Research Project Details
A Space-Time Model of Fertility in China
Institution: University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Principal Investigators: Katherine King
Expected Outputs: Presentation at 2006 PAA
Software Used: R, ArcGIS, Geoda
Contact: Katherine King
Agricultural Colonization and Malaria on the Amazon Frontier
Institution: Princeton University The Office of Population Research at Princeton University
Principal Investigators: Burton H. Singer and Marcia Caldas De Castro
Contact: Burton Singer
Alcohol Outlets and Driving After Drinking: A County-Level Spatial Analysis
Institution: Washington State University
Principal Investigators: Bryan Rookey
Description: An Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) methodology is employed to shed light on the relationship between alcohol outlets and two drinking and driving related outcomes at the county level; DUI arrest rates and alcohol-related traffic fatalities. More >>
Related Publications: Paper presented at American Society of Criminology 2006
Software Used: Arc GIS, GeoDa
Contact: Bryan Rookey
Metadata
Applications of Remote Sensing/GIS to An Analysis of the Arab Fertility Transition
Institution: San Diego State University International Population Center
Principal Investigators: PI - John R. Weeks Co-PI - Saad Gadalla Co-PI - Allan Hill Co-PI - Doug Stow Co-PI - Arthur Getis
Description: The AFT project began as a pilot project (1998-2000) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to test the use of remotely-sensed images, geographic information systems (GIS), and spatial analysis to model the spatial and temporal variability in fertility in Egypt in both a rural setting (Menufia Governorate) and an urban setting (central Cairo). The results obtained from the pilot phase were sufficiently promising to extend the research to include a broader geographic coverage. The AFT was then supported by the National Science Foundation (2001-2004) and its geographic scope has been extended to other areas within Egypt, and also to urban and rural areas in Jordan. The project is administrated by the International Population Center, in the Department of Geography, San Diego State University Link to Project Summary.
Contact: John Weeks
Biocomplexity in Linked Bioecological-Human Systems: Agent-Based Models of Land-Use Decisions and Emergent Land Use Patterns in Forested Regions of the American Midwest and the Brazilian Amazon
Institution: Indiana University
Principal Investigators: Elinor Ostrom, Jimmy Walker, Tom Evans, Vicky Meretsky, Jerry Busemeyer
Grant Number: NSF SES008351
Description: The primary goal of this project is to explain long-term, complex change processes in human-bioecological systems-especially forested regions. We will develop agent-based models to examine how land-use decisions made at one level (a household) affect outcomes at that level and at several higher and lower levels in a hierarchically nested set of systems. We develop two agent-based models to explain land-use patterns in the frontier and post-frontier Midwest of the United States and the frontier of the Brazilian Amazon. The first model will address two major puzzles: (1) Why did the descendants of the initial settlers in nineteenth-century Indiana cut down timber at such a massive and seemingly uneconomic rate that they eventually denuded the land, causing massive erosion and soil loss, and leading to substantial farm abandonment? and (2) Why have forests regrown so extensively on privately owned land when so many public policies are based on the assumption that fragmented, privately owned parcels are destined never to have significant forest regrowth? The second model will explain the spatial and temporal patterns of deforestation in the Amazon over the last three decades. The assumptions we make in the two models will be empirically tested and grounded by rigorous laboratory experiments. The patterns of land use at any point in time and the processes of change also will be tested against a rich set of data derived from ground-truthed satellite data, aerial photographs, land surveys, census data, household interviews, forest mensuration undertaken in a sample of forest patches, and archival data regarding timber and agricultural prices, input costs, and land values. After further development and testing, both models will be used to extrapolate into the future and assess how diverse public policies are likely to affect land use in general and forest change in particular in these regions. The project will involve three important capstone activities: a Workshop on Agent-Based Models of Biocomplexity, a synthesis volume to be derived from the Workshop, and a Summer Institute. More >>
Expected Outputs: http://www.cipec.org/research/biocomplexity/biopubs.html
Contact: Tom Evans
Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science
Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara
Principal Investigators: Michael F. Goodchild, PI and Director Richard Appelbaum, co-PI Luc Anselin, Pi for Spatial Tools Development Donald Janelle, Program Director
Grant Number: National Science Foundation BCS 9978058
Description: CSISS is dedicated to building national infrastructure to support spatial analytic persectives in the social sciences. It provides training in the use of spatial tech More >>
Related Publications: M.F. Goodchild and D.G. Janelle, editors, Spatially Integrated Social Science (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Contact: Michael F. Goodchild
Chitwan Healthy Aging Project
Institution: University of Michigan Population and Ecology Research Laboratory
Principal Investigators: Amy Pienta (PI), Jennifer Barber (Co-PI), William Axinn
Description: In fall 1999, Amy Pienta and Jennifer Barber conducted a pilot study which interviewed 103 older adults residing in the Chitwan Valley. This pilot study was undertaken in preparation for a new, large-scale project to collect data on mental and physical health from the elderly residents in the 171 neighborhoods sampled by the Chitwan Valley Family Study. Measures of physical functioning, chronic health conditions, lifestyle behaviors, health care utilization, barriers to health care utilization, depression, personal control, and cognition were pretested. This pilot study was an outstanding success. Locating and interviewing elderly respondents proved straightforward. Furthermore, virtually all of the survey questions proved feasible to ask and responses varied in reasonable and predictable ways. Our analyses of these pretest data give us great confidence that a large-scale project can be conducted successfully. Pienta and Barber are currently revising an R01 proposal previously submitted to the National Institute of Aging (National Institutes of Health) to fund a large-scale data collection project in Nepal.
Contact: Bill Axinn
Chitwan Valley Family Study
Institution: University of Michigan Population and Ecology Research Laboratory
Principal Investigators: William Axinn (PI), Jennifer Barber, Susan Murphy, Arland Thornton, Tom Fricke
Description: This study was originally funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD R01-HD32912) for a five year period, 1994 through 1999. The study was designed to investigate the influence of changing social contexts on the timing of marriage, childbearing, and contraceptive use. The research investigates the extent to which changes in the community produce changes in family formation behavior, and whether the family organization of individual life courses produces these changes in behavior. The study used a combination of ethnographic and survey research methods to gather 171 neighborhood histories, 142 school histories, 118 health service histories, and 20 bus route histories in Western Chitwan. Personal histories were gathered from the 5271 individuals ages 15-59 years living in these neighborhoods using a semi-structured Life History Calendar and a highly structured survey questionnaire. The sample neighborhoods for this study were chosen to represent the neighborhoods in Western Chitwan, including each of the five major ethnic groups inhabiting the area: high caste Hindus, hill Tibeto-Burmese (such as Gurung, Tamang, and Magar), indigenous terai Tibeto-Burmese (such as Tharu, Darai, and Kumal), Newar, and other caste Hindus. To answer the questions posed by the original project, and also to answer new questions that arose during the preliminary analysis of the collected data, a five year continuation (1999 through 2004) of the project was granted by NICHD. The grant includes funding for analysis of the data collected under the original grant, as well as to continue the monthly register of demographic events originally funded under the Population and Environment grant. One of the analytic goals of the continuation project focuses on the original research question: To what extent do changes in the social and economic context influence family formation processes (particularly marriage, first birth timing, and contraception)? The continuation project also poses three additional questions. (1) How do qualitative dimensions of these contextual changes, such as the quality of new schools or health services, shape family formation processes? (2) Do neighbors' experiences with social change produce these contextual effects? And (3) Do variations in attitudes and beliefs, or neighbors' attitudes and beliefs, produce these behavioral changes?
Contact: Bill Axinn
Demographic Dynamics Along the Border
Institution: San Diego State University International Population Center
Principal Investigators: John R. Weeks
Description: John R. Weeks, Project Director, "Border Issues in Population/Family Planning," Grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bergstrom Foundation, the S. H. Cowell Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation to the San Diego State University Foundation, 1986-1987. John R. Weeks, Principal Investigator, "Demographic Interrelatedness of the U.S. Mexico Border Region," Grant from the S.H. Cowell Foundation, and a Joint Statistical Agreement (JSA) with the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988-1989. John R. Weeks, Project Director, "Publication of Proceedings of Population Issues Along the U.S.-Mexico Border," grants from the S.H. Cowell Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 1990. Manual García y Griego, John R. Weeks, and Roberto Ham Chande, "Migration to Mexico," in C. Nam, R. Weller, and W. Serow (eds.), Comparative Handbook of International Migration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), 1990. John R. Weeks, "The Binational Survey in San Diego and Tijuana," Frontera Norte 2(4): 234-236, 1990. John R. Weeks and Roberto Ham Chande (eds.), Demographic Dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of Texas at El Paso: Texas Western Press), 1992. John R. Weeks, "The Changing Demographic Structure of the San Diego Region," in Norris Clement, editor, San Diego and Tijuana in Transition (San Diego State University: Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias), 1993. Paul Ganster, John R. Weeks, and Roberto Ham-Chande, “Demographic Dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico Border,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 114:124-129, 1995 John R. Weeks, “Demographic Dynamics of the San Diego-Tijuana Region,” Chapter 2 (pp 17-34) in Mark Spalding, editor, Sustainable Development in San Diego-Tijuana: Environmental, Social and Economic Implications of Interdependence. La Jolla: Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1999.
Contact: John Weeks
Developmental Idealism and Family and Population Dynamics in Nepal
Institution: University of Michigan Population and Ecology Research Laboratory
Principal Investigators: Arland Thornton (PI), William Axinn, Dirgha Ghimire, Jennifer Barber
Description: This is a pilot project including both training and research, led by Arland Thornton. The research component of this project is a collaborative endeavor that will create and test research instruments for measuring developmental idealism, a concept developed by Thornton in his 2001 Population Association of America Presidential address. The pilot project will collect data from approximately 500 respondents, and will evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the research protocols and data. The training component will provide Nepali students and collaborators information concerning developmental idealism and its relationship to family and population dynamics, knowledge of questionnaire design, and practice in translating theoretical concepts into questions for survey administration.
Contact: Bill Axinn
Distinguishing the Geographic Levels and Social Dimensions of U.S. Metropolitan Segregation, 1960-2000
Institution: University of California, Berkeley A Century of Difference Project
Principal Investigators: Claude S. Fischer, Gretchen Stockmayer, Jon Stiles and Michael Hout
Contact: Claude Fischer
Ever-More Rooted Americans
Institution: University of California, Berkeley A Century of Difference Project
Principal Investigators: Claude S. Fischer
Contact: Claude Fischer
Examining health access in Los Angeles County's immigrant and minority communities
Institution: University of Southern California School of Social Work
Principal Investigators: Dennis Kao
Description: The purpose of this study was to examine the spatial accessibility of health facilities (i.e. hospitals and community clinics) for immigrant and minority communities in Los Angeles County.
Expected Outputs: Manuscript in progress
Related Publications: Poster presentation at the 5th International Conference on Social Work in Health & Mental Health in Hong Kong (December 2006) Poster presentation at the 2007 Society for Social Work & Research Conference (January 2007)
Software Used: ArcGIS; GeoDa
Contact: Dennis Kao
Health Inequality and the Introduction of Anti-retroviral Treatment
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Principal Investigators: Mathew Creighton Georges Reniers Brodie Ferguson
Description: Analysis of the role of wealth in HIV/AIDS mortality after the availabiliy of anti-retroviral treatment, using spatial lag and spatial autoregressive models.
Expected Outputs: working paper at PSC poster PAA 2007
Software Used: ArcGIS MATLAB Stata
Institution: The Pennsylvania State University University of California, Santa Barbara
Principal Investigators: List names of researchers who secured the funding for the project and name(s) of primary researcher(s) -- e.g., Stephen A. Matthews, Michael F. Goodchild, Donald G. Janelle
Grant Number: Organization funding the research -- e.g., NICHD
Description: Provide enough information to give viewers an idea of the problems and research questions being investigated, the data and methods used, and anticipated outcomes. See the Help facility (?) for info on adding > 1 institution or publication. More >>
Expected Outputs: List publicly accessible resources that are related to the project.
Related Publications: Goodchild, M.F., and D.G. Janelle, eds. (2004). Spatially Integrated Social Science (Oxford University Press). Matthews, S.A. and B. Gubhaju (2004). Contextual Influences on the Use of Antenatal Care in Nepal (DHS Geographic Studies 2). Calverton, MD: ORC Macro
Software Used: Arc GIS GeoDa
Contact:
Metadata
Immigrant Issues Along the Border
Institution: San Diego State University International Population Center
Principal Investigators: John R. Weeks
Description: John R. Weeks, Principal Investigator, "Determining the Costs of Illegal Immigrant Criminal Activity and Use of Emergency Medical Services in San Diego and Imperial Counties," Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, through the United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition, 2000-2001 David McIntyre and John R. Weeks, " Environmental Impacts of Illegal Immigration on the Cleveland National Forest in California." Professional Geographer, 54 (3): 392-405, 2002. Tanis Salant, Christine Brenner, Nadia Rubaii-Barrett, and John R. Weeks;Illegal Immigrants in U.S./Mexico Border Counties: The Costs of Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Medical Services. Final Report to the United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition, 2001 (http://www.bordercounties.org/). John R. Weeks, Co-Investigator (Douglas Stow, PI);Spatial Decision Support for Border Security,” Grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2003-2007
Contact: John Weeks
Integrated Urban Malaria Control: A Case Study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Institution: Princeton University The Office of Population Research at Princeton University
Principal Investigators: Marcia Caldas De Castro, Y. Yamagata, D. Mtasiwa, M. Tanner, J. Utzinger, J. Keiser, and B.H. Singer
Contact: Burton Singer
Intra-Urban Health In Accra, Ghana Assessed with Remote Sensing and GIS
Institution: San Diego State University International Population Center
Principal Investigators: PI - John R. Weeks Co-PI - Allan Hill Co-PI - Doug Stow Co-PI - Arthur Getis Co-PI - Stephanie Brodine
Grant Number: Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: Grant # 1 R21 HD046612-0
Description: This project explores the use of remotely sensed imagery and GIS to enhance our understanding of intra-urban inequalities in health, using data for the metropolitan area of Accra, Ghana as a study site. The specific aims are as follows: (1) to derive local (neighborhood) measures of health by combining spatially referenced census data, survey data, and vital statistics into a geographic information system (GIS) for metropolitan Accra; (2) to derive local (neighborhood) measures of the built and natural environment through the classification and analysis of data from remotely sensed imagery; (3) to test the hypothesis that health levels in urban places are importantly influenced by the local neighborhood environmental context, including the natural and built environment, the socio-economic composition of the neighborhood's residents, and the location of a neighborhood within the broader urban environment (including its proximity to health clinics and hospitals); (4) to assess the relative contribution of neighborhood environmental context, population composition, and the neighborhood locational attributes to health outcomes in metropolitan Accra; (5) to model the interaction among the variables that predict health levels to determine what changes might be introduced into a neighborhood to bring its overall level of health up to a minimally acceptable standard; and (6) to evaluate how well the remotely-sensed data can, on their own as a proxy, model the intra-urban inequalities in health in ways that might lead these data to be used as health monitoring tools. The research involves three major steps: (1) creation of data layers and specification of georeferenced variables to be measured, including data from the 2000 Census, the 1998 and 2003 Demographic and Health Surveys, the 2003 Women's Health in Accra Survey, the 2003 WHO World Health Survey in Ghana, data from the vital statistics for 1999-2001, and a high resolution multispectral satellite image which will be classified according to the Ridd V-I-S model of urban ecology, subsequent to which a set of landscape metrics will be calculated to measure the built and natural environments; (2) statistical analysis to answer the questions posed by our Specific Aims, which will include spatial statistics, regression, and multi-level approaches; and (3) interpretation and dissemination of the results.
Contact: John Weeks
Land Use Weighted Areal Interpolation
Institution: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Principal Investigators: Michael Reibel and Aditya Agrawal
Contact: Michael Reibel
Measuring Spatial Segregation
Institution: Stanford University Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University
Principal Investigators: Sean Reardon (Stanford) Stephen A. Matthews (Penn State) Barrett Lee (Penn State) Glenn Firebaugh (Penn State) David O’Sullivan (University of Auckland, New Zealand) Chad Farrell (University of Alaska, Anchorage)
Grant Number: NSF SES-0520400 and SES-0520405
Description: The study of the causes, patterns, and consequences of racial and socioeconomic residential segregation requires the careful measurement of segregation patterns. This, in turn, requires that measures of segregation incorporate an understanding of spatial proximity/distance, something that is now possible due to the increasing availability, sophistication, and ease-of-use of desktop geographical information system (GIS) software. The project will develop and refine a new approach to measuring spatial (race/ethnic) segregation that addresses known flaws in other measures. This approach is based on the understanding that a segregation index is a measure of the extent to which the local environments of individuals differ in their racial or socioeconomic composition (or, more generally, on any population trait). This approach is operationalized by assuming each individual inhabits a ‘local environment’ whose population is made up of the spatially-weighted average of the populations at each point in the region of interest. Given a particular spatial weighting function, segregation is measured by computing the spatially-weighted racial (or socioeconomic) composition of the local environment of each location (or person) in the study region and then comparing the average compositions of the local environments of members of each group. This approach has a number of features that make it well-suited to measuring spatial segregation. In particular, measures derived from this approach 1) are independent of choices of tract boundaries; 2) are sensitive to segregation patterns at any scale; 3) measure both spatial exposure and spatial evenness; 4) can be computed using any theory-based definition of spatial proximity and distance; 5) measure segregation among multiple racial/ethnic groups; and 6) are readily adaptable to the measurement of income segregation. This project will develop, evaluate, and refine a set of measures of segregation that a) are computable from available census and geospatial data, and b) enable researchers to measure segregation based on theory-driven definitions of social proximity and distance. In addition, the project will develop software tools, provide training materials (on-line) and opportunities (workshops), and publish descriptive analyses of segregation patterns and trends in order to enable the research community to use these measures. More >>
Expected Outputs: This project will develop, evaluate, and refine a set of measures of segregation that a) are computable from available census and geospatial data, and b) enable researchers to measure segregation based on theory-driven definitions of social proximity and distance. In addition, the project will develop software tools, provide training materials (on-line) and opportunities (workshops), and publish descriptive analyses of segregation patterns and trends in order to enable the research community to use these measures.
Related Publications: Reardon, Sean F. and Glenn Firebaugh. 2002. "Measures of multi-group segregation." Sociological Methodology 32:33-67. Reardon, Sean F. and David O'Sullivan. 2004. "Measures of spatial segregation." Sociological Methodology 34:121-162.
Software Used: VB and ArcGIS 9.x but exploring open source
Contact: Sean F. Reardon (at Stanford) or Stephen A. Matthews (at Penn State)
Neighborhood, Food Environment, Diet and Health: Quasi-experimental Study
Institution: Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University
Principal Investigators: Stephen A. Matthews (Penn State) Steve Cummins (Queen Mary, London) Ana Diez Roux (Michigan) and the Survey Research Center at Penn State Food Trust, Philadelphia
Grant Number: NIEHS 1 R21 ES014211-01
Description: Reducing the population prevalence of obesity is a current major public health goal. Interventions to reduce the prevalence of obesity have generally focused on individual behavior and lifestyle but have met with limited success. Strategies that focus on the role of the built environment have been neglected. The purpose of this innovative pilot study is to evaluate, using a quasi-experimental design, the impact on diet and psychological health of a five-year $40 million state-government funded program – The Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative - that aims to improve the local built food retail environment in Philadelphia. The project has four specific aims. 1) To describe and compare fruit and vegetable consumption patterns and measures of psychological health in an intervention neighborhood against a matched comparison neighborhood. 2) To evaluate whether these patterns change after the opening of a new food superstore (the intervention) in the intervention neighborhood compared to a matched comparison site. 3) To explore impacts on defined subgroups of residents based on income, education and baseline consumption status. 4) To investigate changes in the retail economy in the intervention neighborhood and compare these with the comparison neighborhood. A telephone survey of residents of two Philadelphia neighborhoods (one intervention and one comparison) with an achieved sample size of four hundred and sixty-six men and women aged 18+ in each neighborhood at follow-up will be undertaken. At baseline, respondents will be contacted with a pre-notification letter which will then be followed by a telephone call designed to elicit responses to questions relating to diet, mental health, perceptions of food access, food shopping behavior, transport and a range of socio-demographic data. Respondents will then be followed-up at eight months in order to assess the effect of the intervention. In addition geographical information systems will be used to assess positive and negative changes in the local food retail economy and relate them to changes in physical access to food. Findings from the project will be used to prepare a proposal to NIH for a larger mixed-method, multi-site experimental study in a range of community settings (urban, small town, rural) throughout the USA. More >>
Related Publications: Cummins S, Findlay A, Higgins C, Petticrew M and L Sparks (under review) Large-scale food retailing as health intervention: quasi-experimental evaluation of a natural experiment. Cummins S, Sparks L, Petticrew M, Findlay A (2005) Large scale food retail interventions and diet. BMJ Cummins S, Macintyre S (2002) Food-deserts - evidence and assumption in health policy making. BMJ 325:436-8 Cummins S & Macintyre S (1999) The location of food stores in urban areas: a case study in Glasgow British Food Journal 101 (7) p542 Diez Roux AV (2001). Investigating area and neighborhood effects on health. Am J Public Health 91(11):1783-9. Diez Roux AV. (2000) Multilevel analysis in public health research. Annual Rev Public Health. 21:171-92. Diez-Roux AV, Nieto FJ, Caulfield L, et al (1999). NeighbourhoodNeighborhood differences in diet: the atherosclerosis risk in communities (ARIC) study. J Epidemiol Community Health 53:55–63. Diez-Roux AV (1998) Bringing context back in: variables and fallacies in multi-level analysis. Am J Public Health. 88(2):216-22 Diez Roux AV, Nieto FJ, Muntaner C, Tyroler HA, Comstock GW et al (1997). Neighborhood environments and coronary heart disease: a multilevel analysis. Am J Epidemiol. 146:48-63. Diez-Roux AV, Nieto FJ, Caulfield L, et al (1999). NeighbourhoodNeighborhood differences in diet: the atherosclerosis risk in communities (ARIC) study. J Epidemiol Community Health 53:55–63.
Contact: Stephen A. Matthews
Neighborhood-level characteristics of built and social environments and physical inactivity
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Principal Investigators: Riti Shimkhada
Description: The purpose of this study was to examine neighborhood-level predictors of physical inactivity using cross-sectional surveillance data on adults 18-65 years old from the 2002 and 2005 Los Angeles County Health Survey waves, integrated with neighborhood-level data, which are matched to individual-level data by census tract of residence reported in the LACHS. Using data from the 2000 Census and the Southern California Association of Governments, neighborhood-level characteristics of the built environment, such as street connectivity, were assessed using GIS software. These characteristics, along with other neighborhood-level characteristics of the social environment, were assessed to estimate their independent effects on physical inactivity and potential to explain racial/ethnic disparities in physical inactivity. This study represents the many recent studies in epidemiology that have begun to use GIS technologies for exposure assessment.
Expected Outputs: Dissertation
Software Used: ArcGIS
Contact: Riti Shimkhada
Occupational Choice in 18th Century Italy
Institution: Yale School of Public Health
Principal Investigators: Jason Fletcher
Description: I examine the spatial distribution of occupations in the city of Turin, Italy from a census taken in the early 18th century. I also examine the intergenerational correlation of occupational "choice" for father-son pairs.
Software Used: GeoDa, MATLAB
Contact: Jason Fletcher
Places as Recovery Machines: Neighborhood Change Following Major Hurricanes
Institution: State University of New York at Albany University of Oregon
Principal Investigators: Jeremy Pais James Elliott
Description: Abstract: Much research has examined the social, psychological, and economic impacts of natural disasters, but few have considered their demographic effects and fewer still have moved beyond specific case studies to consider how places, in general, recover after such catastrophes. In this study, we contribute to sociological understanding of disasters by advancing a conceptual framework of places as recovery machines and by introducing an innovative method for testing and refining general propositions about how neighborhoods change after major coastal disasters, paying particular attention to patterns and processes of power and vulnerability. Results from major hurricanes of the early 1990s show that affected regions grow substantially after major storms and this growth is highly uneven, with elite entrenchment characterizing the core zone of recovery and rapid, ethno-racially diverse growth dominating the surrounding, inner ring of recovery.
Expected Outputs: Full draft currently under review; Presenting at the 2007 PAA
Software Used: ArcGIS; Geoda; HAZUS-MR-1
Contact: Jeremy Pais jp578587@albany.edu
Population and Environment Study
Institution: University of Michigan Population and Ecology Research Laboratory
Principal Investigators: William Axinn (PI), Jennifer Barber, Ann Biddlecom, Lisa Pearce, Arland Thornton, Tom Fricke
Description: This study was originally funded through a Request for Applications (RFA) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD R01 HD-33551) for a five year period, 1995 through 2000. The study builds directly on the CVFS and uses the same study area, population, and sampling frame. The Population and Environment Study was designed to answer the following specific questions regarding the relationships between population change and environmental change: (1) To what extent do changes in marriage timing, household fission, childbearing, and migration influence changes in land use, water quality, and flora diversity? (2) To what extent do variations in land use, water quality, and flora diversity produce changes in marriage timing, household fission, child rearing, and migration? And (3) To what extent are the observed relationships between population processes and the environment produced by exogenous changes in the social and institutional context? This study includes a complete census of households within 171 neighborhoods, a household-level survey of agricultural practices and consumption patterns, land use maps of selected neighborhoods, flora data collection from surrounding forests and common lands, lab analysis and interviewer assessments of water samples collected from each neighborhood, a seasonal update of agricultural practices, and a monthly update of demographic events, including contraceptive use. A five year continuation (2001 through 2006) of the project was also subsequently granted by NICHD. The continuation grant includes funding for analysis of the data collected under the original grant, and focuses on a slightly refined set of research questions: (1) To what extent do marriage timing, household fission, childbearing, and migration influence land use and flora diversity? (2) To what extent do land use and flora diversity influence marriage, household fission, childbearing, and migration? (3) To what extent do agricultural practices and consumption patterns link population processes to environmental outcomes? And (4) To what extent are the observed relationships between population processes and the environment produced by exogenous changes in the social, economic, and institutional context? The continuation grant also includes funding for new data collection, including updates of land use and flora diversity measures, an extension of the monthly registry of demographic events, an update of the neighborhood contextual histories, a repeat of the household-level measures of agricultural practices and consumption patterns, and ethnographic information on environmentally-related behaviors and attitudes.
Contact: Bill Axinn
Reproductive Health Issues Along the Border
Institution: San Diego State University International Population Center
Principal Investigators: John R. Weeks
Description: John R. Weeks, Co-Principal Investigator (with Rubén G. Rumbaut), "Perinatal Risks and Outcomes Among Low-Income Immigrants," grant from the U.S. Public Health Service, Bureau of Maternal and Child Health and Resource Development, 1990-91. John R. Weeks and Rubén G. Rumbaut, "Infant Mortality Among Ethnic Immigrant Groups," Social Science and Medicine, 33(3): 327-334, 1991. Rubén G. Rumbaut and John R. Weeks, "Unraveling a Public Health Enigma: Why do Immigrants Experience Superior Perinatal Health Outcomes?" Research in the Sociology of Health Care, 13(B): 337-391, 1996. John R. Weeks, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Norma Ojeda, "Reproductive Outcomes Among Mexico-Born Women in San Diego and Tijuana: Testing the Migration Selectivity Hypothesis," The Journal of Immigrant Health 1(2):77-90, 1999. Rubén G. Rumbaut and John R. Weeks, "Children of Immigrants: Is Americanization Hazardous to Infant Health?" in Hiram E. Fitzgerald, Barry M. Lester, and Barry Zuckerman, editors, Children of Color: Research, Health, and Policy Issues (New York: Garland Publishing), 1999. Christopher Peak and John R. Weeks, “Does Community Context Influence Reproductive Outcomes of Mexican Origin Women in San Diego, California?”, The Journal of Immigrant Health, 4(3):125-136, 2002.
Contact: John Weeks
Spatial Segregation and Local Crime
Institution: The Ohio State University
Principal Investigators: Christopher R. Browning, Catherine Calder, Lauren J. Krivo, Mei-Po Kwan, Michael D. Maltz, Ruth D. Peterson
Grant Number: Segregation and Local Crime: An Integrated Spatial Analysis
Description: This project will explore the effect of spatial segregation on the local crime rate of 10 U.S. cities while controlling for a number of predictors of crime. These predictors will be compiled from Census Data, Land Parcel Data, and Street Network Data from each associated city.
Expected Outputs: Various publications in peer reviewed journals.
Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Population Change in Northern Orkney Islands, c. 1735-2000
Institution: The Pennsylvania State University
Principal Investigators: Jim Wood (Anthropology, Penn State) Patricia Johnson (Anthropology, Penn State) Stephen Matthews (Sociology & Anthropology, Penn State) Timothy Murtha (Lanscape Architecture, Penn State)
Grant Number: NSF HSD Proposal 0527539
Description: Studies of long-term demographic change in the modern period have been dominated by demographic transition theory (DTT), i.e., the unidirectional transition from a preindustrial agricultural regime of high fertility and high mortality to a modern industrial regime of low fertility and low mortality. Despite early descriptive evidence supporting DTT, it is now acknowledged that many localized trajectories of demographic change deviate from the narrow predictions of DTT. Moreover, DTT is not really a theory at all as it does little to explain the mechanisms underlying demographic change. Therefore, this project is designed to address not only why fertility and mortality declined in the industrial regime, but also to identify how a preindustrial demographic regime was dismantled and what new regime took its place. Recognizing that demographic regimes have both temporal and spatial dimensions, this project will use an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating the methods of historical demography, ethnography, landscape archaeology, and spatial analysis. This project will focus on the changes occurring in the northern Orkney Islands, located on the northernmost coast of mainland Scotland, from c. AD 1735-2000. The islands are an ideal location to study these topics for several reasons: 1) the islands have been continuously settled from at least AD 850, 2) Detailed records allow for demographic reconstruction and reconstruction of the material conditions going back to the 1730s, and 3) the islands have experienced significant economic and demographic changes in the last 265 years, including a peak population of 6062 persons in the 1861 census with only about 1300 persons today. During the three year term of the project we will collect and code all of the relevant demographic records, conduct field survey of farms and households, compile relevant environmental and economic data using remote sensing and historic maps, and conduct open-ended interviews with community members over the age of 60. These data will be combined within a single GIS system to understand the processes of “demographic transition” that have occurred in Orkney over the past 250 years. This project brings to bear an innovative combination of models and methods from several fields on the study of demographic and economic “modernization”. Historical demography has never before been carried out in conjunction with historical archaeology, and the combination of the two will allows the investigators to understand demographic change within its larger environmental and spatial context. Ethnographic work with living informants will allow the investigators to tap rich family histories and personal memories of change. Finally, new theoretical models and statistical procedures have been developed to support the analysis, interpretation, and generalization of the field data, and these models and procedures can be applied to data from other parts of the world. The proposed research will have positive impacts on undergraduate and graduate education and training. It is being conducted in association with an undergraduate field school funded by NSF’s program in Research Experience for Undergraduates, and we anticipate that several doctoral dissertations will result from graduate student participation in the project. The project will also have an important economic impact on the local community since the investigators are working closely with community organizations to set up a genealogical database to support heritage tourism. Finally, because the work will be widely published in professional journals and made available to the general public on a project website, advances in the scientific understanding of the modern demographic transition will be disseminated to a wide audience. More >>
Street-weighted Interpolation Techniques for Demographic Count Estimation in Incompatible Zone Systems
Institution: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Principal Investigators: Michael Reibel and Micael E. Bufalino
Contact: Michael Reibel
Ten Years of Fertility Decline in Brazil: Where, Why and How Fast
Institution: University of Wisconsin - Madison
Principal Investigators: Jeronimo O. Muniz
Grant Number: CAPES Grant#BEX1759/02-7
Description: Describe the the evolution of total fertility rates in 5506 Brazilian municipalities using demographic spatial analysis. More >>
Expected Outputs: Master thesis Paper Publication Presentation in in the PAA 2006
Related Publications: Poster presented at the IUSSP 2005, Tours, France
Software Used: ArcGIS 9.0 GeoDa GWR 3.0
Contact: Jeronimo Muniz
Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project
Institution: Princeton University The Office of Population Research at Princeton University
Principal Investigators: Marta Tienda – PI, Teresa Sullivan
Description: The Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project i(THEOP) is a multi-year study that began in fall, 2000, which investigates college planning and enrollment behavior under a policy that guarantees admission to any Texas public college or university to high school seniors who graduate in the top decile of their class. The investigators have collected administrative data from 10 colleges and universities in Texas that differ in the selectivity of their admissions. The centerpiece of the study is a two-cohort longitudinal survey of sophomores and seniors who were enrolled in Texas public schools as of spring, 2002.
Related Publications: Published Tienda, Marta. 2001. "College Admission Policies and the Educational Pipeline: Implications for Medical and Health Professions." Pp. 117-142 in Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, Lois Colburn, and Clyde H. Evans (Eds.), The Right Thing to Do, the Smart Thing to Do: Enhancing Diversity in Health Professions. Washington, DC: National Academy Press for the Institute of Medicine. Lloyd, Kim, Marta Tienda and Anna Zajacova. 2001. "Trends in Educational Achievement of Minority Students Since Brown v. Board of Education." Pp. 149-182 in Timothy Ready, Christopher Edley, and Catherine Snow (eds.), Achieving High Educational Standards for All: Conference Summary, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. National Research Council. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Forthcoming Tienda, Marta and Sunny Niu. forthcoming. “Capitalizing on Segregation, Pretending Neutrality: College Admissions and the Texas Top 10% Law.” American Law and Economics Review. Niu, Sunny; Marta Tienda; and Kalena Cortes. forthcoming. “College Selectivity and the Texas Top 10% Law: How Constrained are the Options?” Economics of Education Review. Kleykamp, Meredith A. forthcoming. “Military Enlistment Decision Making Among Youth: The Influence of Educational Goals, Military Institutional Presence and Family Background.” Social Science Quarterly. Tienda, Marta and Sunny Niu. forthcoming. “Flagships, Feeders, and the Texas Top 10% Plan.” Journal of Higher Education. Working Papers Tienda, Marta; Kalena Cortes; and Sunny Niu. 2003. “College Attendance and the Texas Top 10 Percent Law: Permanent Contagion or Transitory Promise?” Paper presented at the Conference on Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education, Sponsored by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, Sacramento, CA, October 23-25, 2003. Frost, Michelle Bellessa. 2004. “High School Students’ Educational Expectations and Race: How Does Racial Composition Matter?” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation Chapter, OPR, Princeton University. Opinion-Editorials Tienda, Marta. 2004. “Focus on Higher Education upgrades in Texas; Get past debate over top 10% law, make plan better.” The Houston Chronicle. Op-Ed Section, July 18. Tienda, Marta and Sunny Niu. 2004. “Texas’ 10-Percent Plan: the Truth Behind Numbers.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(20): B10. Tienda, Marta. 2003. “Texas’ Top 10 Percent Policy Hurts Minorities’ Chances for College.” Detroit Free Press, March 26.
Contact: Marta Tienda
The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS)
Institution: The Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research and The National Center for Geograhic Information and Analysis at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Principal Investigators: Michael F. Goodchild, PI and Director; Richard Appelbaum, co-PI; Luc Anselin, PI for Spatial Tools Development; Donald Janelle, Program Director
Grant Number: National Science Foundation BCS 9978058
Description: CSISS is dedicated to building national infrastructure to support the dissemination of spatial analytic persectives in the social sciences. It provides training workshops in the use of spatial technologies and geographically referenced data; fosters collaborative interdisciplinary networks; promotes new developments in spatial social science through expert research meetings; supports the development of new open source spatial analytic software; and maintains an extensive website of learning resources and seach tools. More >>
Expected Outputs: Enhanced research expertise through training workshops, publications, and web resource development; Improved spatial analytic tools through software development initiatives; National dissemination across the social sciences through conference presentations and conference didactic workshops. See Annual reports for more information.
Related Publications: M.F. Goodchild and D.G. Janelle, editors, Spatially Integrated Social Science (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Software Used: GeoDa and Flow Mapper
Contact:
The Philadelphia Migration Project
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Principal Investigators: Michael Katz (History)
Description: To document the residential patterns of demographic characteristics of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. This project is a interdisciplinary collaborative, including the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, political science and demography.
Software Used: Geoda, ArcGIS 9
The Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project Monograph
Institution: Harvard School of Public Health
Principal Investigators: Nancy Krieger
Grant Number: National Institutes of Health (1RO1HD36865-01) via the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Behavioral & Social Science Research (OBSSR)
Description: The problem: A lack of socioeconomic data in most US public health surveillance systems. Absent these data, we cannot: (a) monitor socioeconomic inequalities in US health; (b) ascertain their contribution to racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in health; and (c) galvanize public concern, debate, and action concerning how we, as a nation, can achieve the vital goal of eliminating social disparities in health. We accordingly launched the Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project to ascertain which area-based socioeconomic measures [ABSMs], at which geographic level (census block group [BG], census tract [CT], or ZIP Code [ZC]), would be suitable for monitoring US socioeconomic inequalities in the health. Drawing on 1990 census data and public health surveillance systems of 2 New England states, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, we analyzed data for: (a) 7 types of outcomes: mortality (all cause and cause-specific), cancer incidence (all-sites and site-specific), low birth weight, childhood lead poisoning, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, and non-fatal weapons-related injuries, and (b) 18 different ABSMs. We conducted these analyses for both the total population and diverse racial/ethnic-gender groups, at all 3 geographic levels. Our key methodologic finding was that the ABSM most apt for monitoring socioeconomic inequalities in health was the census tract (CT) poverty level, since it: (a) consistently detected expected socioeconomic gradients in health across a wide range of health outcomes, among both the total population and diverse racial/ethnic-gender groups, (b) yielded maximal geocoding and linkage to area-based socioeconomic data (compared to BG and ZC data), and (c) was readily interpretable to and could feasibly be used by state health department staff. Using this measure, we were able to provide evidence of powerful socioeconomic gradients for virtually all the outcomes studied, using a common metric, and further demonstrated that: (a) adjusting solely for this measure substantially reduced excess risk observed in the black and Hispanic compared to the white population, and (b) for half the outcomes, over 50% of cases overall would have been averted if everyone’s risk equaled that of persons in the least impoverished CT, the only group that consistently achieved Healthy People 2000 goals a decade ahead of time. US public health surveillance data should be geocoded and routinely analyzed using the CT-level measure “percent of persons below poverty,” thereby enhancing efforts to track—and improve accountability for addressing—social disparities in health.
Contact: Pamela D. Waterman
Understanding dynamic resource Management Systems and land cover transitions in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
Institution: East-West Center Honolulu, Hawaii
Principal Investigators: JEFFERSON FOX, EAST-WEST CENTER, BENCHAPHAN EKASINGH, CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND YAYOI FUJITA, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LAOS THOMAS GIAMBELLUCA, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII, MANOA LOUIS LEBEL, CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND NIC
Grant Number: NSF Grant #BCS-0434043
Description: Contemporary concerns with climate change, global environmental change, and sustainability have rejuvenated interest in the development of an integrative theory of human-environment relationships. Montane mainland Southeast Asia is a region of great biological and cultural diversity that has come under close scrutiny in the last several decades as a result of both real and perceived deforestation, land degradation, and most recently, the conversion of traditional agricultural practices to more permanent cash crop agriculture driven by regional and global markets. This project seeks to understand how resource management systems in montane mainland Southeast Asia are changing in the wake of commodification of resources in order to appreciate how these changes may affect sustainable resource use, landscape transformation, and land cover. The project is constructed around three broad research objectives: 1. To use an environmental entitlements approach to inform economic, demographic, institutional, and cultural data collection at household, district, provincial, national, and international scales on factors affecting land-cover and land-use change in the region. This analysis will be used to develop narratives of economic, demographic, institutional and cultural change in the region including changing political economics, environmental feedbacks on land use, and external shocks. 2. To link economic, demographic, institutional and cultural data to a comprehensive, high-resolution spatial database of land cover in montane mainland Southeast Asia developed in a project funded by NASA (see below). 3. To develop cellular automata and agent-based models that utilize the narratives of economic, demographic, institutional, and cultural change within the spatial framework to address “what if” questions concerning hypothesized changes in social and biophysical variables and to increase our understanding beyond the available empirical data. A multidisciplinary team (including economists, foresters, geographers, and social scientists is collecting economic, demographic, institutional and cultural data and tying these data together in a multi-temporal high-resolution spatial database (the spatial database is being put together as part of a NASA funded project). Data are being used to develop a narrative of land-cover and land-use change in montane mainland Southeast Asia. We are also building cellular automata and agent-based models to address "what if" questions concerning hypothesized changes in social and biophysical variables and to increase our understanding beyond the available empirical data.
Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa and Implication for Malaria Control
Institution: Princeton University The Office of Population Research at Princeton University
Principal Investigators: Jennifer Keiser, Jurg Utzinger, Marcia Caldas De Castro, Thomas A. Smith, Marcel Tanner and Burton H. Singer
Contact: Burton Singer
Urbanization, Health and Environmental Quality in Coastal Ghana
Institution: Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Principal Investigators: Michael White, Principal Investigator and Professor of Sociology Stephen McGarvey, Professor of Community Health Kofi Awusabo-Asare, Professor of Geography, Dean of Social Sciences Scott Nixon, Professor, Graduate School of Oceanography, Universi
Description: This project draws upon existing links between Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Cape Coast in Cape Coast, Ghana, to examine the social and demographic processes that are closely linked to health and environmental health risks, and how these in turn influence local thinking about environmental issues. The project includes such studies as the relationship between population concentration and water pollution in coastal lagoons; the determinants of environmental attitudes; knowledge of disease etiology, and the relationship between urbanization and fertility. The setting for this research is coastal Ghana, chosen for the ecological sensitivity of its coastal zone. More >>
Related Publications: White, M.J., E. Tagoe, C. Stiff, K. Adazu, and D.J. Smith. 2005. "Urbanization and the Fertility Transition in Ghana," Population Research and Policy Review. 24:59-83. White, M., S. Muhidin, C. Stiff, E. Tagoe and R. Knight. 2005. "Migration and Fertility in Coastal Ghana: An Event History Analysis," in S. Agyei-Mensah, J. Casterline and D. Agyeman, eds., Reproductive Change in Ghana: Recent Patterns and Future Prospects. Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, Legon: 101-115. Chattopadhyay, A. and M.J. White. "Migration and Fertility in Ghana: Beyond Rural-Urban Differentials." Hunter, L.M. 2005. "Household Strategies in the Face of Resource Scarcity: Are They Associated with Development Priorities?" Forthcoming in Population Research and Development Review. Reed, H.E., Andrzejewski, C.S., and M.J. White. 2005. "An Event History Analysis of Internal Migration in Ghana: Determinants of Interregional Mobility among Residents of Coastal Central Region." Under review. White, M.J. and L.M. Hunter. 2005. "Public Perception of Environmental Issues in a Developing Setting." Andrzejewski, C.S. 2005. "Knowledge of Etiology in Coastal Ghana: What Do People Know and How Do They Know It?" Under review. Andrzejewski, C.S. 2005. "Child Health Knowledge in Coastal Ghana: A Qualitative Study of Knowledge of Malaria, Diarrheal Disease and Respiratory Infection." Under review.
Software Used: STATA NVIVO GIS
Contact: Justin Buszin
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