Affiliate Katie Bird, Associate Professor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics at UW Tacoma, co-authored a study that explores whether people will vote more with the addition of more ballot drop boxes, which is required by a new state law in Washington. The study —which Baird and her coauthors presented to the State Government, Elections, and IT Committee on October 27— compared voting behavior in 2015 to that in 2016, when the number of drop boxes increased from 10 to 43. The outcomes suggest that while there may be an increase in voter turnout with the addition of more boxes, it is not likely to be driven by typically low-turnout groups. The study is a product of Project Vote Washington, a team of five economists and political scientists—of which Baird is a member—that examines voting outcomes to inform Washington voting policy. In a recent HeraldNet article that discusses the study, Baird said, “What we know is drop boxes are incredibly popular among voters. We found the low voting groups did not seem to be as influenced by boxes.” A draft of the full study is available below.
Affiliate Emily Williams, Associate Professor of Health Services, co-authored a recent article that examines factors that pose challenges for or aid in prescribing medications for alcohol use disorders (AUD), and beliefs among providers of primary care depending on their willingness to prescribe these medications. For this qualitative study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the authors interviewed 24 providers from five different Veterans Affairs clinics. Their findings indicate that lack of knowledge and experience, stigma around alcohol, and skepticism about using medications rather than addiction treatment are barriers to prescribing medications for AUD. On the other hand, support for prescribing AUD medications, training, and the presence of behavioral staff to aid in the follow-up process facilitated prescription. Moreover, outcomes suggest that depending on their willingness to prescribe AUD medications, primary care providers have divergent attitudes regarding their role in prescribing for AUD and the effectiveness of medications for treating AUD. The full study is available below.
Affiliate Scott Allard was quoted in a recent Chicago Tribune article that addresses myths about housing-related issues, including gentrification, low-income housing, and poverty. In response to the misconception that poverty is greater in cities than it is in suburbs, Allard—Professor at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance—contends that poverty has in fact been shifting to the latter. “The number of poor persons in suburban Chicago eclipsed the number in the City of Chicago in the last decade, and there are no signs of this trend reversing anytime soon. Seven of every ten suburban municipalities outside Chicago saw the number of poor residents at least double from 1990 to 2014,” he said. Allard addresses the issue of rising suburban poverty in greater detail in his book, Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty, published in June. The full article is available below.
Affiliates Adrian Dobra, Tyler McCormick, Katherine Stovel, and Nathalie Williams—also affiliates at the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences—were recently awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
- Dobra—Associate Professor of Nursing and Statistics—and Williams—Associate Professor of International Studies and Sociology—were awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant titled “ATD: Geospatial Graphic Models of Human Response to Emergencies,” for a three year-project that will examine human behavior response patterns to emergencies using machine learning tools.
- Stovel, Professor of Sociology,—along with Assistant Professor Jevin West at the Information School—received a two-year grant from the NSF titled “Echo Chambers in Science? The Impact of Academic Recommender Systems on the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge.” Stovel and West will explore how new search technologies affect scholars’ range of exposure to academic literature, and whether they have broadening or narrowing effects.
- McCormick, Associate Professor of Statistics and Sociology, was awarded a five-year subcontract on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant “Verbal Autopsy: Reimagining Data & Automated Cause Assignment (using ALPHA Network data).” The project will focus on developing methods to assign causes to and describe the distribution of death using verbal autopsy methods.
Instructor: Cori Mar
Tuesday, November 14
1:00-3:30 PM
Savery 121
This is an introduction to the basic graphics package in the statistical programming language R. It will demonstrate how to customize a scatterplot and a barplot as well as create multiple plots on a single page and multiple page pdfs using a loop.
Prerequisite: Experience with R
As a reminder, there will be no CSDE seminar this week due to the observance of Veteran’s Day.
Instead, consider attending tomorrow’s CSSS Seminar featuring Dennis Feehan of UC Berkeley Demography, “Using Sampled Social Network Data to Estimate Adult Death Rates“.
CSDE’s Seminar Series will resume next Friday, November 17 with “Fertility Decline in Africa: Are the Determinants Different?” by John Casterline of the Department of Sociology at Ohio State University.
West Coast Poverty Center (WCPC) Seminar:
“The Shift Project: Unstable Schedules in the Service Sector and Worker Health and Wellbeing”
Kristen Harknett, Sociology, University of California – San Francisco
Monday, November 13th
Social Work Building, Room 305A
12:30 – 1:30 pm
(Q&A until 2:00 pm)
Abstract: The vast majority of service-sector workers report instability in their weekly work schedules. To learn about this instability and its consequences, the Shift Project has developed an innovative approach to collect survey data from hourly workers employed in retail and food services. In this talk, I will draw on survey responses from over 19,000 workers employed at 38 large retail or food establishments to show how unstable work schedules are related to workers’ health and wellbeing.
Got a big idea that could change the world? Got a small idea that could have a huge impact? Apply for an Amazon Catalyst award.
Amazon Catalyst is an award program that helps UW students, staff, and faculty launch their big ideas. Offered through a collaboration between Amazon and UW CoMotion, initial awards are $25,000, given to individuals or teams that want to pursue solutions to real-world problems and make a positive impact.
We are hosting an Info Meeting on November 14.
Amazon Catalyst Award
- $25K award
- Potential for up to $75K more
- Open to UW students, faculty, and staff from all campuses
- All ideas are welcome, from any discipline: arts to engineering
- Simple application: 20 questions
- Next deadline: December 16
Amazon Catalyst Info Meeting
Want to learn more about the program and how to create a compelling application? Join us for the upcoming Amazon Catalyst Info Meeting. Snacks will be served!
Tuesday, November 14
6-7 pm
HUB 106
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact comoazon@u.washington.edu
“Using Sampled Social Network Data to Estimate Adult Death Rates”
Dennis Feehan, UC Berkeley Demography
Wednesday, November 8, 12:30-2:00 PM
Savery 409
Surveys have traditionally been based on the idea that researchers can estimate characteristics of a population by obtaining a sample of individuals and asking them to report about themselves. Network reporting surveys generalize this traditional approach by asking survey respondents to report about members of their personal networks. This approach can be used to study many important rare and hidden populations for which traditional survey methods are inadequate; for example, the approach has been used to estimate the size of epidemiologically important groups like sex workers, drug injectors, and men who have sex with men. Dennis will introduce a framework for developing estimators from network reporting surveys, and present some results from a nationally-representative survey experiment that he and his colleagues conducted to estimate adult death rates in Rwanda.