Alan Griffith, Assistant Professor of Economics at UW, will compare peer effects of an after-school program, under three different (randomly assigned) network-formation regimes: endogenously formed, popularity vote, and randomly assigned. While most social programs are based on some form of exclusion of sub-populations, we know little about how being excluded, and the selection process, affect social inclusion. Griffith finds substantial evidence of homophily within endogenously-formed and elected networks. When participation is randomly assigned, he finds segregation of friendships due to the program.

CSDE Affiliate Melissa Knox, Lecturer in Economics, recently co-authored a report for the City of Seattle on the impact of City funded food access programs on farmers and the Washington farm economy. Authors presented the results to the King County Agricultural Commission and plan to report them to other City policymakers in coming months. CSDE supported the project by providing administrative oversight through its P2C research infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

In 2018, CSDE collaborated with Brian McCabe, Associate Professor of Sociology at Georgetown and, at the time, Visiting Scholar at the UW Department of Sociology and Evans School of Public Policy, and Jennifer Heerwig, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, on a policy brief that assessed the impact of Seattle's Democracy Vouchers. The brief examined how the program has expanded participation in municipal elections, and whether voucher participants voted at higher rates. A recent The Hill story mentions the evaluation as supporting evidence for federal public campaign financing proposals.

The CSDE Biomarker Working Group is meeting today, Wednesday, May 22, 2:30-3:30 PM, in 114 Raitt Hall. Blood is the gold-standard specimen type for most biomarker measurements, but presents some challenges for research that must be conducted in homes or other community settings to better reach study participants.  Our next CSDE Biomarker Working Group meeting will offer an overview of methods for collecting blood in non-clinical settings, including sample sources (venous vs capillary), containers (tubes, DBS cards, and more recent inventions), and processing, storing and shipping procedures.