There is a high interest in using mobile phones to collect health information, which may be a low-cost and efficient way to engage with hard-to-reach populations, nevertheless there can be limitations population representations when using such data. During the Fall 2019 Lightning Talks, CSDE Trainee Claire Rothschild presented a winning poster that demonstrated the methodological promises and pitfalls of mobile phone data collection and access. Claire and her collaborators (CSDE Affiliates Alison Drake, Brandon Guthrie, and Grace John-Stewart) focused on evaluating population representation among samples of women who participate in studies using mobile phone-based data collection in Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Claire and her team utilized enrollment data from a cohort study of female contraceptive users in Kenya, which used a text-messaging platform to capture information on contraceptive experiences from participants. They found that a substantial proportion of women who reported having daily access to a mobile phone did not have the phone with them at the health facility, and that these women were younger, had lower household income, and reported longer travel times to the health facilities than women who brought their mobile phones with them.

Claire’s findings are consistent with studies that show that phone sharing is common in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among rural, low-income, and female populations. Despite high mobile subscriptions per capita, phone-sharing and resulting privacy issues, limited access to electricity for phone charging, and other aspects of phone use may limit who is able to participate in mobile data collection.

Claire is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology. Her dissertation research (supported by an NIH/NICHD F31 pre-doctoral fellowship) focuses on identifying predictors of contraceptive dissatisfaction and early discontinuation. Her aim for this research is to support clinical interventions that can improve women’s experience using contraception. CSDE congratulates Claire on her accomplishments!

Additionally, the Winter 2020 CSDE Biannual Lightning Talks and Poster Session application is now available! The deadline for the application and to submit your brief abstract is WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29th. Contact Emily Pollock (emilypo@uw.edu) if you have any questions.

CSDE’s Migration and Spatial Mobilities Working Group will have its first meeting on Tuesday, January 21, 11:30AM – 12:30PM. This is a multidisciplinary group for UW scholars interested in the study of migrations or spatial mobilities in which we present “work in progress” that would benefit from feedback and suggestions from the members of the working group. During this meeting, CSDE Trainee Neal Marquez (from the UW Sociology Department) will present on “Internal Migration of Mexican Nationals in the United States”

Designed to complement formal course instruction, CSDE Workshops are offered in a shorter, more accessible format responsive to the specific demographic research needs of CSDE’s Trainees and Faculty Affiliates. This Winter quarter, CSDE is offering Workshops on the topics below. Click on any Workshop to learn more and register:

• Portable Methods for Biomarker Data Collection in the Field – Eleanor Brindle (Wednesday January 22, 3:00 – 4:30 PM in Raitt 230)
• Intro to Python and Jupiter Notebooks – Mike Babb (Monday January 27, 2:30 – 5:30 PM in SAV 117)
• Reproducible GIS analysis with R – Phil Hurvitz (Wednesday, February 12, 2:30 – 5:30 PM in SAV 117)
• Intro to Stata – Christine Leibbrand (Wednesday, February 26, 2:30 – 4:30 PM in SAV 117)

This Friday, Thomas B. (Brad) Foster from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies will present his research on the gender gap in earnings by linking individuals’ responses to Census Bureau surveys (like the ACS and CPS) with their W-2 earnings records. His research seeks to improve our measurement and understanding of the gender wage gap—explaining this gap in wages has proven difficult, particularly as women have come to “look more like men” with respect to their human capital endowments, because of limitations on publicly available data. While these data sources provide good measures of human capital, most do not allow researchers to fully account for labor force experience and occupational choice simultaneously, much less with sufficient sample sizes or precision.

Click here to schedule a meeting with Thomas

In his and his co-authors’ research, they use the linked data to decompose the gender gap in wages, providing novel estimates of the contribution of labor force participation, actual work experience, occupational choice, and occupational characteristics to overall gaps, as well as estimates of residual gender earnings gaps within detailed occupation categories. They then model residual occupation-specific wage gaps as a function of occupational characteristics—such as time pressure, schedule flexibility, and the freedom to make one’s own decisions—which prior work suggests may underlie pay discrepancies, and which may serve as valuable points for policy intervention.

Calling all CSDE Trainees! We would love to hear about your work at the March 13 CSDE Biannual Trainees Lightning Talks and Poster Session! Please consider submitting a brief abstract for consideration. In the session, you can:

• Get awesome feedback from an interdisciplinary set of scholars
• Make new connections with researchers working in similar areas
• Practice your presentation skills, perhaps to help you prepare for PAA or another upcoming conference
• Use it for a class that requires a poster presentation

If any (or all) of these appeal to you, you may apply by completing a short form through the this link by Wednesday, January 29, 2020. CSDE will recognize the best poster with an award and prize. Posters will be assessed based on design, content, and presentation.

Seven applicants will be chosen to give a short (~2 minute) presentation and discuss their poster with students, faculty, and other researchers in the CSDE community. Students at any stage in the research process are welcome to apply.

The Poster Session will be on Friday, March 13, 12:30-1:30 PM in Room Green A, Research Commons, Allen Library South

We look forward to hearing about all the cool research that is ongoing! Please feel free to contact Emily Pollock (Anthropology PhD Candidate) at emilypo@uw.edu if you have any questions.

Beginning January 1, 2020, through an agreement between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, (NCHS), NIH will reimburse the NCHS National Death Index (NDI) for the costs of NIH-supported investigators to link their research databases with the NDI for the research aims supported by the NIH. “NIH-supported investigators” refers to extramural investigators actively funded by the NIH, contract investigators working under an active contract with the NIH, and intramural researchers employed by the NIH. These NIH-supported investigators will be able to link their research data to the National Death Index (NDI) at no cost to the NIH supported investigator. NIH-supported investigators will continue to submit applications for NDI linkage as per current NDI procedures, and NDI will review and approve, or disapprove, these applications as per current NDI procedures.

This agreement applies only to NIH-supported investigators who are actively funded by the NIH to conduct research that requires NDI linkage. To be covered under this agreement, the NIH-supported investigator must be the owner or steward of the research data to be linked to the NDI datafile. Investigators are limited to no more than 4 linkage requests in a calendar year, and any linkage requests exceeding $100,000 will require pre-approval by NIH.

NCHS will be implementing an enhanced online application and will increase the frequency of NDI releases to quarterly. NDI allows fully deidentified (public access) research datasets with NDI-linked data to be shared without further NDI approval. Potentially re-identifiable datasets also may be shared without further NDI approval provided the research dataset is not transferred from one investigator to another but instead shared via a data enclave provided that the investigator obtained approval in the original NDI application to share the data via an enclave. An investigator also may share potentially re-identifiable NDI-linked research datasets with a data repository without further NDI approval provided the data repository shares the dataset on behalf of the investigator bound to the same constraints as the investigator (i.e., shared only if the dataset is fully-deidentified or shared only via a data enclave if potentially re-identifiable). During the period of this agreement, NDI will attempt to negotiate with the 57 vital registration jurisdictions to allow further data sharing flexibility without NDI approval.

Please direct all inquiries to:

Michael Spittel
NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)
Telephone: 301-4512-4286
Email: Michael.Spittel@nih.gov