would have to adapt to almost a decade’s worth of change in

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the social sciences. He had the space upfitted with glass-walled meeting areas, a café space with a central help desk, and facilities for data, methods, and education support to flourish. He also began exploring partnerships, including with electrical and computer engineering faculty who were launching their own initiative (in information) within the same building. With the exception of the IBRC lab, most of the core staff relocated in late 2013 to what had been christened “SSRI-West.” Working with the Office of Information Technology, SSRI-West is now building a virtual space for researchers to store, analyze and (when appropriate) share sensitive data. The hope is that this will enable organizations with rich data sources to partner with researchers, knowing that the data would be secure. While data sets will reside in virtual locked rooms, researchers working in different parts of the world can collaborate to merge data sets and tackle questions they never asked before because the data would have been impossible to access. “We created a physical space and are now developing virtual spaces to go with it— spaces where researchers can run into one another, incubate ideas and collaborate— all with lots of infrastructure support,” Nechyba said. Such spaces include the data infrastructure being built with OIT, but they also include spaces with modular educational content to break down disciplinary barriers, and methods support that connects the physical help desk with virtual resources available all the time. Not all knowledge, it turns out, has to be delivered in 14-week increments called semesters—not in today’s world. “We see what we are doing a bit like growing a forest, and SSRI’s biggest task is to fertilize the soil. Faculty and students will come and plant the trees,” explained Nechyba. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, SSRI is realizing Aldrich’s vision—but in ways that it couldn’t have initially, because so much has changed over the last decade.

Photos courtesy of BWPW Photography and Cassidy Belcher

exploring the challenges IN NC’S RURAL, MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES Cassidy Belcher dreams of being a baker. She has grand plans to launch her own business, selling her baked goods to stores, restaurants, and farmers markets. In her mind’s eye, she’s already a culinary success story. But Cassidy has a huge obstacle to overcome. She lives in a small community in the Appalachian Mountains—the same place her family has lived for generations. Nestled in Madison County, N.C., near the Tennessee border, Laurel is a township with poor job prospects and scarce educational resources. It doesn’t have much to offer in support of her goals. (continued on next page) w w w. s s r i . d u k e . e d u 5

Fortunately, Cassidy, a middle-schooler, participates in the Partnership for Appalachian Girl’s Education (PAGE) directed by Duke University adjunct research scholar Deborah Hicks. And, this summer, she’ll be part of the all-girl inaugural group involved with the Education and Rural Entrepreneurship in Appalachia (EREA). This pilot initiative, also led by Hicks, is designed to explore the educational needs, challenges, and opportunities in the state’s rural, mountain communities. It brings together Duke faculty, researchers, and students and the smalltown educators and community members, fostering collaboration. Their work, coupled with support from the University-wide Bass Connections initiative,

Photos on previous page: Top row (left to right): Members of the Bass Connections EHD team meeting with administrative leaders from Madison County Schools; North Carolina Campus Compact VISTA, Elizabeth McIntosh, with Sandra Tolley, Chair of Madison County Schools Board of Education; Bass Connections EHD scholar, Hillary Grubbs, in planning meeting held at Duke with community partners from Madison County Public Schools. Middle row (left to right): Bass Connections EHD Scholars, Abby Ardis and Mary Wilson, in planning meeting with community partners from Madison County Public Schools; Bass Connections EHD Scholars on hike to Max Patch Bald in Madison County, North Carolina; Bass Connections EHD Scholar, Patricia Deza, working on site in Hot Springs, North Carolina. Bottom row (left to right): Bass Connections EHD team leader, Deborah Hicks, leading meeting on site in Hot Springs, North Carolina; Photograph by Cassidy Belcher, 8th grader at Madison Middle School and participant in PAGE: Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education; Bass Connections EHD scholars working with Will Hoffman and Caroline Davis of Madison County Public Schools, in Hot Springs.

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“These small, rural villages face a multitude of economic and social challenges. But there’s one underlying problem that contributes to nearly all the struggles—the lack of educational resources and opportunity.” —Deborah H icks

will introduce school-age students in this part of Appalachia, including Spring Creek and Hot Springs, to the knowledge and resources they will need to pursue their chosen careers. “Our goal is to help young people acquire the skills to be entrepreneurial, such as creating a business plan or designing a marketing strategy,” said Hicks, whose research focus is education. “Even if they decide they don’t want to be entrepreneurs, they’ll still have the 21st-Century skills to translate their knowledge into other opportunities.” Bass Connections is the perfect partner to support such efforts, she said. The $50-million initiative, launched by Anne and Robert Bass, pairs undergraduate students with faculty mentors and gives them a chance to make palpable impacts in communities throughout the world, as well as closer to home. It’s here that EREA will come in. These small, rural villages face a multitude of economic and social challenges. But there’s one underlying problem that contributes to nearly all the struggles—the lack of educational resources and opportunity. According to Hicks, the decrease in educational funding from the N.C. legislature has crippled opportunities for these students. In recent years, the local Head Start—the

free pre-school program available to lowincome families—shut its doors. Many of the smaller schools that traditionally served older children have also closed. As a result, students can spend up to two hours one way to attend school, effectively prohibiting them from joining in any after-school enrichment activities. These problems have parents worried, Hicks said. Little education and even fewer job prospects are creating a brain drain in these communities. Youths who leave home for college frequently don’t return because they find more enticing employment elsewhere. The EREA team considered these concerns when mapping out the program’s structure. Consequently, participants will acquire skills needed to create job opportunities and be successful in their native communities. “It was clear there is a need for alternative ways of supporting adolescent kids in middle school and the need for mentoring kids so they don’t go the path of dropping out of school,” Hicks said. “That’s why we decided to pilot and develop a rural entrepreneurship program for middle school youth.” The pilot year will focus on 8th- and 9th-grade girls, she said. After evaluating its success, the team hopes to offer it to both middle-school and high-school aged boys and girls in the future.

And, the most effective way to engage these students is to introduce them to the undergraduates who are also part of EREA. In fact, the Duke students chose the entrepreneurial concept and are co-designing every part of the project. It’s also helpful, Hicks said, to introduce role models who are closer to the participants’ ages and who also come from small, rural places. For example, it was the intimate knowledge of village life that prompted Emily Hadley, a junior public policy and social sciences major, to jump at the opportunity to work with Madison County’s youth. Growing up in a small town with many dirt roads, Hadley understands the isolation that accompanies living in remote locations, and she’s excited to show these young people how to turn their imaginations and dreams into profitable ventures.

“We’re building relationships with these students. We spend time with them. It’s not just interviewing them and researching. We’re finding out about their lives,” said Hadley, who is a native of rural New Hampshire. “It’s also been really cool to build the interaction with the community leaders—especially with the school board.” In addition, according to Hicks, the Duke students will conduct independent research projects that will support EREA’s overall goals of supporting local communities and school systems. Each project, which must receive approval from Duke’s Institutional Review Board, will include plans for a focus group with parents and school officials or a pre- and post-test of what participants learned during the summer program. But, Hicks and her undergraduate research assistants do not—and will

not—have the resources to maintain a daily presence in the Appalachian communities. Ultimately, the responsibility for maintaining and administering the EREA program will fall to Madison County’s school officials. “We’re building capacity so our school partners in Madison County can take over. We can’t be out there day-to-day, so hopefully, we’re creating something that is sustainable for them,” Hicks said. “We hope, beyond next year, that we’ll be able to tackle the connection between job loss and the economy and the schools themselves. We want to see if there isn’t some way to work with the school system, creating a partnership that could lead to a rebirth or at least make the situation better.”

As a student scholar on the Bass Connections: Education, Poverty, and Economic Development in Rural Appalachia team, I have enjoyed the incredible opportunities to work with community leaders, college professors, fellow Duke students, and Appalachian middle school girls to affect change in Madison County, NC. Together, we have identified a community need for increased awareness of homegrown entrepreneurship and are taking steps to address this issue by developing a three-week summer entrepreneurship program for Madison eighth and ninth grade girls. I love applying my academic studies beyond the classroom and building my problem-solving and teamwork skills. I have only just begun to appreciate the power of research, collaboration, and passion in driving social change and look forward to the many exciting developments on the horizon! —Emily Hadley, Trinity Class of 2015, Bass Scholar

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Renovation Complete.

Let the Collaborations Begin!

he former Gross Chemistry building has been officially renamed Gross Hall for Interdisciplinary Innovation. A dedication ceremony included architects, designers, administration and other key players of the building renovation. Over $29 million worth of renovations within the building and on its exterior began in 2012 to allow other departments to move into the space. Formerly home to the chemistry department, the building now houses SSRI, initiatives in Information, Energy and Entrepreneurship, as well as the Political Science Department. President Richard Brodhead, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask and Provost Peter Lange began the ceremony with a

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few remarks, often poking fun at the form “modern gothic” architecture, which, in the words of Brodhead, seemed to “let nothing in and nothing out.” Brodhead added that previously, the lack of natural lighting in the building and fort-like concrete walls painted an austere portrait—a building far more focused on function than aesthetics. Considered novel when it was built, the building has always seemed to have a less appealing look than the traditional architecture on Duke’s west campus. The newly renovated spaces offer a more open atmosphere than previously. The team rooms, which have glass walls, encourage outsiders to join in on conversations. Overall, while more conducive to group efforts, the new space maintains a homey

feeling of comfort with its mixture of woods, oranges and blues. “The event was such a great success with lots of participation from students, faculty and researchers,” said Communications Director for SSRI, Courtney Orning . “The open house allowed us to showcase our facilities, help promote Bass Connections projects and chat with researchers about possible collaborations. Connecting, collaborating and creating [are] what SSRI is all about.” Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy, discussed the necessity of focusing on scholarship to allow for positive change in social norms and the crafting of informed public policy, referencing the interdisciplinary nature of the building.

top Photo by Megan Morr, Duke Photography; remaining Photos by BWPW Photography

Both Bass Connections and SSRI-West embody the building’s focus on an interdisciplinary approach and were present at the dedication. “My hope is that students will see the power of their disciplinary training—leveraged with disciplinary strength of others— as teams set out to solve problems that require multiple types of expertise,” wrote Thomas Nechyba, director of the SSRI as well as Bass Connections in Education and Human Development and professor of economics and public policy. “If we succeed in that, I think we prepare students for the

challenges they will face in whatever path they choose. SSRI-West, located next to the political science department on the second floor, is the complement to SSRI-East and offers resources, from access to web design to help with statistical analysis. SSRI-West features were designed to be reminiscent of a lounge in order to promote group work. “It was an awesome event,” said Heather Tipalos, administrative director of the Duke Population Research Institute at SSRI. “We have lots of people interested and look forward to working with researchers.”

This article was originally published in the Duke Chronicle http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2014/01/24/renovated-gross-hall-officially-renamed-dedication-ceremony/

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Incubate Ideas and

watch them grow

The new Education and Human Development Incubator (EHDi) is open for business at SSRI-West. “Duke is really committed to education and human development,” says Carol Ripple, associate director for education research and engagement at SSRI, who is overseeing many aspects of EHDi. “And this is a strong expression of that commitment.” SSRI-West is a natural home for EHDi, which will build on SSRI’s strengths in data services, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and educational innovation. “When the administration created this endeavor, they identified the power of leveraging resources at SSRI,” Ripple says. “There’s so much synergy with what we care about here already.”

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Provost Peter Lange notes that many faculty members on campus have extensive interest, experience, and expertise in education and human development. “Bringing those folks together through the relationships the incubator can build is a very attractive prospect for us,” he says. “It’s part of our interdisciplinary approach to applying knowledge in the service of society.” EHDi has three major foci: building a data infrastructure, facilitating interdisciplinary research, and fostering educational innovation. Within those broad categories, EHDi is committed to being responsive to the needs of the Duke community. The future direction of EHDi will in part be determined by who engages as the community grows and what

needs are uncovered in the process. The first priority of the incubator is creating and maintaining a data infrastructure that facilitates collaboration. Lorrie Schmid, data infrastructure manager for EHDi, is heading up this effort, which will complement and enhance SSRI’s Data Information Services. “Having a person embedded in Data Information Services who’s dedicated to education and human development ensures their needs are being met,” Schmid says. EHDi supports researchers in planning, implementing, and sharing data-heavy research. In particular, EHDi can build networks for private or sensitive data within SSRI’s Protected Research Data Network (PRDN) that is in development.

SSRI-West is a natural home for EHDi, which will build on SSRI’s strengths in data services, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and educational innovation.

Schmid is developing (with SSRI’s web development group) an “EHD data portal,” a searchable directory of existing data. “When studies end, it doesn’t mean the end of the usefulness of the data,” she says. But currently, the only way for a researcher to find that type of data is to start searching from scratch, which is time-consuming and often leads to incomplete results. The data in the directory will come from local, national, and international sources. Data generated at Duke will be highlighted so researchers can be aware of what their colleagues across campus are doing. One important way EHDi will facilitate interdisciplinary research is by supporting the Education and Human Development theme of Bass Connections. It is the only one of the five Bass Themes that is not associated with its own Duke Institute or Initiative, at least not until now. Bass Connections launched in the fall of 2013 and teams up professors, graduate students, and undergraduates to work in interdisciplinary groups to address issues of societal importance. In addition to supporting EHD

Bass teams, EHDi will issue a request for proposals in the spring of 2014. As for promoting educational innovation and engagement, EHDi will foster innovation within SSRI’s own education programs as well as across Duke. One project will aim to develop a more modular way of delivering cross-disciplinary tools. Another will develop mechanisms to better analyze and learn from existing data on Duke students— seeding opportunities to foster research using Duke institutional data to reflect on undergraduate education. “Nobody else is really doing that. This is a great model for higher education to reflect on educational practice,” says SSRI Director Tom Nechyba. And EHDi will bring together and support people around the campus who are involved in a wide variety of educational initiatives, from preschool on up, to share and learn from one another. When something is found to work well, EHDi hopes to spread the word and multiply the impact. With EHDi, Ripple says, “We can have a broader impact by facilitating work across an entire community of researchers at Duke.”

Carol Ripple

Lorrie Schmid

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Helping Improve Elementary School Attendance by Creating

Stronger Bonds Between Parents and Teachers

laying hooky from school is a habit that needs to be nixed early, and most critical to success is the interaction of parents and teachers. Helping forge those bonds is the foundation of a project that Phil Cook, Duke’s ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy, and his colleagues at the Center for Child and Family Policy launched in 2010 in the Durham Public Schools, called the Early Truancy Prevention Program. The data group at SSRI-West has played a key role in the success of this project, developing the tools that put

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the information teachers need at their fingertips. The Early Truancy Prevention Program was born of research Cook had conducted that found that while chronic truancy in the second and third grades increased the likelihood of eventual dropout by 15 percentage points, most efforts at prevention were focused on middle and high school, rarely elementary. The reason for that, Cook says, is that very commonly the impetus for taking action against truancy is pressure from retailers to, in his words, “incapacitate the

troublemakers by keeping them in school” and out of the mall. Cook’s idea was to attack the problem at the elementary school level, where educators believe these bad habits are most likely to develop. He recognized that the issue with kids at that age isn’t that they’re skipping school purely of their own volition—as may well be the case once they’ve reached middle school; rather, it’s a matter of parental negligence, or, at best, of parents accommodating resistance to attending. Equally significant, Cook found, is that elementary school kids have one primary

teacher, and, he says, “That teacher is the world’s leading expert outside of the family on that child.” As such, he saw that enlisting the teacher to engage with parents was critical to success. “The core idea,” Cook says, “was that there would be a teacher home visit for every student, early in the fall, to find out what’s going on at home, who the relevant adults were, how to contact them, and just to set up a more comfortable relationship with them.” The second key element was providing teachers with a ready means of contacting parents and an information-management system that allowed them to keep a record of absences and a log of interventions. Each teacher was given an iPhone and easy access to an Attendance Information System. The teacher thus becomes the parents’ ally in overcoming whatever the barrier may be—whether it’s resolving a transportation issue, establishing better morning routines, or working to bolster the child’s enthusiasm for coming to school. No specific goals were set; the objective was simply to see some improvement in attendance and in communications between parents and teachers. Strong, consistent communication

BWPW Photography (this page)

“Interaction between the teacher and the parent opens the door to everything else,” Cook says. What he and his colleagues have found is that rapport with a parent can, in fact, be established in a half-hour meeting. “I enjoy the partnerships that I have built with my families,” one teacher wrote in the most recent round of surveys, collected in February. “We have strong, consistent communication. I really like that.” The surveys indicated that all teachers found the home visits to be enjoyable and that almost all believed the visits were useful in learning more about the family and had some positive impact on the teacher’s relationship with both the parents and the students. As a result, the teachers report,

the parents are more likely to become involved with the school. About two-thirds of teachers indicated that the home visits were having a positive impact on attendance and tardies. But Cook says that what’s most surprised the research team is that the kids really seem to appreciate having the teachers in their homes: “I think they’re just proud that the teacher comes to visit them.” Behind the scenes

Beth Gifford, a research scientist and director of program evaluation services at the Center for Child and Family Policy, served as liaison with the SSRI Data Information Services team in developing the Attendance Information System, which allows teachers to keep track of their communications with parents and their assessments of barriers to attendance and interactions and interventions taken. The system is web based, allowing teachers to access it from any device that’s Wi-Fi enabled. Gifford is extremely pleased with the outcome. There have been no glitches, she says. “It was surprisingly easy. The teachers are able to log in right away and enter information very quickly. We’ve had very few questions as they’ve been entering in the data. To me, that means it’s very intuitive.” Gifford’s job was to determine what information to capture, but the SSRI-West team “brought it to life,” she says. “They did all of the coding and a lot of the behind-thescenes database development.” “We were very pleased with that whole process,” Cook adds. The foundation is thus laid to move forward with the Early Truancy Prevention Program. The research team hopes to again be in five Durham Public schools next school year and will meanwhile be applying for a grant from Teachers keep track of their communications with parents through the Attendance Information the U.S. Department of Education to fund System developed by SSRI. a full-scale experimental evaluation of the program, which would involve 25 schools. By all accounts, this program is pointing kids in the right direction: schoolyard bound.

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