HIDDEN
COSTS OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
IN THIS ISSUE 3 State of the I COVER STORY:
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4 Hidden costs of war 7 ISR in the community
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8 ISR and the Truman/Dewey upset 10 Faculty Research 14 Supporting the Next Generation
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17 Fred Conrad heads PSM 19 Honors & Awards
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ON THE COVER: Palestinian Bedouin boys from a marginal community outside Gaza City play as they look out of their courtyard gate Nov. 3, 2008, in Malalha in the Gaza Strip. Photo credit: Abid Katib/Getty Images
such as a video interview with Christoph Nolte, the first Marshall Weinberg Population, Development, and Climate Change Fellow.
This magazine is printed using vegetable-based inks on Rolland Enviro100, a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified and 100-percent post-consumer fiber paper that is chlorine-free and manufactured using biogas energy.
State of the I
T
his is such an interesting time to be a social scientist! Climate change, economic turmoil and demographic shifts are transforming the world and making new demands on our field. Breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences are helping to advance our understanding of human behavior in profound and provocative ways, and advances in molecular biology, engineering, web surveys, data storage and global positioning technology are allowing us to make connections that would otherwise remain stubbornly obscure. In many ways, this is a “back to the future” moment for the social sciences – a time when we are called to confront emerging challenges and seize emerging opportunities by building on the strengths of our past with ideas and methods from the future. One of the key ways we are doing this is to fulfill our mission of training the Next Generation of empirical social scientists. And we are broadening our scope to include two new cutting-edge collaborations to support research on the crucial topic of sustainability. I’m delighted to announce the selection of the first Marshall Weinberg Population, Development, and Climate Change Fellow. This new program, created to stimulate Ph.D. students to develop a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural research agenda very early in their careers, is administered jointly by the U-M School of Natural Resources and by the ISR Population Studies Center. The second new initiative is the Robert and Judy Marans/Kan and Lillian Chen Fellowship in Sustainability and Survey Methodology. This new program will support a U-M graduate student committed to fostering sustainability using social science research methods, by supporting the
student in earning a certificate in survey methodology from the ISR Program in Survey Methodology. As an emeritus ISR faculty member, Bob Marans has long been committed to sustainability, and to the belief that the answers to complex sustainability challenges can only be developed through solutions that incorporate an understanding of human behavior. You can read more about the first winners of these new initiatives on the Sampler website at www.sampler.isr.umich.edu. And in this issue of the Sampler, you can read about how other members of the Next Generation are using new methods to advance our understanding of important social issues. The far-sighted men, women, and organizations who are supporting our Next Generation initiative are invaluable allies as we strive to reinvent the social sciences to meet the complex challenges our changing world presents. In addition, we are working hard to forge academic and corporate partnerships that allow us to pursue cutting-edge research on vital topics such as our aging society, sustainability, the conflicts and possibilities in the Middle East, and strategies for helping military personnel and their families. Meeting these challenges demands persistent effort, and requires the active support of our many colleagues, friends and supporters around the world, within the Institute and at the University of Michigan. The expertise of our own scientists has always been enriched by collaborations with colleagues from a wide range of disciplines – colleagues who are based a few steps away, across campus, across the country, or halfway around the globe. And as we move forward, ISR’s interdisciplinary role will only strengthen.
ISR Director James Jackson
The cover story in this issue highlights just one of a growing number of international collaborations that enhance the work of ISR researchers, bringing cross-cultural as well as cross-disciplinary understanding to bear on contemporary social problems. Our long-term international institutional collaborations include links with universities in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and these formal ties are enriched by the many cross-national projects that individual researchers establish. As we build for the future, we know that these new collaborations stem from our solid reputation and our long history as a leader in academic social science research and survey research methods. So it is with great pleasure that we welcome Frederick Conrad as Director of the ISR Program in Survey Methodology, one of only three programs in the nation to confer advanced degrees in how to conduct scientifically sound polls and surveys. As the Director of our Program and also of the Joint Program In Survey Methodology, a long-standing collaboration between U-M, Westat, and the University of Maryland, Fred will work toward the eventual consolidation of these two important educational programs – another important step in preparing the Next Generation of survey researchers to practice in an increasingly complex, increasingly inter-connected world.
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HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR: Middle East Violence and its Effect on Children by Susan Rosegrant
Wars have obvious victims. The dead, the injured. Those left behind. But there is another class of victims that often goes unnoticed: children. Not kids who are abducted or killed, but those who simply witness acts of ethnic or political violence, and whose lives and behavior are changed forever. “Violence is really like a contagious disease,” says Rowell Huesmann, director of the Research Center on Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research (ISR). “Except in one sense, it’s worse. With contagious diseases, you have to be near the person in order to get it. Violence is contagious even at a distance.” Huesmann has studied the impact of violence on children in a number of contexts. Most well known is his research showing that kids who watch lots of violent TV programs or movies, or who often play violent video games, become more aggressive. He has also studied how community and peer violence affect kids in inner city neighborhoods. But Huesmann wanted to take it a step further, to go to a part of the world where he could study how regular exposure to ethnic or political violence affects aggressive behavior and post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms—such as nightmares, emotional numbness, and irritability— among young people. 4 | ISR SAMPLER | Spring 2012
Given the world’s state of turmoil, there were plenty of locations to consider. But Huesmann also wanted a crackerjack team with collaborators who would know the territory. He found those collaborators in the Middle East, a region rife with incidents of political violence. At least 4,860 Palestinians, 731 Israeli civilians, and 332 Israeli soldiers were killed in political violence from the beginning of the second intifada—or Palestinian uprising— in September 2000 until the start of the Gaza War on Dec. 26, 2008, according to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. With funding in 2005 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Huesmann and six other researchers set to work. In the US were Paul Boxer of Rutgers University, Jeremy Ginges of the New School for Social Research, and fellow ISR researcher Eric Dubow. In Israel, Simha Landau and Shira Dvir Gvirsman of Hebrew University of Jerusalem would oversee operations. Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, led efforts in the Palestinian Territories. The team started in 2007 with 1,500 kids—600 Palestinians, 450 Israeli Jewish, and 450 Israeli Arabs, split evenly among 8-, 11- and 14-year-olds. The researchers also interviewed a parent of each child or teen.
Interviewers approached the same kids and parents every year for three years, asking questions covering 24 indicators of exposure to ethnicpolitical conflict and violence. These ranged from watching political violence on TV news, to spending hours in a security shelter, to witnessing actual violence or dealing with the death of a family member or friend. Left: A Palestinian girl stands next to a home destroyed in the 22-day war on Gaza in the Jabaliya refugee camp Feb. 2, 2009, Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories. Photo credit: Warrick Page/Getty Images
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It was critical to frame the questions so as not to place respondents in legal jeopardy, or, for that matter, to encourage false answers. “We couldn’t ask a Palestinian, ‘Have you thrown a rock at an Israeli soldier?’ which would be the most common way you would aggress against the Israelis,” Huesmann explains. “But we could ask, ‘Have you been in a demonstration where rocks have been thrown against Israeli soldiers?’ It’s a subtle difference, but legally an important one.” And to successfully do research in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Israeli and Palestinian researchers had to take the lead, Huesmann says. Only they would know the best way to build a representative sample, to elicit cooperation, to maintain the trust of authorities, and even to know what questions you can and can’t ask. Having said that, operating in Israel in many ways was not that different from doing research in the United States. Simha Landau of Hebrew University engaged a survey research company that contacted respondents by phone and then sent interviewers across the country to do faceto-face interviews. Polls and surveys are common in Israel, and the standard of living too high for the 100-shekel participant incentive provided by NIH—equal to about $25—to mean much. Thus, many respondents were somewhat jaded, Landau says. That, combined with Israeli residents’ easy mobility, contributed to a significant falloff in the sample; only about 63 percent participated in the second and third waves of the survey.
The most important finding is that simple exposure to violence results in very substantial increases in both the risk of behaving aggressively against your peers in the in-group, and a significant increase in the risk for developing PTS symptoms.❞
In the Palestinian Territories, it was a different story. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), like ISR, does its own survey work, and is deeply embedded in the communities where it operates. “Because of Israeli checkpoints, because we are concerned about the mobility of our data collectors and our field workers, we’ve built local capacity,” Khalil Shikaki says. “In any single geographic location, we have teams of interviewers and field workers. It is their responsibility to make sure throughout the year that we remain in touch with the families.” Shikaki says it was easier to recruit survey participants in Palestine than in Israel or the US, where pollsters call on the phone and residents routinely beg off or don’t answer at all. By contrast, all PSR’s contacts were face to face. “It’s more difficult for someone to turn away two young data collectors who knock at their doors,” he says. The 100-shekel incentive also meant much more to poor Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank than to a typical Israeli. The fact that many Palestinians can’t move freely also likely contributed to PSR’s remarkable 95 percent retention rate over the three years of the survey. Data collection ended in 2010, and the results, now appearing in a series of articles, have been illuminating, Huesmann says. “The most important finding is that simple exposure to violence results in very substantial increases in both the risk of behaving aggressively against your peers in the in-group, and a significant increase in the risk for
➤ continued on p. 6 Violent events observed/experienced at least once in 3 waves % Palestinians
% Israeli Jews % Israeli Arabs
Family member died as a result of political or military violence
10%
7%
3%
Friends/acquaintances died as result of political or military violence
55%
13%
3%
Family member injured as result of political or military violence
23%
12%
4%
Friends/acquaintances injured as result of political or military violence
55%
23%
6%
Seen video clips or photographs of Palestinians [Israelis] being held hostage, tortured, or abused by Israelis [Palestinians]
94%
53%
37%
Seen in person Palestinians [Israelis] being held hostage, tortured, or abused by Israelis [Palestinians]
43%
14%
8%
Seen in person Palestinian [Israeli] buildings, buses, or other property destroyed by Israelis [Palestinians]
54%
19%
11%
Seen in person injured or martyred Palestinians [dead Israelis] on stretchers or ground because of Israeli [Palestinian] attack
56%
17%
15%
Seen in person Palestinians [Israelis] upset or crying because someone they knew or loved killed by Israelis [Palestinians]
63%
35%
19%
Source: Mediators of the Relation Between Exposure to Violence and Aggression in Israeli and Palestinian Youths, presented at the 2011 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Montreal, April 2, 2011.
Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 5
Left: Graffiti on a wall in downtown Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo credit: Eddie Gerald
Perhaps not surprisingly, children whose parents punish them harshly are more likely to be aggressive themselves, or to suffer PTS symptoms.
➤ continued from p. 5 - HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR developing PTS symptoms—anxiety, depression, and so on,” he says. “We expected we’d find some effects, but they’re really quite substantial. We were particularly surprised by how much war violence leads to increased aggression by youth directed at their own peers.” The team also found that ethnic political violence has a cascading effect, stimulating violence within ever-smaller social spheres—the community, schools, peers, and families, all of which increase the violence of the individual. Part of the value of the research was getting to look more carefully at why observing violence increases aggression by the observer. Many children who routinely witness political violence begin to see it as normal, Huesmann says; they become convinced that the world is a hostile place, and eventually become desensitized to the point that a violent act may produce little emotional reaction at all. “What we’re talking about are very fundamental rules of how the nervous system, the brain, the mind works,” Huesmann says. “I believe what we found here in just two cultures is probably generalizable to anyplace.”
All of this has policy implications; the researchers plan to recommend approaches both to protect kids from bad effects and to help those already affected. Educating adults about parenting approaches and placing adequate social and therapeutic resources in schools and communities would be important first steps. “We think that every school should have more than one social worker, and that they should be trained to address these specific issues that we find to be very troubling,” Shikaki says. Indeed, for Shikaki, the policy implications are the crux of the entire survey. Palestinians reported the most incidents of political violence, and showed the highest levels of aggression and PTS symptoms. In fact, about a quarter of the Palestinian kids could probably be diagnosed with fullblown PTSD, Dubow says, compared to about 6 percent of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. As Shikaki notes: “Our children, in particular, are at much greater risk, which means we really need a much greater intervention at the policy level to address these issues. If this is not addressed, we’re planting the seeds for the next conflict.” The researchers agree that the ultimate solution would be to stop this and other conflicts. But given the reality, world leaders must, at a minimum, understand that all wars inflict collateral damage on youth. “Children are at a critical period where their personalities are being molded,” Huesmann says. “We’re talking about how their beliefs, their social cognitions, their emotional reactions are changed. And once these cognitions become crystallized, it’s very difficult to dissolve them.” ♦
For team member Eric Dubow, a clinical psychologist by training, the study was also a chance to investigate the factors that protect kids from negative outcomes. “One of the things we’re finding is that self-esteem seems to be a protective factor for these kids, and so is positive parenting—parenting that’s non punitive,” Dubow says. “Some of these kids are exposed to pretty chronic violence, and often that erodes those potential protective factors. But that’s not what’s happening here.”
From left: Simha Landau and Rowell Huesmann in Israel. Photos courtesy of the researchers
From left: Jeremy Ginges, Khalil Shikaki and Eric Dubow at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
OTHER ISR STUDIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARAB BAROMETER
MIDDLE EASTERN VALUES STUDY
Directed by Mark Tessler of U-M and Amaney Jamal of Princeton University, and coordinated by an international team composed primarily of Arab scholars, these surveys involve face-to-face interviews with representative, probability-based national samples in 11 Arab nations. Learn more at arabbarometer.org.
Directed by Mansoor Moaddel of ISR and Eastern Michigan University, this systematic, comparative study probes the values and attitudes of the population in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and other Islamic countries. Learn more at mevs.org.
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ISR in the Community: En Nuestra Lengua
Above: José Benkí teaches a class on sound in the literacy program. Photo courtesy of José Benkí
by Susan Rosegrant
José Benkí and Teresa Satterfield speak Spanish at home with their two boys. They read books in Spanish, fix dinner in Spanish, and play games in Spanish. But when Angel goes to preschool, and Félix goes to second grade, their work and play are in English. And as the two boys age, they likely will have fewer and fewer opportunities to use Spanish outside the home in a meaningful way. For many Spanish-speaking families in Ann Arbor and across the country, that’s just the way it is. Children and teens drop Spanish except for at home with their parents. Although they understand it and speak it, many can’t read or write well in their native tongue, so they lose the opportunity to become fully bilingual. Even worse, students who aren’t really literate in Spanish—who enter school unable to read or write— often struggle to become literate in English. It’s just one factor in the Latino achievement gap, Benkí says, but it’s a serious one.
what if the process for setting up such a program could be analyzed—and the results documented—in order to create a national model? “We were looking for opportunities for our sons,” Benkí says, “but we were interested in the community, as well. And we saw a need and a research interest. What’s sufficient in terms of language exposure at home and formal academic exposure in a school in order for a person to be fully bilingual?” Backed by about $18,000 in grants from the Ginsberg Center and the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at U-M, Benkí and Satterfield pulled together a pilot program in the spring of 2010. They had imagined the literacy program would meet one day a week after school in the late afternoon or Right: Benkí helps son Félix tackle homework. Photo courtesy of José Benkí
evening; that’s what most of the few programs they’d located around the country did. But when Sandra Núñez, their community liaison officer and an ESL tutor for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, polled likely participants, families said no—it had to be on Saturday. Benkí and Satterfield were taken aback by the response. But they’ve come to believe that the Saturday morning time slot is integral to the program’s success. It lets them hold classes in Bach Elementary, an Ann Arbor school already attended by many of the city’s Latino children. The classes are in the morning, when kids are more alert. And the parents who work second jobs, a sizeable percentage in the Latino community, are better able to participate.
➤ continued on p. 18
In 2009, Benkí and Satterfield came up with an idea to change this. Both are linguists and faculty members at the University of Michigan, Benkí at the Institute for Social Research and Satterfield in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures. What if, they thought, there was a Spanish literacy program in Ann Arbor for native speakers of Spanish, targeted at the years when children are first learning how to read and write? And Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 7
ISR and the
by Susan Rosegrant
TRUMAN/DEWEY The two questions were tacked on at the last minute to a Survey Research Center (SRC) survey on foreign policy:
trend began to emerge: The two candidates were running neck and neck, with Truman slightly ahead, and more than 20 percent of voters still undecided.
“In the presidential elections next month, are you almost certain to vote, uncertain, or won’t you vote?”
“The thing that was exciting, in spite of our very small sample, was that we were showing almost equal votes for Dewey and for Truman,” Kahn says, “whereas the widely publicized polls—and certainly all the newsprint—were agreed that it was going to be a landslide for the Republicans—for Dewey.”
(If certain or uncertain) “Do you plan to vote Republican, Democratic, or something else?” The questions weren’t even the point of the survey. But the answers and their impact helped launch a far-ranging new field of study at the fledgling Institute for Social Research (ISR), establish electoral behavior as a discipline in political science, and shine a light on polling and sampling methodology nationwide. It was the fall of 1948, and incumbent President Harry S. Truman was embroiled in a grueling campaign against Republican challenger, Thomas E. Dewey. Truman’s popularity was low, even among Democrats, and as the election neared, the national press corps—based in large part on the reports of the three major pollsters, Gallup, Roper, and Crossley—was bluntly predicting an easy Dewey victory. That’s when SRC unwittingly stepped in. Newly arrived researcher Robert Kahn was working with founder and future ISR director Angus Campbell on a study of public attitudes toward foreign policy for the U.S. State Department. As an afterthought, Campbell and Kahn threw in two questions to gauge the political interests and orientations of the respondents. “There was a great deal of interest in the coming election, so we added those questions,” Kahn says. Kahn and Campbell ran their survey in October, finishing shortly before the Nov. 2 election. The sample of 610 prospective voters was too small to make any predictions about the forthcoming election, and that wasn’t what their research was about anyway, Kahn says. Still, as the responses to the survey came in and Kahn posted them on a blackboard, a surprising
Left: Robert Kahn in 1956 Photo credit: ISR Archives
Kahn and his wife Bea hunkered down by their home radio on election night to listen to the results come in. By late in the evening, broadcasters began questioning the predicted Dewey triumph; by morning, they were announcing one of the greatest upsets in American election history. As Truman, the newly re-elected president, headed from his home in Missouri back to Washington, D.C., the train paused in St. Louis and a photographer snapped the now famous photo of Truman grinning and thrusting out a copy of the Chicago Tribune declaring Dewey the winner. The very public failure of the predictions shook commercial polling operations to their core. In fact, the negative fallout was so widespread that SRC (soon to be ISR) Director Rensis Likert felt compelled to declare in a Scientific American article that, “it would be as foolish to abandon this field as it would be to give up any scientific inquiry which, because of faulty methods and analysis, produced inaccurate results.” SRC certainly had no intentions of abandoning the field. Immediately after the election, Kahn and Campbell decided to go back to the respondents who had participated in the first survey. This time, their questions would be firmly focused on how voters had behaved in the just completed election. With the new data in hand, Kahn and Campbell began to draw conclusions, including the following: had drastically underrated the importance of * Pollsters undecided voters, apparently assuming they would either
not vote or would split along the lines of committed voters. But in fact, late deciders went 2 to 1 for Truman.
misunderstood how much could change in the * Pollsters final weeks or even days of the campaign: Roper stopped
polling in September, and Gallup and Crossley in early October. But one-eighth of those who claimed to have voted said they didn’t choose a candidate until two weeks or less before Election Day.
* what they said they planned to do, but that often wasn’t the Pollsters appeared to accept that respondents would do
case. Some who said they would vote didn’t; some who said they wouldn’t did. Moreover, a significant number of “committed” voters changed their minds, with more changing from Dewey to Truman.
UPSET
Left: At St. Louis Union Station, postmaster Bernard Dickmann (left) stands next to newly elected President Harry S. Truman as Mr. Truman holds up the famous Chicago Tribune newspaper headline "Dewey Defeats Truman." November 5, 1948. Photo credit: campaign scrapbook of Harry S. Truman, trumanlibrary.org
At the time, commercial polling firms like Gallup and Roper all did quota sampling. Interviewers sought out certain quotas of respondents—such as male or female, young or old—within set geographical areas. But because how they selected those respondents was largely up to them, interviewers might, for example, go mainly to affluent neighborhoods, excluding poor and middle-class residents and biasing the results.
SRC wasn’t the only organization evaluating what had happened. In the post-election turmoil, the Social Science Research Council convened a group to evaluate what had gone wrong. A few months later, the Committee on Analysis of Pre-Election Polls and Forecasts delivered a verdict that largely agreed with SRC’s conclusions. In addition, the committee suggested that pollsters had relied on unscientific methods.
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The thing that was exciting, in spite of our very small sample, was that we were showing almost equal votes for Dewey and for Truman whereas the widely publicized polls—and certainly all the newsprint— were agreed that it was going to be a landslide for the Republicans—for Dewey.❞
By contrast, SRC used a more time-consuming and costly approach known as probability or random geographic sampling. For the foreign policy survey, they chose clusters of counties across the country, and then randomly sampled the populations in those areas, giving every resident of voting age an equal chance of being chosen. SRC didn’t invent these techniques—they were developed in the 1930s, and one group of researchers had even studied political behavior using community samples in an Ohio county during the 1940 presidential campaign. But SRC was refining them and putting them to new uses. The hard look at sampling that resulted from Truman’s unexpected win was a turning point in survey methodology. Writing in 1998, Humphrey Taylor, head of polling firm Louis Harris and Assoc., declared, “Virtually all public opinion surveys conducted in the United States since then—whether conducted face-to-face or by telephone—have used some modified version of probability (or random) sampling. Indeed, for American researchers quota sampling is almost a dirty phrase.” Meanwhile, SRC was reaping the benefits of its small but accurate survey. “It gave a kind of visibility to the organization and its sampling methods that had not been there before,” Kahn says. Campbell launched a new research program to study election behavior with collaborators who eventually came to include Gerald Gurin, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and Donald Stokes. Their early election behavior studies and other related research were central to the 1970 founding of ISR’s Center for Political Studies, in the process creating the foundation for this branch of political science. And the Michigan Election Studies, which Campbell and Miller started in 1952, would go on to become the National Election Studies in 1977 and the American National Election Studies in 2005, along the way covering every presidential and midterm election since 1956. As for Kahn, he doesn’t believe the survey particularly boosted his research reputation. He shortly moved on to organizational issues. But there was a side benefit: “Angus and I became friends and colleagues in the process of working on it.” ♦
Left: Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Angus Campbell (left to right) discuss the National Election Study in 1956. Miller was the director of the Center for Political Studies from 1970 to 1981. Photo credit: ISR Archives
Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 9
Faculty Research Thinkstock
Generation X meets influenza
Only about one in five adults in their late 30s received a flu shot during the 2009-2010 swine flu epidemic, according to an ISR report that details the behavior and attitudes of Generation X.
this group had ever experienced – the second issue of The Generation X Report explores how Americans ages 36-39 kept abreast of the issue and what actions they eventually took to protect themselves and their families.
But about 65 percent were at least moderately concerned about the flu, and nearly 60 percent said they were following the issue very or moderately closely.
“These results suggest that young adults in Generation X did reasonably well in their first encounter with a major epidemic,” says Jon D. Miller, author of The Generation X Report. “Those with minor children at home were at the greatest risk, and they responded accordingly, with higher levels of awareness and concern.”
Using survey data collected from approximately 3,000 people during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza epidemic – the first serious infectious disease
According to Miller, understanding GenX reactions to this recent threat may help public health officials deal more effectively with future epidemics.
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The results also show that even though a majority of Generation X young adults felt that they were ‘well informed’ or ‘very well informed’ about the issue, overall they scored only moderately well on an Index
... understanding GenX reactions to this recent threat may help public health officials deal more effectively with future epidemics.❞
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of Influenza Knowledge, a series of five items designed to test the level of knowledge about viral infections generally and about the swine flu epidemic specifically. “In the decades ahead, the young adults in Generation X will encounter numerous other crises – some biomedical, some environmental, and others yet to be imagined,” says Miller. “They will have to acquire, organize and make sense of emerging scientific and technical information, and the experience of coping with the swine flu epidemic suggests how they will meet that challenge.” The third Generation X Report will be issued in April 2012, on the topic of food and cooking. Subsequent reports will cover climate, space exploration, and citizenship and voting. Read more about the study and download a copy of the report at http://bit.ly/genxflu.
Watch a video interview with Miller on ISR’s YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/hGCZU42v9ug
Faculty Research Bad neighborhoods and high school graduation Growing up in a poor neighborhood significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, and the longer a child lives in that kind of neighborhood, the more harmful the impact. The study, by University of Michigan sociologists Geoffrey Wodtke and David Harding and University of WisconsinMadison sociologist Felix Elwert, is the first to capture the cumulative impact of growing up in America’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods on a key educational outcome – high school graduation. “Compared to growing up in affluent neighborhoods, growing up in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment reduces the chances
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of high school graduation from 96 percent to 76 percent for black children,” says Wodtke, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow and Ph.D. student who works with Harding at ISR. “The impact on white children is also harmful, but not as large, reducing their chances of graduating from 95 percent to 87 percent.” In contrast to earlier research that examined neighborhood effects on children at a single point in time, the new study uses data from the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics to follow 2,093 children from age one through age 17, assessing the neighborhoods in which they lived every year. The study was published in the American Sociological Review.
Read more about the findings and listen to a podcast about the study at http://bit.ly/badhoods.
Growing income and gender gaps in college graduation in educational inequality are largely driven by women.” Bailey and Dynarski analyzed nearly seventy years of data on postsecondary education from the U.S. Census and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth.
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The gap in rates of college completion between students from high- and lowincome families has grown significantly in the last 50 years, according to a University of Michigan study. “We find growing advantages for students from high-income families,” says ISR economist Martha Bailey, who conducted the study with U-M economist Susan Dynarski. “And we also find that increases
Their findings were included as a chapter in the book Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality and the Uncertain Life Chances of Low-Income Children, published in 2011 by the Russell Sage Foundation. They found that 54 percent of those who went to college in the early 2000s and who were from families in the top income category graduated from college, fully 18 percentage points more than collegeage students in the same income group twenty years earlier. In contrast, college
completion rates for those in the lowest income group increased only slightly over the same period, from 5 percent to 9 percent. “Growing inequality in college graduation rates happened during a period when education became increasingly important for subsequent earnings,” says Dynarski. The U-M researchers also found that inequality in educational attainment has risen more sharply among women than among men. Read more about the findings at http://bit.ly/edgapstudy.
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Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 11
Faculty Research Thinkstock
Expensive Egos: Narcissism is more harmful to men
The personality trait narcissism may have an especially negative effect on the health of men, according to a study published in PLoS ONE.
The personality trait is characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, overestimations of uniqueness, and a sense of grandiosity.
“Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships,” says ISR psychologist Sara Konrath, who coauthored the study.
For the new study, Konrath and colleagues David Reinhard of the University of Virginia, and William Lopez and Heather Cameron of the University of Michigan examined the role of narcissism and sex on cortisol levels in a sample of 106 undergraduate students.
Earlier studies by Konrath and others have shown that the level of narcissism is rising in American culture, and that narcissism tends to be more prevalent among men.
Cortisol, which can be measured through saliva samples, is a widely used marker of physiological stress. The researchers measured cortisol levels at two points in time in order to assess baseline levels of the hormone, which signals the level of activation of the body’s key stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Participants were not asked to complete any tasks that would elevate their stress. Elevated levels of cortisol in a relatively stress-free situation would indicate chronic HPA activation, which has significant health implications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular problems. To assess participants’ narcissism, the researchers administered a 40item narcissism questionnaire that measures five different components of the personality trait. Two of these components are more maladaptive,
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or unhealthy – exploitativeness and entitlement; and the other three are more adaptive, or healthy – leadership/ authority, superiority/arrogance, and self-absorption/self-admiration. The most toxic aspects of narcissism were indeed associated with higher cortisol in male participants, but not in females, the researchers found. In fact, unhealthy narcissism was more than twice as large a predictor of cortisol levels in males as in females.
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Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships.❞
“Given societal definitions of masculinity that overlap with narcissism – for example, the belief that men should be arrogant and dominant – men who endorse stereotypically male sex roles and who are also high in narcissism may feel especially stressed,” Konrath suggests. Read more about the study at http://bit.ly/expensiveegos. To test your level of narcissism, visit http://bit.ly/NarcissisticPersonalityQuiz.
Faculty Research Chinese health care coverage surges by Jared Wadley
A new study of health insurance in nine Chinese provinces shows that individual coverage surged within a two-year time frame, from 2004-2006, coinciding with new government interventions designed to improve access to health care. The changes were most dramatic in rural areas, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Brown University. The findings appear in the December 2011 issue of Health Affairs.
They focused on patterns of coverage among rural and urban residents.
“There’s been great concern about increasing inequality in China, and particularly urban-rural inequalities,” Short said. “This work shows that at least in one sphere, health insurance coverage, urbanrural inequality may be decreasing.” The dramatic rise in rural coverage rates coincided with the efforts to develop new insurance programs and provide increased subsidies for rural participants.
Their analysis shows that overall, the percentage of individuals in the sample with insurance increased from 24 percent in 1997 to 28 percent in 2004, then rose sharply to 49 percent in 2006. During
“The findings from this research highlight the recovery in health insurance coverage in general and more importantly the significant reduction in the rural-urban inequality in the coverage in particular,
Lead author Hongwei Xu, a faculty fellow at the ISR Survey Research Center and Brown University sociologist Susan Short analyzed data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, which follows households in nine provinces that are home to more than 40 percent of China’s population.
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that time period, rural and urban levels of insurance coverage became more similar. Xu and Short call the increase in rural areas “nothing short of dramatic,” saying that it likely benefited millions of rural Chinese residents.
largely due to the great efforts by the Chinese government, in a quite short time period,” Xu said. “On the other hand, the suggestive finding of continued rural disadvantage in terms of health insurance benefits suggests we should not overestimate the success of the policy interventions.” Read more about the findings at http://bit.ly/chinesehealth.
Project readies video data on effective teaching by Dan Meisler
Center (SRC) -- are leading the grants to archive videos and related quantitative data from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, funded by the foundation. Robbin Gonzalez serves as U-M project manager.
Above: A screen shot of the user interface for the MET project.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded U-M two grants totaling more than $4.7 million over four years. Two ISR Centers – the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Survey Research
“The videos from the MET project are extremely valuable to education researchers,” says George Alter, ICPSR director and principal investigator of the grant. “And this project represents a great step forward for ICPSR as we develop new capabilities to archive and disseminate emerging types of research data.” The MET project (www.metproject. org) has gathered video from the
classrooms of more than 3,000 teacher volunteers, capturing a 360-degree view of the classroom so that student reactions to the teacher can be viewed as well. Two groups of researchers Robbin Gonzalez will have early access to the video data. The initial analysis will be done by the MET research partners who collected the data, including U-M’s Brian Rowan. The second group is expected to be recipients of grants that will be competitively awarded to use the new MET Database beginning in the summer of 2012. Authorized users will access the videos through a secure, web-based streaming service, and they will access quantitative data through a secure virtual data enclave. ♦ Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 13
Supporting the Next Generation The generous donors who contribute to ISR’s 24 research funds and fellowships provide critical support for the research and training activities of graduate students, post-doctoral candidates,
young researchers, and junior faculty in a range of disciplines. Following are three profiles, written by Susan Rosegrant, that capture some of the innovative work being undertaken by recent award winners.
Nicky Newton
2011 Libby Douvan Junior Scholarship in Life Course Development Perhaps in part because of her own unconventional path, Newton—who has short reddish-brown hair, a frank gaze, and a contagious laugh—chose to focus her research on women who have lived outside the norm. For her dissertation, she examined women in their early 60s, looking particularly at what relationship their life choices had with well being and personality. Specifically, she studied women who never had children, women who divorced after having children and didn’t remarry, and women who went into predominantly male professions. “All the non-normative women were rated by personality researchers as sharing a propensity to reject norms, but they reject them in different ways,” depending on which of the three groups they are in, Newton says. The research, she adds, shows just how complex the links between personality and life paths can be. Photo courtesy of Nicky Newton
Nicky Newton left her home and “a very grounded upbringing” in Christchurch, New Zealand, at 17 to study flute. Years of intense work, including study with the principal flute player of the Vienna Philharmonic, Wolfgang Schulz, eventually landed Newton a job with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. But in her early 30s, something went badly wrong. The little finger and ring finger of Newton’s left hand began to curl into her palms when she tried to play—a characteristic of focal dystonia, an overuse syndrome that can affect musicians and others who stress parts of the body not intended for work. Two years of unsuccessful rehabilitation, and the painful realization that she could no longer be a professional musician, upended Newton’s life. After she and her American husband moved to San Francisco, she enrolled in a few psych classes at City College of San Francisco. Focal dystonia has a psychological component, Newton says, and she felt driven to understand more about how the human mind works. At the age of 40, she transferred to UC Berkeley, where she earned a degree in psychology. “Undergrad just stoked the fire, and I realized there was more that I really wanted to know,” she recalls. Despite the challenges of being an older student, Newton came to the University of Michigan and ISR, where she immersed herself in the study of personality and social contexts. Newton completed her doctorate in psychology last spring, at the age of 49. “It’s been fantastic at times and hair pulling at times and very challenging all the way around.” 14 | ISR SAMPLER | Spring 2012
Newton’s dissertation research inspired her to dig deeper with a larger and more representative data set. With support from the Libby Douvan Junior Scholars Award in Life Course Development, Newton is now working with ISR researchers Jacqui Smith and Lindsay Ryan on a study looking at four cohorts of women in their 50s and 60s through the lens of social context. The first goal of the study is to identify the percentage of married women and single women—including divorced, widowed, and always single—at different points of time, and to see if those percentages have changed. Second, the researchers will look at differences between single and married women in social connectedness, and at how that influences health and well being. Among other things, Newton hopes the research will shed light on the impact of political and social events like the feminist movement on women’s psychological development. Newton has continued her research collaboration in her new job as an assistant professor of psychology at Youngstown State University in Ohio, where she teaches lifespan development and research methods. She also recently took up a new challenge: tap dancing. “I’m hoping the music can translate to my feet,” she says. “I don’t want to be disappointed: Ex-musician does not make good on tap dance floor!”
Watch a conversation between Nicky Newton and Jacqui Smith on ISR’s YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/CcBmUzw4Gcw
❱❱❱❱❱ Brady West
2011 Charles Cannell Fund in Survey Methodology
If the word “driven” were given human form, it might look a lot like Brady West—a lean 32-year-old with a buzz haircut and a long angular face anxious to get the next thing done… get someone helped…get to the point. Last October, in just a little over three years, West got his Ph.D. from the Michigan Program in Survey Methodology. Along the way, West worked three quarters time as a graduate student research assistant and a consultant at a campus center for statistical consultation and research. He oversaw the work of more than 50 deacons at Ann Arbor’s First Presbyterian Church. He devised new ranking methods that could improve how college football and basketball teams are selected for their championship games. He published several papers in peer reviewed journals. He traveled with his wife. And he played competitive basketball with former high school buddies from Livonia. “I don’t waste time during the day,” West says. “Every single minute of the day I have to have something I’m working on and taking care of or I feel like I’m not being productive.” That drive was apparent in West’s ambitious dissertation on nonresponse adjustment. When conducting surveys, researchers want to make sure that non-respondents, those who choose not Above: Brady West dunks the ball on a cruise ship to the Caribbean last year with his wife’s family. to participate, aren’t Photo courtesy of Brady West different in important ways from those who do, thus biasing the results. By collecting interviewer observations of relevant details at all households, researchers are able to draw some conclusions about the families that decide not to take part, and to adjust their estimates accordingly. For example, when interviewers for ISR’s National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) do face-to-face screening interviews, they record whether they think the person they talked to is in a sexually active relationship, based on selected details such as whether a member of the opposite sex was present during the interview. (Government agencies use NSFG’s rich pool of data on family life to plan health services and programs and to study families, fertility, and health.)
Photo credit: Eva Menezes
West concluded that the answer to that last question was yes. For his dissertation, he showed that if interviewer observations are incorrect, the adjustments based on them lower the quality of survey estimates. “I’m doing some research now to try to find at what point, in terms of reduced quality, it doesn’t make sense to use the observations for adjustment.” He also used completed surveys to produce a list of variables that most accurately predict respondent reports of sexual activity; interviewers now have a list of those ten predictors posted on their laptops. “Things like was there a kid present in the house, did the person say they were in a relationship, are they older—not rocket science,” West says. The checklist, he notes, has reduced the number of false positive judgments, the main failing of previous observations. In late October, immediately after his dissertation defense, West flew to Germany for two weeks to complete a related research project. Then he joined the program he had just graduated from as an assistant research professor; West had received several offers, but Michigan’s couldn’t be matched. “A personality flaw, if you will, is I always feel like I let people down if I don’t do a good enough job for them,” Brady says. “Seeing that kind of offer added to my motivation to do as high quality work as possible to show them they made the right decision.” Here’s betting they did. Below: West and wife Laura on a trip to Portland wine country in 2010. Photo courtesy of Brady West
But West wondered how accurate those observations were. “That just troubled me from the first day I heard about this,” West says. “Aren’t those guesses? Aren’t those judgments? What if they’re actually not sexually active? Aren’t your predictions and your estimates all going to be wrong?” Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 15
Supporting the Next Generation Lisa Marchiondo 2011 Robert Kahn Fellowship for the Scientific Study of Social Issues Lisa Marchiondo is very polite. She makes steady eye contact, doesn’t interrupt, and responds to emails quickly and courteously. But then, she would. Marchiondo, who will receive her Ph.D. from Michigan’s Department of Psychology next month, is studying the impact of incivility in the workplace on individuals and on organizations. It’s an area of research, Marchiondo says, that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. “It’s so low level, it’s hard to address,” she says. “Yet despite the fact that it’s low level, it has really profound consequences,” like low productivity, burnout, and even early retirement. Marchiondo defines incivility as behavior that breaks the norms of respect, and that a majority of people would consider rude—behavior like not returning emails, or ignoring or excluding a co-worker. According to her research, such behavior is disturbingly widespread: In one of her studies, 88 percent of respondents reported experiencing incivility in the last year. But Marchiondo isn’t just looking at prevalence. She also wants to see how different people interpret and experience uncivil acts. Marchiondo, 28, got the inspiration for the study in school. One professor was so bad at returning emails and so blunt in dismissing student comments that a portion of the class wanted to file a joint complaint. Yet others faced with the same behavior accepted it. “That really sparked my interest,” she recalls. “What forms these different opinions, and how does that relate to people’s outcomes?”
Above: Lisa Marchiondo speaks at a recent ISR retirees and donors event. Photo credit: Eva Menezes
For example, an employee who thinks her boss isn’t answering her email because he doesn’t like her feels much worse than one who thinks the boss is just busy. Marchiondo was also surprised to discover that a small percentage of employees feel they can grow from uncivil treatment. “You wouldn’t go into this thinking somebody could actually see this as a learning opportunity,” Marchiondo says, “but being able to pinpoint that and see how it influences people helps expand our knowledge of people’s sense-making of these kinds of events.” Marchiondo, who in August will join Wayne State University as an assistant professor of psychology, says incivility appears to be on the upswing. One possible explanation is that more overt misbehaviors like discrimination and harassment are now illegal, but people can still get away with being rude. “It’s important for organizations to prevent the occurrence of incivility, because you don’t know how people are going to make sense of it, and it’s difficult to address retrospectively,” she says. “Organization leaders have to be models, not only through their behavior but in talking about it and saying, ‘Be aware of how you’re behaving.’”
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For her dissertation, Marchiondo conducted two large-scale surveys, the first of 424 women workers in Michigan, and the second of 479 working men and women nationwide. The data confirmed her hypothesis: The way targets interpret uncivil acts determines their impact. 16 | ISR SAMPLER | Spring 2012
To this end, Marchiondo is pleased to have served on a civility committee at ISR. One of its proposed initiatives? To establish and foster norms of respect among faculty and staff. It’s an important consideration, given that in Marchiondo’s studies more than 60 percent of people say the incivility came from someone hierarchically above them. “It is often a top down thing,” she says. ♦
Frederick Conrad to direct U-M Program in Survey Methodology
Photo credit: Eva Menezes
Cognitive psychologist Frederick Conrad has been appointed director of the University of Michigan Program in Survey Methodology, based at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). The Program is one of only three in the U.S. to provide graduate-level training in how to conduct scientifically sound polls and surveys. “I am delighted that Fred Conrad will be heading this important graduate program,” says ISR Director James S. Jackson. “His energy and deep commitment to the highest standards of survey research are crucial to the continuing success and growth of this program. The field of survey research is going through major changes, from incorporating new types of data to using new types of media for collecting data, and Fred’s leadership in understanding the challenges and opportunities facing the next generation of survey researchers is invaluable.” Conrad succeeds the Program’s founding director, James Lepkowski, a professor of biostatistics and public health who will now serve as associate director of the Program. “I am very grateful to Jim for his steady and thoughtful leadership of the Program, and for his continuing involvement as associate director,” says Conrad. “He was instrumental in establishing the Program here at Michigan, where scientific survey research has a long and venerable history. “I am also deeply honored to be heading the Program in Survey Methodology at ISR, which is known world-wide for its expertise in this area. Our program greatly benefits from the involvement of ISR faculty, many of whom are affiliated with Michigan’s
social science departments, which are among the best in the world.” Jackson notes that the program also benefits from the involvement of companies that help to sponsor academic programs through internships and other kinds of support. Conrad will also serve as director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, a long-standing collaboration between U-M, Westat, and the University of Maryland. Conrad’s appointment as director of both Programs marks an important step in their eventual consolidation. “I hope to advance the continued integration of these programs, by working to coordinate admissions and faculty recruitment,” says Conrad. “Eventually, our goal is to have a single program at two sites, offering degrees issued jointly by Michigan and Maryland.” The Michigan Program in Survey Methodology was established in 2001, and offers certificates in survey methodology as well as master’s and Ph.D. degrees. Graduates of the program are employed by the U.S. federal statistical system, commercial survey and market research firms, the academic community, and non-profit organizations. “Our graduates are doing very well,” says Conrad. “Even when the economy is weak, survey researchers are in demand. I’m not aware of a single graduate who wants to work in the field who has not been able to find a satisfying position.” Conrad’s recent research in survey methodology focuses on new data collection methods such as interactive web surveys and virtual interviewers, on interviewer-respondent interactions, and on the effectiveness of pretesting
techniques. He has also recently conducted research on the usability of electronic voting systems, and in the role of public events in personal memory. He is currently the co-principal investigator, with Michael Schober of the New School for Social Research, on a National Science Foundation grant investigating responses to surveys on mobile, multimodal devices. “We’re looking at the impact on survey data quality of collecting information using speech and SMS text modes on mobile devices, when either a human or automated interviewer asks the questions. We’re focusing on iPhones so that the user interface is the same for everyone,” he explains. “One of the issues we’re examining is whether people are more or less willing to disclose confidential information in some of these conditions than others. It is well known that people are usually more willing to disclose confidential information if the interviewer is automated, but what if questions are asked via a text message so there are relatively few cues about whether the interviewer is a person or a computer? Another issue we’re examining is how these modes affect respondent ‘satisficing’ – the tendency to take shortcuts when answering rather than giving full thought to the answer. And, we are looking at the effect of allowing people to choose one of these modes: for example, will they choose a visual mode like SMS in a noisy environment?” Conrad received a B.A. from Hampshire College in 1977 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Chicago in 1986.
➤ continued on p. 18 Spring 2012 | ISR SAMPLER | 17
A visiting Latino musician might sing with the kids or an artist guide them in painting. And every couple of weeks, interested parents meet in a separate room to talk about issues they face as immigrants, such as how to navigate the American educational system and how to handle a parent-teacher conference. Above: Benkí meets with a group of parents. Photo courtesy of José Benkí
➤ continued from p. 7 - ISR IN THE COMMUNITY Before the first Saturday in 2010, Benkí and Satterfield waited with trepidation. There hadn’t been much time to publicize the pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade program, and they were hoping to attract 20 kids. When the doors opened, they got 50. “We said, ‘Whoa, what are we going to do?’” Benkí recalls, laughing. Interest hasn’t flagged since. Now into their second full year of fall and winter sessions, En Nuestra Lengua—In Our Language—has a full enrollment of 82 students, and a waiting list for pre-K. In a typical two-and-a-half hour session, the teachers—specially recruited from the university and the community— help students read, do worksheets, and write stories. Parent volunteers bring snacks, lead activities, and read aloud.
For now, En Nuestra Lengua is free and Benkí and Satterfield plan to keep it that way. About $25,000 in grants from the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation and the National Center for Institutional Diversity at U-M will take the program through the 2011-2012 year. Some parents have offered to pay, Benkí says, but he and Satterfield want all children to have the same access, whether their parents are doctors or don’t have work documents. Current families have roots in 12 countries, including Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Spain, and Cuba. The literacy program has proven a rich opportunity for research. Benkí and Satterfield are publishing papers on methods to evaluate and place students in native language literacy programs, on community support of the Saturday morning language school model, and on the program’s success in achieving and maintaining Spanish literacy. “We have kids who are reading in Spanish at grade level in kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade,” Benkí says.
❝
... they were hoping to attract 20 kids. When the doors opened, they got 50. “We said, ‘Whoa, what are we going to do?’” Benkí recalls.❞
“That’s not the way it was when we started.” Preliminary data from 2010 for students in the kindergarten and 1st grade classes also show a high correlation between Spanish literacy levels and the English literacy levels students are achieving in their elementary schools. From this work, Benkí and Satterfield intend to develop a proven set of K-3rd grade curricula for communities to adopt nationwide. Latinos are the fastest growing demographic in the country, Benkí notes, and for the young to be less than fully literate in their native language, and possibly struggling with English, as well, is a tragic waste of resources and potential. “We don’t see it as either politically or financially viable to have vast bilingual immersion for the Latinos in this country,” Benkí says. “So we need some kind of solution for kids not to lose that cognitive development they started out with.” ♦
➤ continued from p. 17 - FRED CONRAD HEADS PSM He worked at Carnegie-Mellon University as a post-doctoral research associate in the Psychology Department then joined the Artificial Intelligence Research Group of Digital Equipment Corporation as principal software engineer. In 1991 he joined the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as a senior research psychologist, and in 2002 he joined both ISR and the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland as an associate research scientist. He is now research professor at both institutions. Conrad is the author or co-author of scores of articles and book chapters on questionnaire design, survey interviewing methods, web surveys, and related topics. He is the co-editor of Envisioning the Survey Interview of the Future, and Intersections in Basic and Applied Memory Research, and the co-author of Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot. ♦
18 | ISR SAMPLER | Spring 2012
Above: Fred Conrad (left) moderates a panel discussion on the challenges facing the research industry at an Executive Briefing Session hosted by the U-M Program in Survey Methodology (PSM) on October 14, 2011. Also pictured are (left to right) Brady West, an assistant research professor at PSM, and James Wagner, a survey statistician at the ISR Survey Research Center. Photo credit: Eva Menezes View other photos from this event on ISR's Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/PSMbriefing
Ho n o r s & Awar ds Toni Antonucci, ISR Survey Research Center, won the 2011 Robert L. Kahn Masterpiece Living Lifetime Achievement in Promoting Successful Aging Award. The award recognizes contributions to the propagation and application of principles of successful aging. Jacque Eccles, ISR Research Center for Group Dynamics, received the 2012 APA Division 7 "Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society." Eccles also received the Shavelson Award for Life Time Contributions to the Study of the Self from the International Self Research Society based at the University of Sydney, Australia. Robert Groves, Director of the U.S. Census and Research Professor at the ISR Survey Research Center, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Members of the organization are elected based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Myron Gutmann, Director of the Social, Behavioral and Economics Directorate at the National Science Foundation and ISR Research Professor, was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Gutmann served as Director of the ISR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research from 2001 to 2009. Ronald Inglehart, ISR Center for Political Studies and ISR Population Studies Center, and Harvard University colleague Pippa Norris won the 2011 Johan Skytte Prize in political science, awarded annually by Sweden's Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University for the most valuable contribution to political science. In making the award, the committee cited Inglehart's and Norris's "innovative ideas about the relevance and roots of political culture in a global context, transcending previous mainstream approaches of research."
Jerome Johnston, ISR Research Center for Group Dynamics, received a 2011 Literacy Leadership Award from the National Coalition for Literacy, for his work on the U.S.A. Learns website, designed to help Spanish-speakers learn English. The awards are presented to recipients who have “made extraordinary contributions to improving literacy in the United States.” Watch a video about U.S.A. Learns and Johnston at http://youtu.be/JrO91Y1ZFVg. Lloyd Johnston, ISR Survey Research Center, was named the Angus Campbell Collegiate Research Professor at the University of Michigan. Johnston’s pioneering work in substance abuse and obesity prevention has been invaluable to educators, scientists and policy makers, including U.S. presidents and Congress. He directs Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of American Youth, now in its 36th year, and the Youth, Education and Society study, launched 14 years ago. Read a profile of Johnston at http://bit.ly/lloydjohnston. Scott Page, ISR Center for Political Studies, was named a 2011 fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious society that recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in scholarly and professional fields. Sela Panapasa, ISR Research Center for Group Dynamics, received a 2011 Health Disparities Research Leadership Award as a result of her significant contributions to improving Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander health. The award was conferred Dec. 3, 2011, at the Sixth Annual Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Health Conference co-hosted by the New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health and the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. Pamela Smock, ISR Population Studies Center Director, was elected to the Population Association of America Board of Directors. Her three-year term began in January 2012. Spring 2011 | ISR SAMPLER | 19
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH 426 Thompson St., PO Box 1248 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 USA
REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor; Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms; Denise Ilitch, Birmingham Farms; Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich; Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor; Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park; S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms; Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor; Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio
ISR Sampler
The ISR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will conclude its celebration of 50 years in data management with the symposium "Analyzing Sustainable SocialEcological Systems," featuring Nobel Laureate and former ICPSR Council member Elinor Ostrom. The symposium will take place on June 7, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. at the Rackham Amphitheatre on the University of Michigan campus. It will be livestreamed at http://livestream.com/ICPSR. For more information about ICPSR's 50th anniversary, visit http://bit.ly/50thICPSR.
James S. Jackson, ISR Director Patrick Shields, ISR Director of External Relations Diane Swanbrow, ISR Director of Communications Eva Menezes, Multimedia Designer Susan Rosegrant, Contributing Editor FOR INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT Patrick Shields at 734.764.8369 peshield@umich.edu
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