Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science
Assistant Professor of Sociology
CSDE Welcomes Four New UW & External Affiliates!
CSDE’s Executive Committee is pleased to introduce four of our new UW Faculty & External Affiliates:
- Afra Mashhadi—Assistant Professor, Computing & Software Systems, UW Bothell. Dr. Mashhadi is a research scientist in the domain of Ubiquitous Computing. She is interested in developing mathematical and computational models that leverage the proliferation of sensors and breakthroughs in machine learning to (1) understand societies and social phenomena at different spatial scales and (2) model social dynamics of human behavior.
- Leo Morales—Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine; Adjunct Professor, Health Services, UW Seattle. Dr. Morales’s research has focused on measurement of patient reported outcomes in diverse populations, and minority health and health disparities including immigrant and Latino Health. He serves as Chief Diversity Officer for the School of Medicine.
- Rebecca Rebbe—Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University of Southern California. Dr. Rebbe’s research examines the measurement of and community responses to child maltreatment. She has training using demographic methods and specializes in using population-based linked administrative datasets to better understand child maltreatment.
- Eric Waithaka–Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, George Mason University. Dr. Waithanka’s research focuses on intergenerational social and economic mobility during young adults’ transitions to adulthood, with a particular focus on the role of family capital (resources & processes) and public policies influence on young adults’ life outcomes.
CSDE Affiliates Knox and Jones-Smith Awarded Grant from the Royalty Research Fund!
CSDE Affiliates Mellisa Knox and Jessica Jones-Smith have recently been awarded a research grant from the UW RRF as co-PIs. Taxes on sweetened beverages have become an important policy response to growing obesity rates and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. and other nations. Since 2015, eight U.S. cities have implemented these taxes, but so far direct evidence of their impacts on household purchasing behavior is scarce. Of particular interest to many researchers and policy makers is the response of low-income consumers to these taxes, both because they have higher sweetened beverage consumption on average and because of concerns that sweetened beverage taxes are regressive. This project will investigate the income-stratified household response to sweetened beverage taxes using a data set containing the purchasing behavior of approximately 500 households in the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, and Philadelphia, all of which have recently introduced beverage taxes. Knox and Jones-Smith’s analysis will combine this household-level data with proprietary data on beverage and retailer characteristics specific to the context of these taxes. Whereas previous literature in this area has used household responses to general price fluctuations to simulate household responses to sweetened beverage taxes, this novel data set will enable the PIs to detect household responses to these taxes directly. Direct measurement of the consumer response to these taxes is important if, as has been shown with other consumption taxes, consumers respond differently to them than to idiosyncratic price fluctuations. By improving understanding of household behavior around sweetened beverage taxes, Knox and Jones-Smith’s findings have the potential to improve sweetened beverage tax policy and promote population health.
Wilson & Wakefield Analyze Summary and Birth History Data through Modeling Advancements in New Research
Katie Wilson (UW Biostatistics) and CSDE Affiliate and Executive Committee Member Jon Wakefield recently published their methodological research in Demographic Research. Their work is motivated by the tension between demand for high-quality subnational estimates of under-5 mortality and data limitations in lower- and middle-income countries. In the paper, Wilson & Wakefield describe a computationally efficient, model-based approach that allows summary birth history and full birth history data to be combined into analyses of under-5 mortality in a natural way.
Curran and Co-Authors Redefine “Abandoned” Agricultural Land in New Publication
CSDE Director Sara Curran, along with a number of co-authors, recently penned a perspective article in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Global mapping efforts to date have relied on vague and oversimplified definitions of “abandoned” agricultural land which results in overestimates of the land area that is likely to support persistent increases in forest cover and associated carbon sequestration. The authors propose a new conceptualization of abandoned agricultural land that incorporates changes in landholding status over time into determining whether land should be considered as abandoned.
Mooney, Hill, Rowhani-Rabhar, and Co-Authors Continue Exploring the Connection Between EITC and Firearm Violence in New Publication
CSDE Affiliates Stephen Mooney, Heather Hill, and Ali Rowhani-Rabhar, with co-authors Kimberly Dalve, Caitlin Moe, Nicole Kovski, and Frederick Rivara, recently published research in Prevention Science, extending their collective work on the relationship between the earned income tax credit (EITC) and youth firearm violence. To estimate the association between state EITC and youth violence, the authors conducted a repeated cross-sectional analysis using the variation in state EITC generosity over time by state and self-reported data in the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) from 2005 to 2019, with additional association estimates stratified by sex and race.
Zhao & Co-Authors Publish New Exploration of Black-Owned Restaurant Patronage During the Pandemic
CSDE Affiliate Bo Zhao along with co-authors Xiao Huang, Xiaoqi Bao (a past recipient of the CSDE Applied Research Fellowship), Zhenlong Li, and Shaozeng Zhang recently published an article in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers which has also been covered in Seattle’s King 5 news. In this article, the authors assess the circumstances of Black-owned restaurants during the entire year of 2020 through a longitudinal quantitative analysis of restaurant patronage. Using multiple sources of geospatial big data, the analysis reveals that most Black-owned restaurants in this study are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic among different cities in the United States over time.
Grover Awarded Research Grant from the National Science Foundation!
CSDE Affiliate Himanshu Grover has been awarded a new grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is titled, “Assessing the Expectations Gap – Impact on Critical Infrastructure Service Providers’ and Consumers’ Preparedness, and Response.” While community lifeline service providers and local emergency managers must maintain coordinated response and recovery plans, their timelines may not match expectations of local consumers of lifeline services. Indeed, it is quite likely consumers have unrealistic expectations about lifeline restoration, which could explain current inadequate levels of disaster preparedness. This hypothesized expectation gap has received little attention because engineering research typically addresses providers’ capacities, whereas disaster research addresses household and business preparedness. This project will provide government agencies, lifeline providers, and consumers with strong evidence to address the expectations gap and, in turn, promote appropriate preparedness actions that will increase community resilience. This research will produce significant societal benefits to consumers and lifeline providers in the broader Cascadia region, and other areas exposed to major earthquakes by facilitating an informed information exchange among stakeholders. The authors focus on energy, water, wastewater, and communication, whose restoration is critical for limiting cascading damages, and for rapid recovery of community functions.
Grover’s project will address this issue by assessing consumers’ (households, business owners/managers, nonprofit managers) expectations about lifeline system performance, and comparing them to lifeline provider capacity in a post-hazard event scenario (following a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of 9.0 magnitude or greater) in two communities—Kirkland and Shoreline, WA (likely to experience most shaking in this scenario). The research goal of this proposal is to identify and quantify determinants of the gap between societal expectations of critical lifeline systems performance in a hazard event and the planned resilience (avoiding failures/ timeline for service restoration) of these systems. The authors will address the following research questions: 1) What do consumers think is the likely level of critical lifeline disruption from an earthquake and the timeline for restoration? 2) What are consumers’ current levels of preparedness for lifeline interruption? 3) What do lifeline providers and an independent engineering expert think are providers’ capabilities to maintain and restore lifeline services? 4) How do consumers’ expectations compare with providers’ capabilities (expectations gap)? 5) How will this study’s feedback about the expectations gap affect consumers’ and providers’ lifeline resilience expectations, as well as their mitigation and preparedness intentions? The authors’ research methodology ensures that minority residents and business will directly benefit from this research through feedback information sharing in second round of data collection. Outcomes of this research will enhance consumers’ preparedness and lifeline providers’ recovery capacity.