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Editor:
Tonya Allen
allen@pop.psu.edu
PRInformation
Spring 2008
New External Research Funding
Baylor Religion Survey
Dr. Roger Finke, professor of sociology and religious studies and director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), received funding for one year from the Templeton Foundation for the ARDA to develop a website that provides a reduced version of the Baylor Religion Survey and serves as a test site for new survey questions. Respondents will be randomly assigned alternative wording and ordering of questions in an effort to pretest new survey items. They will also be invited to offer additional comments on the questions. The website and interviews will allow for ongoing dynamic revision of survey items.
Parenting of Infants Project
Dr. Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and employment relations and women's studies, received funding for one year from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the general pattern of time demands faced by parents of infants, as well as the likely impact of parental leave and reduced-hours options. Recent decades have witnessed fathers spending increased time with children while mothers continue to spend much time on childcare even in the presence of expanded work commitments; however, it is not known whether this pattern holds for parents of infants under the age of one year. This project will use data from the first four waves of the American Time Use Survey to investigate these issues.
The Role of Career Aspirations and Educational Expectations in the Process of Socioeconomic Attainment: Evidence from Two Recent Cohorts of Youth
Dr. Jeremy Staff, assistant professor of crime, law and justice and sociology, Dr. Angel L. Harris (University of Texas at Austin), and Dr. Ricardo Sabates (University of London) received funding for one year from the Johann Jacobs Foundation to study how early career aspirations and educational expectations affect both college entry and the receipt of a college degree. The project will draw on longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (U.S. Department of Education, 2002) and the British Cohort Survey (CLS, 2007). The researchers will also examine how early aspirations and expectations affect wage attainments and unemployment in adulthood, and whether the effect of early ambitions on socioeconomic attainment varies by population subgroups, which will provide a strong basis for examining how early aspirations and expectations shape the transition from school to work and longer-term socioeconomic attainment.
Simultaneous Activities in the American Time Use Survey: An Exploratory Analysis
Dr. Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and employment relations and women's studies, received funding for one year from the American Statistical Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze American Time Use Survey observations from 2006 to identify, code, and merge information on simultaneous activities into the main ATUS database. These analyses have the potential to (1) change interpretation of the data to the extent simultaneous activities are distributed in a systematic fashion; (2) shed light on the extent of multitasking and of interruptions in the home or elsewhere; (3) show that simultaneous activity reports are fundamentally different from traditional secondary activities data; and (4) shed light on how data collection procedures for the ATUS might be improved.
University of Ghana (RIPS) Visiting Scholar Training Program at Penn State University
Dr. Francis Dodoo, College of Liberal Arts Research Professor and professor of sociology and demography; Dr. Gordon F. De Jong, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography and director, Graduate Program in Demography; and Nancy S. Landale, professor of sociology and demography and director, Population Research Institute, received funding for two years from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support a training partnership between the University of Ghana's Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) and PRI. Each year, doctoral students from RIPS will spend the second year of their three-year PhD program at PRI, enabling them to develop their grantsmanship prospects and gain exposure in the international population health arena while still receiving their terminal degrees from RIPS. Beyond building their scholarly and professional development the students will be given the opportunity to nurture potential collaborative opportunities in their encounters with faculty mentors and advanced graduate student peers.
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