fall 2009

gistf ro m th e m i ll

genes and the environmentresearcher-couple plumb DuneDin stuDy together

The social science magazine of Duke universiTySponSored by the Social Science reSearch inStitute

fall 2009, volume 3, iSSue 2

t is my privilege to introduce the fifth issue of GIST from the Mill. GIST is a

magazine that provides news and fea-tures related to the social and behav-ioral sciences at Duke and its catalyst, the social science research institute (ssri). as always, this issue covers a variety of research areas, with features on the new nsf-funded mobile behavioral research laboratory; the profoundly important ongoing longitudinal health study in new Zealand directed by avshalom caspi and terri moffitt; nancy hill’s new study on mid-dle school students showing that current academic performance can be boosted by stressing its links to future goals; and Ken

land’s ongoing monitoring of the well-being of children and the likely impacts on chil-dren of the current recession. these studies demonstrate the importance and breadth of ongoing work in the social sciences at Duke.

over the past year ssri joined a group of seven interdisciplinary university institutes, all of which were formally designated in Duke’s strategic plan “making a Difference.” the university institutes and their affili-ated centers contribute interdisciplinary, problem-focused research and education,

but each has its own character. ssri aug-ments the research infrastructure avail-able to Duke social science faculty and students, and supports interdisciplinary collaborations among social scientists and others. specifically, our administrative, educational, and data services cores, plus our Diisp labs, provide key infrastructure to individual investigators and to a set of research centers affiliated with ssri: center for child and family policy (ccfp), center on globalization, governance & competitiveness (cggc), Duke university population research institute (Dupri) and center for the study of race, ethnicity and gender in the social sciences (regss).

interdisciplinary projects are jump-started through ssri programs such as the program for advanced research in the social sciences (pariss) and faculty fellows program.

Despite current fiscal constraints, ssri retains high ambitions and has important goals for the next year. first, we are very excited about the 2009-10 faculty fellows program, Decisions and Behavior: from Society to the Brain (and back), convened by rachel Kranton, economics, and scott huettel, psychology and neuroscience. other participants include: phil costanzo, psychology and neuroscience; michael platt, neurobiology; philipp sadowski, economics; seth sanders, economics; lynn smith-lovin, sociology; Duncan thomas, economics; and neil Vidmar, law. the goal of this year-long effort is to generate re-search collaborations and theoretical devel-opment that build on emerging knowledge about how the brain stores and processes information. We hope to find more out about how the human brain is shaped by experience, how it processes information and leads to behaviors that then reinforce

or reproduce the status quo, or change it. We look forward to building on this initia-tive to develop strong intellectual and research ties to a fellow signature institute, the Duke institute for brain sciences (Dibs).

the 2009-10 year will also see significant new activity in Dupri—Duke has built an impressive faculty in the population sciences. Dupri aims to be a world-class population research center. past Dupri director and nas member James Vaupel led a group of population scientists who won a national institute of aging center grant. new Dupri director seth sanders is now organizing an effort to win a parallel center grant from nichD (national institute of child and human Development). Kenneth land leads an effort that won renewal of Duke’s training grant in population aging; other training grants are being planned. the development of population research activity at Duke is an area to watch.

this will also be a year to reflect on and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the center for child and family policy (ccfp). Kenneth Dodge has built a highly visible and active research center that contributes important basic research, influences family policy at local, state and national levels, and evaluates policy interventions. among its recent accomplishments: winning a niDa center grant focused on addiction science, and a field project where all babies born in Durham will be visited by a nurse and care-takers counseled on infant care and support services with the goal of reducing child neglect and abuse. ccfp will have a set of activities to celebrate their anniversary.

i have only scratched the surface of activi-ties of ssri and its affiliate centers. see our website for more information and the most recent updates. (www.ssri.duke.edu)

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2in brief

16profile: faculty

17 profile: student

18ask the social scientist

19Questions

20 technology

21 the strip

Back Coverfinal note

in eVery issue

6 genes and the environment

10 Keeping an eye on child Well-being

12mobile behavioral research lab: taking social science research on the road

14 new research encourages parents to help teens look forward

features

editor: courtney p. orning

Assistant editor: claire cusick

Designer: regina barnhill-bordowww.bdesign-studio.com

gIst Advisory Board:Karl leif batespaul Dudenhefer andrea fereshtehhallie Knuffmanrichard lucic courtney p. orning erika patall ara Wilson

this publication is printed with vegetable-based inks on chlorine free paper containing 10% post-consumer fiber.

please recycle this magazine.

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newsIn BrIef

eACh of us hAs grAppleD with our sense of identity at one time or another—perhaps frivolously, as a child fantasizing about descend-ing from royalty, or more earnestly, as a minority hoping to escape an oppressive environment. these days, people searching for answers about themselves and their family history can study their Dna.

genetic testing, once employed primarily for diagnosing disease, establishing paternity, or even police work, has now become a popular tool for determining ancestry. Dozens of companies claim to uncover one’s genetic past, but even then they can provide only part of the picture.

charmaine royal, associate research professor in the Duke institute for genome sciences & policy, has spent much of her career re-searching how genetics and genomics influence concepts of race and

ancestry. so she has a reminder for those who might be considering plunking down hard-earned money to these services: genetics will never determine a person’s entire story. “no doubt our genetic make-up is connected to our geographical origins, our genealogy, and our identity,” royal said. “but our identity is a com-plex web that is shaped not just by our genes, but also by cultural and historical events and experiences.”

royal agreed to co-chair a task force on ancestry testing, which is examining the scientific and social issues surrounding this application of genomic tech-nology. in particular, the task force expressed concern that scientists providing the testing make its limits

clearer to consumers, the scientific community and the public. ancestry testing appears to be particularly popular among african

americans, who comprised most of royal’s study subjects. some simply want to learn their history; others have traveled to meet their “long-lost relatives” or even chosen to gain citizenship in the country where tests indicate their ancestors once resided. “many african americans express a sense of feeling lost in this country and that this gives them the opportunity to go back to a place where in their minds and in their hearts they see as their real home,” royal said.

as her work—and the work of the task force—continues, royal hopes that scientists will better communicate to the public the limitations of ancestry testing and the reality that genetics does not encompass all of their history, nor their entire destiny. in royal’s words, “there is more to us than our Dna.”

IDentIty In A Bottle?AnCestry testIng mAy promIse Answers, But Be AwAre of Its lImItAtIons by marla VaceK broaDfoot

“ genetics will never determine a person’s entire story.”

—charmaine royal

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the reseArCh of Jen’nAn reAD, associate professor of sociology and global health at Duke university, is debunking a pervasive stereotype of muslim americans. contrary to the myth that they are devout and/or extremists, read’s research found that muslim americans are a much more diverse population than popular opinion dictates. “to make an analogy, you can think of christian americans, which are a very large majority population in the u.s.,” read said. “the term ‘christian american’ encompasses a wide range of people: from the very religious who are in church two or three times a week and consider themselves very devout, to very secular christians who perhaps only go to church at easter and christmas.”

she’s found that diversity extends to other aspects of muslim-american life. “in the same way that christian americans include black evangelicals, white evangelicals, protestants and catholics, muslim americans are quite diverse in terms of their ethnic and racial makeup,” noted read. “there is a tendency that when you say ‘muslim’, that people think ‘arab.’ in fact, only about a quarter of muslim americans are arabs. While the largest ethnic group is

south asians, including pakistanis and indonesians, a big propor-tion of muslim-americans are u.s. born african-american converts who have chosen traditional islam.

“i could go down the line as far as muslim american diversity including socioeconomic status and education,” read said. “muslim americans as a group are more highly educated and more well off in terms of household income than your average american.” in fact, read has found that when looking at the well-being of the u.s. popu-lation, the more highly educated people are, the more they look like one another rather than members of their same ethnic or religious group. “it’s somehow seen as if you’re arab or muslim, that is your primary identity and the most important thing determining how you think, act or believe,” she said. “but in reality, it’s not: if you’re highly educated and you make a lot of money, you tend to be liberal on so-cial attitudes; you tend to be conservative when it comes to taxes.”

“the social sciences in general are very interested in how groups interact in society,” she added. When you tease out some of these differences, you find things that you can’t see if you only look at one majority population.”

DeBunkIng A muslIm AmerICAnstereotypeby michele lynn

BuIlDIng on more than 20 years of research in eastern north carolina, sanford school of public policy professor sherman James is beginning a community case study that will tell a more complete story of how civil rights advances affected the health of african-americans.

During the period James will study, african-american gains in vot-ing rights, housing, education, employment and access to medical care were mirrored in their improved health outcomes. rates of infant mortality and cardiovascular disease among blacks in pitt county, as elsewhere in the south, fell dramatically, although they never declined to rates experienced by whites.

During a three-month sabbatical in pitt county in 2005, James collected 38 oral histories. he talked with respondents about how civil rights legislation had affected their lives in the areas of medical care, jobs and housing. among the interviewees was Dr. andrew

best, a general practitioner and the only black doctor in pitt county in 1965.

in the early 1960s, best and Dr. malene irons, a white woman pe-diatrician, co-organized a community interracial committee aimed at promoting desegregation in pitt county, beginning with hospital-based infant care. in the mid 1960s, federal legislation mandating nondiscriminatory use of all federal funds enabled them to consoli-date and expand their pioneering civil rights activity in both medical and non-medical arenas.

a rapidly expanding middle class population, black as well as white, along with the rapid growth of medical care services in the area during the 1970s, make pitt county an ideal laboratory to investigate early influences of civil rights legislation and related social polices, James said.

JAmes BegIns CAse stuDy of heAlth effeCtsof DesegregAtIon In pItt Countyby Karen Kemp

this is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in the summer 2009 issue of Public Policy Focus.

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when seth sAnDers, professor of economics and public policy in the Department of economics and sanford school of public policy, began his research on family demography in the early 1990s, little attention was being paid to lesbian and gay families. now, more than a decade later, thanks to sanders and other researchers in the field, the study of the gay and lesbian population is a mainstream topic in the social sciences.

in many aspects of life, gay families differ from heterosexual families in ways that are explainable by the different constraints that they face, sanders said. “there has been a great deal written on why gay communities develop where they do,” he said. “some of the work has emphasized tolerance toward sexual minorities in particular areas of the country. and there is certainly historic work that shows historic links of gay communities with the decommissioning of sailors during World War ii. so, historians and sociologists who have looked at this have emphasized the special conditions in the u.s. that led gay men to places such as san francisco, san Diego, Washington, D.c., and new york city.”

“in our research, we point out the simple fact is that it’s more difficult for gay men to have children than it is for heterosexual couples,” he said. “and children are expensive. We look at how much of the location decision can simply be explained by the fact that families who have large amounts of disposable income sort to these kinds of cities. in fact, what we find is that can actually explain everything. you don’t have to rely on the gay community being different in what they would like out of cities or having a different history to explain why they are in the cities they are. they are located very similarly to other dual-income couples who don’t have children.” sanders added with a laugh, “the answer to the question, ‘Why do gay men live in san francisco?’ is ‘because they can!’ it’s such a beautiful city that more people would live there if they could.” sanders notes that lesbian couples—who are less likely than heterosexual couples but more likely than male couples to have children—tend to sort to the less expensive parts of cities and in general, sort to less expensive cities.

“it’s unfortunate that work on minority communities often gets ghettoized into very small subsets of social science researchers,” he added. “the more people who think hard about an area that is as interesting as this, the better science we’re going to get.”

the eConomICs of lgBtby michele lynn

“the more people who think hard about an area that is an interesting as this, the better science we’re going to get.”

—seth sanDers

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Although reDuCIng heAlth DIspArItIes in remote parts of the world is a daunting task, Duke university students are helping to make it happen. students from different disciplines are coming together to help the sick in the world’s most challenged communities, while completing their own training.

this past summer, more than 50 students completed fieldwork in 11 countries—including honduras, india, tanzania and uganda—through the Duke global health institute (Dghi). they worked on a range of health education, outreach and surveying projects that were tailored to the needs of each community. the students represented eight of Duke’s 10 schools, with majors ranging from biomedical engineering and economics to public policy studies, religion and psychology.

“this trip has taught me that multidisciplinary public health projects have the potential to save more lives and improve more people’s quality of life,” said meryl colton ’11.

colton spent the summer in the rural haitian community of thomassique to educate families about the importance of safe drinking water. she’s learned the severity of health problems in haiti due to contamination, which is preventable with a simple water treatment system. colton, whose major is environmental science, finds it fascinating to learn how people’s environments affect their health. she worked alongside christina booth ’10, who is interested in how someone’s belief system affects their health.

“religion is an interesting angle for studying what motivates people to make certain decisions in their lives,” said booth, whose goal was to understand how simple water interventions may affect behavior. booth said religion is useful in studying global health be-

cause “seemingly illogical health decisions can be better understood within the context of a person’s particular culture.”

in the small ugandan village of naama, five students focused their fieldwork on community health and development. students learned firsthand from ugandan families that poverty is the main reason why they don’t see a doctor, and that most believe that health care is only necessary for those who are sick. students challenged this notion among schoolchildren, with the hope of teaching them about prevention, so they may lead healthier lives and influence their neighbors to do the same.

by the end of the trip, neha limaye ’11 felt proud that ugandan village leaders understood their strategy for improving community health and well-being. limaye and her peers taught several courses at a local school, donated classroom and medical supplies, and built “tippy tap” hand-washing stations with the children. the hard work by each Duke student culminated in the community’s first health fair, where the guest of honor spoke about uplifting a community through its children. more than 1,000 people attended the event, which also provided screenings for hiV, syphilis and diabetes. before returning to the united states, the students made contacts with community partners so they can help organize next year’s fair, with the hope of making it an annual event.

as students continue to foster collaboration both among themselves and within the communities where they volunteered, they are real-izing their efforts can make a difference in the health and well-being of others. newly reaffirmed by their summer fieldwork experiences, students can now carry their appreciation for working with people from different backgrounds and cultures back into the classroom.

Duke stuDents teAm up to Improve heAlth In DevelopIng CountrIes by alyssa Zamora

l to r: sharmistha rudra raising awareness about the dangers of tobacco use among high school children; matt gay addressing health care needs; meryl colton conducting an education session on safe drinking water.

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by mary-russell roberson

genesAnD the envIronment:the DuneDin stuDy


avshalom caspi and terrie moffitt met at a conference devoted to deviant pathways from childhood to adulthood. their posters were side by side. moffitt’s was about the relationship between conduct disorders in childhood and criminal behavior in adolescence; her data was drawn from a longitudinal study of 1,000 people born in Dunedin, new Zealand in 1972 and 1973. “i really liked her data,” caspi said. “i was quite enchanted by her and by the Dunedin study.”


in 1989, caspi and moffitt wed and began working on the Dunedin study together. today they are both professors in the de-partments of psychology and neuroscience, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and the institute for genome sciences and policy.

moffitt became involved in the study when the participants were 13 and is now the associate director. “other studies are longer or larger, but this is unique because it has assessed both mental health and physical health, in great depth,” moffitt said. as children, participants underwent eight hours of rigorous clinical assessment every two years. now that they are adults, they are assessed every five years.

Dozens of researchers from all over the world use the Dunedin data to study every-thing from dental health to asthma to fertili-ty. caspi and moffitt lead the research teams related to social issues, mental health, and the gene-environment interactions.

moffitt said the quality of the mental health data is one of the strengths of the study. larger studies assess mental health through mail-in questionnaires or front-door interviews (neither of which inspire trust or full disclosure by those being surveyed) or by checking medical records (missing those who never seek

medical treatment for their mental health problems). “We can really do the stress history and the mental health a lot better,” she said. “We can interview people face to face and ask them if they thought of com-mitting suicide this year, if they quarreled with their partner, if they hit their partner. their willingness to give frank reports is enhanced because we’ve never violated their confidentiality.” With the exception of life-threatening situations, all information is kept private.

as the participants age, the focus of research must change too. “it keeps avshalom and me on our toes,” moffitt said. “every five years we have to learn a whole new topic of research and data collection.”

the two are preparing for the age-38 assessment, which takes place next year. “one of our next goals is to study how recurrent clinical psychiatric conditions hasten the aging process,” caspi said. “it’s amazing. you look at people who are the same chronological age and you see these profound differences. Where do those dif-ferences come from?” they plan to collect information on memory function and bio-markers of aging, including lung capacity, periodontal disease, bone mineral density, inflammation, glucose tolerance, wrinkling, and the length of telomeres (the caps on the end of chromosomes).

caspi said their goal is to identify ways to prevent premature aging. “you can say stress is bad for brain and body, but how do you treat stress?” he asked. “but you can actually treat psychiatric disorders.”

the pair also plans to continue to work on the genetics of stress resistance. in 2003, they and some colleagues published a paper showing that people with a short ver-sion of a particular allele in their genome were more likely to become depressed following major life crises. since then, laboratory studies with both humans and rhesus monkeys have shown that people and monkeys with the short version are more likely to become anxious and fearful in the face of stress as compared to those with the long version.

although a recent well-publicized meta-analysis of a dozen or so epidemiological studies among humans failed to replicate those findings, moffitt said many of the studies in the meta-analysis used unreli-able data-collection methods. “the finding is definitely there for studies that have good measurements,” she said. “and i really believe the finding is being validated by neuroscience experiments.”

although media headlines often call the short version of the allele the “depression

husband and wife team, caspi and moffitt, work together on the Dunedin study.

“ We can really do the stress history and the mental health a lot better. We can interview people face to face and ask them if they thought of committing suicide this year, if they quarreled with their partner, if they hit their partner. their willingness to give frank reports is enhanced because we’ve never violated their confidentiality.”

—terrie moffitt


gene,” moffitt said that gives the wrong im-pression. “i think it’s important that people know that genes don’t act deterministi-cally,” she said. the gene is only triggered, she says, in those who experience major life stresses, such as child abuse or aban-donment or death of a parent.

caspi said they will continue to work on the genetics of stress resistance, and he’s confident their original findings will hold up. furthermore, they are pursuing other intriguing genetic clues to help explain why some people are more resilient than others. “this is not going to be about one gene,” he said. “there are many genes that are go-ing to be involved in stress resistance.”

answering these kinds of questions about genes and the environment wasn’t pos-sible when the Dunedin study began. the participants gave their first Dna samples at age 26. in order to look more closely at the interaction between genes and environment, caspi and moffitt started the environmental risk longitudinal twin study in britain, which follows more than 1,000 pairs of twins born in britain in 1994 and 1995. these children gave their first Dna samples as 5-year-olds.

experience gained in Dunedin informs all aspects of the british study. “it gives us a

chance to correct all the mistakes we made in Dunedin,” moffitt said. “there are always things you wish you could have done differ-ently, or new concepts coming online.”

for example, someone in Dunedin came across a box of files in the basement that contained data that was collected at age 11, but never analyzed. one of the questions asked the children if they had ever heard voices or seen ghosts. about 5 percent said yes. When the files were discovered, the study participants were in their late 20s. moffitt found that about half of the young adults who had experienced psychotic breaks were in that group of children.

as a result, moffitt decided to ask the 12-year-olds in the british twin study whether they heard voices or saw ghosts. again, about 5 percent said yes. “the most ominous thing was they had already started self harming,” she said. one had swallowed a bottle of aspirin; others had cut themselves. “none of these children had been detected by any doctor of helped in any way,” moffitt said. “it suggests that anyone who is interested in children’s mental health should start asking them these questions.”

caspi and moffitt spend their summers working on the twin study at the institute of

psychiatry at the King’s college in london, where they are also on the faculty. they try to spend about a month every year in Dunedin. teams of students and post-doctor-al fellows in Durham, london, and Dunedin analyze the flow of data and help keep the projects running smoothly in their absence.

of the tri-continental lifestyle, caspi said, “on any given day, it’s either terribly roman-tic or terribly difficult.” originally from israel, he moved a lot as a child. “i’ve led a rather peripatetic life,” he said. “i’m loving living here [Durham] because it’s like no other place i’ve lived before. novelty is good.”

the pair also spends time in randolph county, where moffitt grew up and where her father, siblings and cousins still live. “We bought my grandparents’ farm so we go there on weekends,” she said. “We’re plant-ing fruit trees. right now it’s a poison ivy farm. We have a dream that we want to make it a nice place by the time we retire.”

at the last assessment, at age 32, 96 percent of the living members participated. “the participants have come to understand that one of the main exports of new Zealand is health care information,” moffitt says. “they feel a sense of bonding and trust with the study, like an olympic team would.” furthermore, the free plane ticket home is a significant incen-tive for those who live in australia, the uK, the us, and canada.

canada 3

uSa 12

uk 3

europe 6

mid eaSt 2

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auStralia 141

pacific 2

nz 742

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s a result of the current recession, the well-being of children and younger adults is likely to decline

over the next couple of years to its lowest level in decades. that’s according to the latest projections of the child and youth Well-being index project, an ongoing effort at Duke university to monitor key indicators of the health and welfare of young people.

the project coordinator is Kenneth c. land, the John franklin crowell professor of sociology and Demography at Duke. “the index number for child well-being may fall in 2010 to its 1975 level,” land explained. “all the gains in child well-being that we have attained over the past 35 years could be wiped out.”

the project is unique in that it predicts the effects of current circumstances on child well-being. “this is uncharted territory,” land said. “no one, to the best of our knowl-edge, has engaged in this kind of systematic anticipatory exercise for child and youth well-being. but since that’s the case, the impacts we have projected must be consid-ered tentative.”

still, land is confident that the projec-tions will prove reliable. “that’s because the composite indices and key social indicators we use are evidence-based, that is, they are based on empirical research on factors that affect subjective well-being, not on some predetermined theory of the good life,” he explained. in addition, the data series used to construct the overall composite well-being index date back to 1975, and therefore the study already contains evidence of the im-pacts of three previous recessions (1981–82, 1990–91, and 2001-02) on child and youth well-being; the projections are based in part on the evidence from those periods.

according to the latest report from the project, the percentage of children in poverty

Keeping an eye on

child Well-beingby paul DuDenhefer

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will peak at 21 in 2010; more than 25 percent of children will have at least one parent not working full-time year-round; and median family income will decline. family income will fall especially among households headed by a single male, from $38,100 in 2007 to $33,300 in 2010. over the same pe-riod, households headed by a single female will see their family income will drop from $24,950 to $23,000.

“We also expect that we’ll see a ‘reces-sion obesity’ uptick,” land said. “as fami-lies feel more strapped financially, there will be a greater temptation to buy inex-pensive fast food that is high in calories

and fat. rates of childhood obesity are already rising; the recession may acceler-ate them further.”

and unlike most recessions, the present one will likely disrupt the living arrange-ments of the young. normally, in a reces-sion, vulnerable families who might want to move cannot because they do not have the money. “but in this recession,” land explained, “because it is centered so much on the housing market, we’re going to see more and more poor families lose their houses.”

the child well-being index is constructed from data 28 indicators of child well-being: poverty rates, infant mortality rates, and reading test scores, as well as the rate of illicit drug use, the rate of voting in presidential elections, and the percentage

of children who report that religion is “very important,” to name just a few. each indica-tor is in one of seven categories of well-being: family economic well-being; health; safety and behavior; education; community connectedness; social relationships; and emotional and spiritual well-being. the seven categories have consistently been identified as important by a long line of research on subjective well-being.

“What’s important is not any particular index number itself but the trend,” land emphasized. “are things getting better for children? or are they getting worse or not changing at all?”

the base year of the project is 1975, a time when many series of data began to be collected. as the base year, the index for 1975 is 100. the index for all other years is meant to be compared to 100.

starting from 100 in the base year, the index generally declined until it reached its lowest point in 1994, when it was 91.29. it then rose over the next decade and stood at 103.07 in 2008. it is expected to fall to nearly 100 in 2010.

“our index takes into account not only income and health, but areas that affect and give us a picture of the whole child. are they tightly connected to their community, for instance? if a child drops out of high school and is unemployed, that child is not connected to mainstream schooling and economic institutions, and he (or she) is

susceptible to criminal and other destruc-tive behaviors,” land said.

“the goal of the project is to promote awareness. america has a strong civil sector, and by informing parents, civic groups, and churches, among others, of what the current recession may do to our children, they can pick up where the public sector leaves off. social institutions do adapt to changing trends. one reason the index increased after its low point in the early 1990s is that our public services met the new needs that had arisen in the 1980s. We began to see more after-school programs, for instance, in the mid-nineties, to address increasing rates of single parenthood and mothers employed outside the home.”

the data used to construct the index are compiled mostly from government sources, especially the u.s. bureau of the census and the centers for Disease control.

in June, land presented the latest index and projections to the new america foundation, in Washington, D.c. “When i make a public presentation of an annual report on the index project in Washington, folks often look for a correlation between the trends and the political party in control of the White house and the congress,” he said. “but the domains take into account a complex mix of indicators that defy that kind of simple analysis. many social, demographic, and economic forces are at work to cause the trends in the time series of our indicators and composite indices. politics and public policy are part of that mix, but not the whole story. this often confounds the pundits. in fact, one com-mentator from a conservative think tank remarked that some of our indicators and findings are favorable to traditional rightist thinking, while others are amenable to traditional leftist thinking.”

“ the goal of the project is to promote awareness. america has a strong civil sector, and by informing parents, civic groups, and churches, among others, of what the current recession may do to our children, they can pick up where the public sector leaves off.”

—Kenneth c. lanD

the child and youth Well-being index project is funded by the foundation for child Development, a national, private philanthropy whose mission is to promote the well-being of children.

“research in our field is mostly question-based,” said mark leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. “We need to isolate people, do computer-based testing, and when we do interviews we need privacy.”

researchers are often limited to studying the population that is willing to come to campus labs for their studies, leary added. scientists can tap into the university de-mographic for some studies, but they need to go outside campus borders for others requiring a diversity of ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic groups.

“We needed to design a real experimental lab on wheels,” he said.

that’s where the research mobile comes in. the nearly 40-foot mobile behavioral

research laboratory can take social scientists directly to the populations they want to study, along with all the tools and instruments they would have at their disposal in a stationary lab facility. conceived by leary with support from social science faculty across the univer-sity, the research mobile is funded by a grant from the national science foundation and arrives on campus this semester.

“this facility will allow us to study not only samples of the population that are

hard to reach, but certain topics that we can’t study [on campus],” said leary, citing potential research examples such as polling places, indian reservations and churches.

“as social scientists, our goal is to under-stand and improve the human condition—why people think, feel and behave the way they do,” he said. “this will allow us to get more diverse samples and study phenom-ena not located here.”

leary designed the research mobile with the help of former Duke faculty member Wendy Wood and research associate David neal. all three had experience building lab facilities on campus, but faced new chal-lenges building a mobile lab unit.

“We had to learn about weight distribution to the axles on the vehicle, decide whether we would need a truck to pull it, and how much air conditioning was needed,” leary explained. after soliciting bids from differ-ent companies with experience creating facilities like bloodmobiles, they decided on a featherlite trailer pulled by a truck. the facility has a distinct blue color and graphic of people splashed across the exterior.

inside, the unit is equipped with five soundproof cubicles with computers and audio-visual recording equipment, a

larger room for small group studies, and a psychophysiology measurement system capable of monitoring heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response and respiration—essentially the same features available in the state-of-the-art experi-mental research facility that is part of the Duke interdisciplinary initiative in social psychology (Diisp).

also like the Diisp lab, the research mobile is available to any researcher at Duke and from surrounding universities with an idea and plan for how to use it.

one of those potential users is Duke politi-cal science professor John aldrich. “my area is studying elections,” he said, “and we have been dominated by the survey. you get to ask a whole lot of people a whole lot of ques-tions. that’s very useful, but it’s limited.”

aldrich said the research mobile would be helpful for studying voters as they are making decisions about candidates and at places where they are engaged in voting.

“bringing them to [campus] could create a sort of artificial environment instead of a more natural setting where we can inter-

by anDrea fereshteh

1 2 g i St f ro m t h e m i l l • fa l l 2 0 0 9

moBIle BehAvIorAl reseArCh lAB taking social science research on the

natural disasters, union picket lines and even the north carolina state fair are all ripe with opportunities for social science research. but they also present challenges for researchers at Duke university and elsewhere in the triangle.

w w w. S S r i . d u k e . e d u 1 3

for more information about the research mobile, visit: http://ssri.duke.edu/diisp.php

or contact: meredith terry, ssrierwin mill building2024 W. main st.Durham nc [email protected]

view them, study them and do our various projects with them,” he said.

bypassing the artificial environment created in a stationary lab is a key benefit of the research mobile, said David neal, who is now at the university of southern california after several years running Duke’s Diisp lab. “We try to create in a university environment scenarios and situ-ations that map on to everyday life,” he said. “We try to simulate the real world in the artificiality of the lab environment.”

With the research mobile, someone studying religiosity can take the unit direct-ly to a church and get people as they are coming and going, neal said, thus relying less on simulating real-world experiences.

rick hoyle, professor of psychology and neuroscience, also plans to use the research mobile. a social psychologist, hoyle studies self-control. going beyond the campus community is crucial for his research, he said. “We’re particularly interested in situations in which people are unable to control their behavior, such as dieting or adhering to medical advice,” he said. “We can imagine parking the research mobile near Duke hospital. the nice thing about this unit is it has every-thing in it—it is a mobile lab facility.”

hoyle stresses the benefit of using the research mobile to connect with hard-to-reach populations for academic studies. “We have good access to Duke students and staff and people near campus, but we don’t have a good mechanism to gaining access to populations off campus,” he

said. “a lot of research questions, really to be answered well, require venturing out to these other populations.”

the interdisciplinary nature of the research mobile is part of what made the project go from idea to reality, said leary and neal. “the tools really matter,” neal said. “intellectual openness and forums are critical parts of interdisciplinary process but a huge component is logistical—having shared physical spaces that draw people together are a huge piece of the puzzle.”

leary agreed. “Duke puts more time, effort, energy and money into promoting interdisciplinary things,” leary said. “Duke clearly says it’s expected. a lot of times you try to talk across the wall and people don’t want to talk, but here they do.”

taking social science research on the roaD

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he tumultuousness of adolescence is a universal experience for teens as well

as the anxious parents struggling to under-stand and communicate with them. middle school in particular, with all the accompa-nying changes in schedules, peers and even biology, can be particularly challenging for all involved. however, a research study on school achievement in early adolescence, recently published in the may issue of the american psychological association’s Developmental Psychology, may help to smooth out a few wrinkles on the brows of parents wondering, “What can we do?”

according to lead researcher nancy e. hill, a professor in the graduate school of education at harvard university, it is important to keep in mind the particu-lar developmental changes that occur in early adolescence, and work with them, not against them. “there is a synergy of devel-opment on multiple fronts in middle school,” said hill. “family relationships are chang-ing, students are thinking differently, more complexly. aspects of their bodies, emotions and mental health are all changing. this is the time that these kids are figuring out their identities—by high school, a lot of that is already figured out.”

hill began her research in this area while working as associate professor of psychol-ogy in the Department of psychology and

neuroscience at Duke university. this sensi-tive period of development for middle school students is what spurred hill and co-author Diana f. tyson, graduate student in psychol-ogy and neuroscience at Duke, to tackle this research project. in a meta-analysis spanning 50 studies conducted over a 26-year period and involving more than 50,000 students, hill and tyson examined which parental involvement strategies seemed to correlate most strongly with student achievement.

though previous studies have shown that parental involvement is a positive factor in school success across developmental levels, hill and tyson focused on specific strategies that were most effective with middle school-ers. they looked at three different types of involvement: home-based, school-based, and academic socialization. as they had predicted, academic socialization strategies were the most successful and appropriate for parents dealing with young adolescents. this includes helping students plan for the future, make curricular choices, and become aware of how their decisions affect the world around them.

“We wanted to be able to answer for parents, ‘What are the most important things we can do for our kids?’” said hill. “it is more effective to communicate the value and utility of education and help them plan for the future in terms of the classes they are

taking than volunteering to put up bulletin boards in the hall at school.”

elementary schools are structured so that parents involved directly in the classroom can learn more about curriculum, get to know their child’s teacher, and influence their child through the teacher, hill said. in middle schools, this is not the case. “teachers know the children less well, because of the way middle schools are structured,” she explained. “the instruction is organized departmentally, so that any individual teacher has less of a chance to have a holistic picture of the child. if you’re a parent and you’re trying to call the school to see how your child is doing, it’s less clear whom you would even contact. the best teachers want to have a relationship with every parent, but it’s not possible for teach-ers or parents to meet the standards of the elementary school model.”

to add to this, middle school students

by mary-russell roberson

neW research encourages parents

tohelp teenslooK forWarD

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w w w. S S r i . d u k e . e d u 1 5

often don’t even want their parents to visit the schools. While conducting a focus group as a follow-up to their study, hill and tyson found that young adolescents were conflict-ed about their parents’ school involvement. “middle school students are grappling with their autonomy,” said hill. “they want their parents to be involved, but not in the same way as before. they want them to be interested in the things they’re interested in, show them how their ideas can be linked to something bigger, how what they’re learning impacts the world around them.”

hill and tyson believe that academic so-cialization is successful because it supports young adolescents’ needs for independent decision making and identity development, and scaffolds their developing ability to plan, solve problems, and analyze the consequenc-es of their actions, just as their education becomes more important than ever.

“for the first time the types of courses in

which they enroll have an impact on their future goals,” said hill. “it’s the decisions in middle school that either set you on a trajectory to college or close the door; if you’re not taking the right math and science courses by the end of middle school, it is more difficult to catch up.”

While help with choosing courses is effec-tive, hill and tyson found that helping with homework could have the opposite effect. though a parent’s at-home intervention will likely help save a failing student, hill says middle schoolers generally don’t want their parents “picking through their backpack,” as this can be an affront to their burgeon-ing autonomy. also, as the subject matter increases in difficulty, parents often find they are less able to assist their children with their homework.

other strategies examined, such as parents volunteering at schools, attending school events, and providing educational

experiences outside of school showed moderate positive correlations with school success, but academic socialization appears to be the strongest link to achievement.

in the course of their research, hill and tyson found some holes they’d like to fill. they’re working to develop an evaluation measure of parental involvement that focus-es on the developmentally unique aspects of middle school students. hill has also co-edited a new book set titled Families, Schools and the Adolescent (teachers college press), which shares research and strategies for effective parental involvement in education.

hill believes this kind of research helps us realize how different factors come together to affect our children’s development and suc-cess. “it points to the need to understand the intersection of human developmental stages with the contextual systems that shape human development, which includes schools, families and communities,” she said. her driving motivation for her work, and her message of hope for parents, is sim-ple: “at the end of the day, we want to show that any parent can help their kid succeed in school; they don’t have to have a college de-gree or know how to ‘work the system’... the key is scaffolding the child’s independence while not letting go completely.”

“ middle school students are grappling with their autonomy. they want their parents to be involved, but not in the same way as before. they want them to be interested in the things they’re interested in, show them how their ideas can be linked to something bigger, how what they’re learning impacts the world around them.”

—nancy e. hill

fACulty


everyBoDy knows it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Duke economist rachel Kranton studies why. she built her dis-sertation on that adage, pulling in research from other disciplines and working out the puzzle why networks—buyers, sellers and the pattern of links connecting them—rather than markets, can drive economic exchange.

“the idea is to bring in the social setting and see classic economics questions through a new frame and a new model of exchange,” Kranton said. “it sounds crazy, but no one had done that in economics before. When i was doing my ph.D. in the early ’90s, no one was writing that connections matter.”

Kranton’s dissertation was among the earliest papers to apply so-cial networks to economics; now a research community of respect-able size has grown. her work could have practical applications for businesses, for instance, in understanding how a research team works to produce a new product, and in think tanks and policymak-ing bodies, such as understanding job networks among mexican immigrants in raleigh. “a lot of economics happens outside of markets and happens in social relations,” she said.

by pulling together research from other fields that shows the im-portance of social relations, then looking at the implications from an economics standpoint, Kranton provides a new framework that economists and policy analysts can use to come up with innova-tive solutions for what’s not working.

the impetus for her dissertation topic has its roots in her first job out of college. With a double major in economics and middle east studies, she became fluent in arabic and worked as a project officer for catholic relief services in cairo, egypt. later, she re-turned to egypt with usaiD. in egypt, she saw that nothing could be accomplished without connections. When she returned to the u.s. for graduate school, she wondered just how different the u.s. structure was from egypt’s.

“friends from college say it’s a shame i’m not using my arabic,” she said. “but i am, because it gave me a way to be in a society deeply, and that allowed me to see things differently.”

achieving a better understanding of how people interact can lead to better policy, and that feeds Kranton’s interest in social justice. for individuals, social networks matter in many small ways with big consequences—getting into schools and being hired for jobs, for example. it’s not true that everyone is equal, Kranton said. although economists study inequality, Kranton goes one step deeper.

“economists might understand inequality in that some racial groups didn’t get a good education,” she said. “Well, why didn’t they? What was excluding them? Why aren’t there more resources

for schools in predominantly african-american neighborhoods? should we take that as a given?

Kranton and scott huettel, of the center for neuroeconomics studies at Duke, will run “Decisions and behavior: from society to the brain (and back)” that will bring together 10 researchers at Duke from different methodological perspectives to talk about a similar set of questions. ultimately, the group may develop a joint project, such as looking at what motivates teen risk-taking behav-ior. a social justice aspect would come in if the researchers found risk takers more prevalent in different demographic clusters.

such cross-campus conversations are what brought Kranton to Duke. she has taught at the university of maryland; she was a visiting scholar at the russell sage foundation and was a member of the school of social science at the institute for advanced study. that Duke celebrates her interdisciplinary work sets the university apart from its peers.

“Duke is different,” Kranton said, “and i’m kind of normal at Duke.” Kranton will continue her work in networking and identity, and at

some point, will bring them together, which will require even more complex mathematics. her models remain extremely abstract, she said, but she hopes that research by others will add to and enrich what she has accomplished.

“my work is a pretty significant step,” she said, “but there are many more steps to be taken. i hope 20 years from now, you’ll look at my model and think it’s primitive.”

rAChel krAntoneconomics professor studies social networks and why they matterby nancy e. oates

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In 2007, just graduated from Duke university, rachel Weeks trav-eled to sri lanka to interview and write about socially responsible apparel makers. by the time she flew home 10 months later, she had become one.

Weeks is president and founder of school house, which makes fashion-forward collegiate apparel and pays the mostly female workers at its partner factory in sri lanka a living wage—16,750 rupees, or about $150 u.s. dollars, per month. that’s almost three times more than most garment workers in the country make.

Weeks and a team of two employees at her greensboro base have negotiated licenses to produce clothes for Duke and 10 other schools, including harvard, yale, and brown. they also hold 10 similar licenses for sororities. school house clothes are sold at bookstores at Duke, the university of north carolina at chapel hill, and Wake forest university, as well as at the conference store in greensboro. in august, the line rolled out at north carolina state university, east carolina university, columbia university, and princeton university.

the inspiration for the company sprang partly from Weeks’ years as a women’s studies major at Duke. “When i go back and glance at my papers sometimes, i just can’t believe it; they were in a lot of ways a manifesto for my company,” Weeks said. “robyn Wiegman [professor of women’s studies and literature] was such an incredible advisor. the conversations we used to have about the intersections of fashion and feminism really helped plant the seeds for this idea.”

Weeks also got her first taste of organizing ventures while at Duke. as a senior, she and a friend created Dukeplays, a movement to

redefine campus culture. for a Dukeplays party they threw at the Duke library, Weeks commissioned a designer she found online to make a custom gown out of 17 Duke t-shirts. “these alumni were go-ing crazy over it, trying to buy it off my back,” she said. that got her thinking about the demand for more fashion-forward collegiate wear. “i was walking through the bookstore and noticing that collegiate apparel is really 10 years behind fashion industry trends,” she said.

With all these ideas marinating, Weeks won a fulbright scholarship to go to sri lanka to study “Women go beyond,” an education pro-gram for women workers at mas holdings, a company that manufac-tures clothes for Victoria’s secret and nike, among others. but at the huge, well-oiled mas holdings factory, Weeks felt she wasn’t seeing what it was really like for most workers. so she branched out to other factories and women’s’ organizations, and someone told her about a small group of women who had started their own sewing business after getting fired from a factory for trying to organize a labor union. Weeks rode for an hour in a “tuc-tuc”—a three-wheeled vehicle—to visit them in their open-air shop where they sewed on a dozen rented machines. “they were so positive despite losing their jobs overnight and having to start again from nothing,” Weeks said.

inspired, Weeks put her ideas into action. the girl’s got moxie; with no apparel experience, she started by placing a newspaper ad: “u.s. buyer seeks manufacturer for unique project.” that’s how she met upali Weerakon, a buyer who’d worked in the sri lankan garment industry for a decade. “i had this business plan, but i didn’t have a single product yet,” Weeks remembered. “he said, ‘you need samples.’ then he drove me to a fabric mill and taught me about fabric and draw cords and buttons and snaps.” he also led her to J.K. apparel, a new factory that agreed to sew her first samples for free. “i said, i’m willing to pay an additional amount per t-shirt from your factory on the condition that you triple the wages you’re planning to offer the employees,” Weeks said.

Weerakon is now a partner in school house, and Weeks treats the workers at J.K. apparel like true partners too. school house works with a sri lankan labor rights organization called alarm (apparel-industry labour rights movement) to ensure the factory pays the agreed-upon wage, and to provide education to help the workers manage their newly increased income. “in an industry where every other brand just packs up and leaves the second

they find labor that’s 10 cents cheaper, i want to be able to demonstrate that we can have a profitable company and a profitable product without sacrificing a commitment to factories in the developing world,” she said.

rAChel weeks Duke alumna mixes feminism and fashionby angela spiVey

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rachel Weeks got a crash course in fabric, buttons, and snaps when she started her ethically run collegiate apparel company.

the short AnD glIB Answer Is, “everythIng!” the short-term fluctuations of the equities markets, whether gentle or nausea-inducing, reflect millions of transactions aggregated into a few summary statistics (e.g., the s&p 500 index). many of those transactions will be driven by newly available information: the latest unemployment numbers, announced earnings, political upheaval in a country that is rich in some natural resource. other activity reflects pressures endemic to the financial system, such as the tendency for mutual fund managers to adjust their portfolios right before the end of reporting cycle. and, still other trades are driven by psychological phenomena. all of us who have suffered through the roller-coaster gyrations of the past year experienced a mix of emotions, from regret at not jumping out earlier to relief as our portfolios (partially recovered). undoubtedly, many recent trades were shaped not by one’s judgments of market value but by one’s tolerance for risk (or lack thereof ).

from my perspective as a psychologist/neuroscientist (not an economist), this welter of possible influences means that attempts to predict the short-term movements of markets are foolhardy. instead, we as investors and scientists should understand how people respond to market changes, with an eye toward encouraging adaptive, consistent behavior. as one of many possible examples, we know that individuals’ risk aversion tracks the recent history of losses and gains; e.g., they feel a strong pull toward selling losing investments, and they chase after potential winners. by pre-committing investments to a diversified fund (e.g., through regular deposits to a 401k or 403b), individuals can minimize their chances to act on those tendencies, with likely better results. Determining general “good practice” principles will require data from many fields— including behavioral economics, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience—but it is more likely to lead to salutary outcomes then trying to outsmart the market.

scott huettelAssociate Professor of Psychology and NeuroscienceDirector, Duke Center for Neuroeconomic Studies

fIrst of All, it depends on what you mean by “the market.” economists have a well-developed categorization scheme for all of the things that can affect the demand and supply of a good: on the demand side, things like the price of the good and of related goods, income, the number of buyers, people’s tastes, and expectations about future prices; and on the supply side things like the state of technology, level of competition, regulations and taxes, current and future costs of production and of the prices of the goods they produce. this framework is very useful for explaining changes in market prices: everything else equal, when a hurricane hits florida, this eventually pushes up the price of grapefruit; when a reces-sion hits and incomes drop, people buy less of some goods (say, restaurant meals) and more of others (macaroni and cheese dinners-in-a-box).

markets vary immensely. in some markets the underlying fundamentals do not change much. in others, the market for teenage clothing, say, rapidly changing tastes and preferences make it very hard to explain or predict anything. in currency and stock markets, all sorts of things can move the market. John maynard Keynes once wisely compared the stock market to a beauty contest in which the investor was a judge who was trying not to pick the most beautiful candidate, but the one that the other judges will deem most beautiful.

expectations can have strange effects: if people expect higher prices in the future, they will take actions (increasing current demand) that make the expectation come true. When i was in graduate school an impending sugar shortage and coffee shortage were both announced in the news. only one announcement was true, but in the short term, in both cases prices rapidly rose.

so my answer is: all of the above, and much more.

Bruce CaldwellResearch Professor, Department of Economics

whAt InfluenCes the mArket? economy, media, public opinion…all of the above?


asK the social scientist

Q: you are one of the newest members of Duke’s african and african american studies department. Why did you come Duke, and why do you feel aaas is a fit for your research?A: When Duke university press published my first book, i came to value Duke’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies. subsequently, i learned that the university created a provost-level position to foster such research. in many ways, aaas epitomizes the goals of interdisciplinarity. as the english Department at my former institution narrowed the kinds of texts it studied, i looked to aaas as a more capacious rubric for my multimedia work.

Q: your research interests include performance studies, gender/sexuality studies, and visual culture. What do you hope to achieve with your research? A: i hope that my research (which works in conjunction with my teaching) challenges us to revise received notions that denigrate and dismiss art, the body and what is seen to be the ephemeral. my hope is that i can foster Duke’s initiative in the arts so that dance, theater, music and visual studies continue to flourish. i want my research to make a case for the significance of embodied practices even at the level of the everyday. i want everyone to be more aware of how our heavily saturated environments (in the largest sense) affect our being—to understand the ways in which intellectual life is lived and practiced.

Q: the way you have combined scholarly research and art is a perfect example of interdisciplinarity—a major focus at Duke right now. can you tell us a little about your research on race, gender and art?A: i became interested in the burgeoning field of performance studies about a decade ago, although my work had always focused on how we read words and image, words as images, as well as on “live” art and representation. for example, when i was training as a Victorianist at Vassar college in the 1980s, i read first editions of texts, such as Vanity Fair, that included illustrations, and therefore might be considered as precursors to what we now call graphic novels. some of the other questions i have grappled with in my research on race, gender and art focus on how seem-ingly purely aesthetic forms—such as the polka dots that appear in yayoi Kusama’s work—also function ideologically in her case to express collectivity.

Q: you were the youngest docent at the historical society of princeton, and both of your parents were professors. it seems like you were destined for the life in academia. Did you ever consider taking a different path?

A: until my first year in graduate school, i was convinced that i would be a curator of material culture. i spent many years work-ing and or volunteering in museums in hartford, london and new york. i would love to curate a show in the future. i am interested in expanding the dimen-sions of my work and often conceive of new projects as “three dimensional.” for exam-ple, it would be thrilling to organize a show and even a live performance about the 19th century sculptor, edmonia lewis, who is the topic of my most recent research.

Q: you were the first black faculty member in the english department at the university of california-riverside. Did you find that posi-tion intimidating or powerful? A: i come from three genera-tions of black female college professors (my grandmother went to oberlin and taught briefly at prairie View in texas) so i have been acclimated to university culture for most of my life. i felt enormously privileged to have landed at riverside in the early 1990s. i will never forget getting the keys to my office and then being able—to extend the metaphor—to open the door for other minorities who came after me. my time at riverside was wonderful intellectually and professionally. assistant pro-fessors were full members of the department and my time there was eased by the fact while i was the first black member, i was not the first lesbian member of the department.

w w w. S S r i . d u k e . e d u 1 9

Questions

JennIfer BroDyJennifer DeVere brody is a professor of african and african american studies at Duke university, where she teaches cultural and performance studies, gender and sexuality as well as film and literary studies. a relatively new member of the Duke faculty, we wanted to chat with her to hear about her life and her research.

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technology

tools AvAIlABle to social science researchers at the ssri Data services core (Dsc) expand this fall with the availability of checkbox survey software.

the Dsc staff added checkbox to their suite of tools in response to the need for flexible and sophisticated software to support social science research specifically. “our review team evaluated a number of options before deciding on checkbox,” said gary thompson, Dsc associate director. (Viewsflash, an alternative survey tool support-ed by Duke’s office of information technology, will also be available to researchers.)

“We contacted social science research units at major research universities to find out what software they were using,” said rick hoyle, Dsc director. “checkbox offered all of the primary features on our list. We believe it provides a first-rate solution for social and behavioral scientists who want to conduct surveys using the web.”

thompson praised checkbox’s features. “We liked its overall us-ability as well as the branching and skip pattern options available,” he said.

in addition, data collected through checkbox surveys will be stored directly on Duke servers—a feature that staffers required for the sake of security. “our review team thought it was imperative that we have the capability to store data on our own servers, not on a remote vendor site,” said thompson.

ssri makes the checkbox software available to any social sci-ence researcher at Duke at no cost. those with a new or existing Dsc account can create, manage and analyze online surveys with a standard web browser using the software.

the Dsc staff will offer a half-day workshop each semester to train researchers on the “intuitive” software. additionally, there are online faQs, tutorials and user-supported forums available directly from the vendor.

“We want to provide the resources clients need to make using this tool a positive experience,” said thompson. if more in-depth assistance is needed, the Dsc staff is available for hire to develop, implement and analyze surveys.

according to a case study published at checkbox.com, clients at miami university of ohio have been pleased with checkbox.

“We knew that the solution was to put the tools in the hands of the people who needed them, when they needed them,” said Joyce buttery, senior Web and publications coordinator for it services at miami university. “We reviewed many products and were able to eliminate those that did not have on-site hosting capability and those that could not be integrated into our authentication system. We liked what checkbox had to offer and have since found that it is able to fulfill most of our survey needs.”

miami university deployed checkbox in september 2007, and the user group has since grown to include more than 200. “the faculty and staff like the tool,” said buttery. “our users can deploy a simple survey within minutes with little to no specific checkbox training.”

thompson and the staff at the Dsc expect that Duke social sci-ence researchers will have similar positive results.

ssri created the Dsc in 2007 as an interdisciplinary resource to help researchers find, collect and archive data. the group is particularly interested in facilitating collaborative efforts between research partners across disciplines who can benefit one another. the Dsc staff offers consulting, training and support for data retrieval, collection, analysis and archival. in some cases, they can also provide funds to seed research projects.

CheCkBox fIts the BIll for soCIAl sCIenCe surveys onlIne

by DaWn stuart

alexandra fox, Dsc Database specialist, and Josh smith, ssri it manager, discuss the new options checkbox can offer the social sciences .

for more information on checkbox, contact ssri checkbox support at [email protected] or alexandra fox at 919-681-4727.

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social science Departments

African & African American studies www.aas.duke.edu/aaas

Cultural Anthropology ca-www.aas.duke.edu

economics www.econ.duke.edu

program in educationwww.duke.edu/web/education

historywww-history.aas.duke.edu

political sciencewww.poli.duke.edu

psychology & neuroscience pn.aas.duke.edu

public policypubpol.duke.edu

sociologywww.soc.duke.edu

program in women’s studieswww.duke.edu/womstud

uniVersity institutes anD centers (uics)

Duke global health Instituteglobalhealth.duke.edu

Duke Institute for Brain scienceswww.dibs.duke.edu

Institute for genome sciences & policywww.genome.duke.edu

John hope franklin humanities Institutewww.jhfc.duke.edu/fhi

the kenan Institute for ethicskenan.ethics.duke.edu

nicholas Institute for environmental policy solutionswww.nicholas.duke.edu/institute

social science research Institutewww.ssri.duke.edu

soCIAl sCIenCe @ Duke

p. o . b o x 9 0 4 2 0 | d u r h a m , n c 2 7 7 0 8

non-profit orgu.s. postagepaiDDurham, ncpermit no. 60


pArents Don’t hAve to let their youngster’s fascination with the new “beatles: rock band” video game turn into a “magical mystery tour” to nowhere.

instead of letting them become little “Day trippers” who only master the game, parents can use the experience to spark a real love for music and even a desire to play a musical instrument, said a Duke university child development expert.

“Video games like this have the potential to spark an interest in music. but to create a long-lasting interest in music, parents also need to provide opportunities for children to use real musical instruments,” said lisa linnenbrink-garcia, an assistant professor in developmental psychology and education at Duke.

With so many schools no longer able to afford music programs for students, parents, along with interactive, music-themed video games will likely play a greater role in nurturing the next lennon or mccartney.

the much-anticipated “beatles: rock band” was recently released, and features custom-built models of the instruments played by John, paul, george and ringo, as well as many of the band’s actual recordings.

to develop a deeper and longer-lasting interest in music, how-ever, linnenbrink-garcia says children need the opportunity to develop an appreciation and enjoyment of the music itself, rather than the video game only.

“children also need the opportunity to develop confidence in their music skills, rather than their skill in using a game controller,” she said. “to do this, parents should make sure to build upon children’s initial interest by giving them opportunities to use real musical instruments and encouraging them to take music lessons.”

CAn roCk BAnD sAve musIC eDuCAtIon?wIth sChool BuDgets slAsheD, BeAtles vIDeo gAme CAn spArk A love of musICby steVe hartsoe

fInAl note

fall 2009

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