Helping projects growSSRI

SSRI provides research support for

social science projects in Gross Hall

near the heart of West Campus. Our

combination of space and research

infrastructure serves as an incubator

for social science research by faculty

and students across the various

schools at Duke.

We want to help your projects grow.

Think of us as the soil that helps

your project reach maturity. We have

a full range of services including

grants, project management, data,

workshops, consulting, web services

and more. We are here to assist at all

stages of the research process.

WORKING WITH SSRI THROUGHOUT YOUR PROJECT

“The SSRI space allows more conversations, not

only about substantive issues, but also about the

methodological challenges in interpreting both

qualitative and quantitative data and the mix of

those types of data.”

— Lind Burton, Dean of Social Sciences

RESEARCH LIFE CYCLEINSTITUTIONAL REvIEW BOARd (IRB)When working with human subjects in your research, it’s

important to work within IRB guidelines. Our experts

can assist with administering, supporting, and guiding

the work of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and all

related activities. Any research involving human subjects

proposed by faculty, staff, or students must be reviewed

and approved by an IRB before research may begin, and

before related grants may be funded.

GRANTSSSRI is dedicated to supporting faculty and students as

they pursue funding for their research. We are particularly

interested in supporting the development of larger,

cross-disciplinary initiatives that hold substantial promise

of external funding.

We support research activity at Duke by providing pre-

award and post-award services, research development

assistance, and training and networking opportunities

relevant to research administration.

BEGINNING AT THE PLANNING STAGE

pRopoSalplaNNINGWRITING

pRoJECTSTaRT up

daTa aNalySIS

daTaShaRING

dISSEmINaTE FINdINGS

daTaCollECTIoN

daTaaRChIvE

RE-uSE dEpoSIT

RE-puRpoSE

daTa lIFE CyClE

daTadISCovERy

GETTING STARTEd

Come and chat with us once you

decide to begin a project. We will

work with you through each step

of the research life cycle.

“The SSRI staff helped me at every step in the development

of my grant; from looking up my RFa number getting the

specifics about that announcement, to developing an

appropriate budget, to helping create deadlines for the

ultimate submission of the proposal. all I needed was to

ask and I got the support I needed, even for coordinating

investigator information from outside duke.”

— Keith E. Whitfield, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

MEETING ANd WORKING IN THE CONNECTION

Surrounded by team rooms devoted to research and

projects, a welcoming, large space known as ‘The

Connection’ features informal areas to cross paths on

the way to coffee and refreshments, and whiteboards

and writable glass to facilitate instant exchange of ideas.

Seminars, classes, and teams operating in the space

are able to draw on an extensive social science data

infrastructure backed up by a 21st century help desk,

the Connection Bar.

Our facilities are equipped to conduct and communicate

social science research, as well as attract, train and

support scholars engaged in research and interested in

collaboration. Rooms are available for teams, seminars,

or small classes.

Research originates with a great question or idea, yet

requires much more–such as testable hypotheses, useful

data, coded interviews, statistical or spatial software,

and the ability to interpret and disseminate findings.

Getting from great idea to feasible project can require

dodging pitfalls, particularly for the novice researcher

or for collaborative teams that apply new methods and

integrate multiple disciplines.

CONNECTION BAROur Connection Bar offers a consulting service staffed

by advanced graduate students and postdoctoral fellows,

who are on call from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through

Friday during the academic year, and available to consult

on all stages of the research process. Connection Bar

staffers can offer quick advice on such topics as:

• Model development and hypothesis specification

• Duke data resources

• Crafting and conducting surveys and interviews

• Qualtrics survey software

• Common statistical software, including R, SPSS,

Stata, SAS and NVivo

RESEARCH CONNECTThe Research Connect website provides a place where

Duke students, looking to join research projects, can

find Duke investigators who have projects needing

motivated student researchers and vice versa.

By listing available projects and the skills each requires,

this site allows students to identify commonly needed

skills and to prepare themselves to be productive

members of a research team. It also enables research

teams to find and contact potential team members.

CONNECTION BAR

• Chat Online

• Find a Consultant

• Make an Appointment

• Request a Class Visit

• Browse Research & Help Topics

“The Connection Bar is a great resource. I don’t know of any other place where students can regularly call on

such skilled and seasoned consultants. As a consultant, it’s so rewarding to help students cut through the

messy stuff and get back on track with their research.”

— Steven Snell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Duke Initiative on Survey Methodology

WORKING WITH dATAdATA MANAGEMENTWhether your project is big or small or uses new or

existing data, SSRI’s data management services can

help increase your productivity and organization.

dUKE INITIATIvE ON SURvEY METHOdOLOGY (dISM) We think of surveys as any setting in

which research participants are asked

questions about their attitudes or

behaviors, whether in the traditional

survey format, experiments, inter-

views, or focus groups. DISM offers

a number of resources including

advising on individual projects, funding opportunities,

and training in survey research methods.

dUKE NETWORK ANALYSIS CENTER (dNAC)DNAC is dedicated to building a world-class network

science & analysis program at Duke. The program strives

to help make visible the cutting-edge network scholarship

currently ongoing on campus, promote new collaborations

in network science, introduce new researchers to network

analysis and train them in related methods and applications.

EdUCATION ANd HUMAN dEvELOPMENT INCUBATOR (EHdI) EHDi strives to incubate communities by fostering

research collaboration, connecting cross-disciplinary

communities within Duke, and supporting real-world

engagement and innovation. Dedicated to improving the

lives of children and youth, EHDi is in a unique position

to protect, manage, and provide access to data for a new

generation of education research.

INTERdISCIPLINARY BEHAvIORAL RESEARCH CENTER (IBRC)The IBRC lab holds computing facilities for group and

individual testing. The lab provides researchers with

space, equipment, and services to facilitate the recruit-

ment of research participants and the collection of data

for laboratory-based social and behavioral research. For

researchers wanting to go outside campus borders for

research requiring a diversity of ages, ethnicities, and

socioeconomic groups, check out the ResearchMobile.

INITIATIvE ON ETHNOGRAPHIC & QUALITATIvE METHOdS (IEQM)In collaboration with leading experts at Duke, SSRI is soon

launching a new initiative aimed at expanding support

for social science research using

ethnographic and mixed methods

– and integrating such methods

into cross-disciplinary research that

also employs other methods. This

initiative is a complement to SSRI’s

already existing initiative on survey

methods (Duke Initiative on Survey

Methods), its center on network methods (Duke Network

Analysis Center), its collaboration on big data with the

Initiative in Information at Duke (iiD) and SSRI’s data core.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGYMobile devices are transforming the way that many of us

live, learn and conduct research. The Mobile Technology

Initiative is a collaborative effort between SSRI and

partners around the university to work closely with faculty

in the creation of new applications of mobile technologies;

develop open source and modular programming tools;

assist in the submission of funding proposals; and develop

a training program that allows a team of programmers and

researchers to keep pace with the rapid innovations in the

use of mobile technology for research.

TRIANGLE RESEARCH dATA CENTER (TRdC)The TRDC is a partnership between the Center for

Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau and Duke

University, in cooperation with the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), North Carolina State

University (NCSU), and RTI International (RTI). Under

this partnership, the Census Bureau allows researchers

with approved proposals to perform statistical analysis on

non-public microdata from the Census Bureau’s economic

and demographic censuses and surveys.

WEB dEvELOPMENT SSRI focuses on web projects that further the research

goals of social and behavioral science researchers at Duke

University. The team is well versed in creating custom,

complex data collection and tracking tools for research

projects needing specialized and secure data-entry web

forms. Such websites also include backend tools to display

information and create reports.

PROTECTEd dATASSRI specializes in helping social science researchers

navigate a myriad of issues when dealing with acquiring,

storing, securing and using such data. We have a number of

specialists on staff to assist researchers with protected data.

dATAdISCOvERY

dATACOLLECTION

dATAANALYSIS

dATAARCHIvE

dATASHARING

“We have been using SSRI’s Protected Data Network for over a year because it has the capability to support complex

statistical analysis of big datasets. The pRdN has been absolutely essential to the success of our research.”

— John de Figueiredo, Edward and Ellen Marie Schwarzman Professor of Law

GETTING EdUCATEdWORKSHOPSWant to learn how to use a statistical software

program or improve your understanding of how

to craft a survey and encourage your subjects to

respond to it?

SSRI offers workshops on a diverse array of topics

throughout the year. They typically run for two to

four hours and focus on a particular task, meth-

odology or software. We are also prepared to offer

customized workshops for research teams.

HELP TOPICSNeed help planning a project, collecting or analyzing

data, or using a particular software package? Our

web-based help topics will allow you to find support

for a wide-range of research tasks; identifying

Connection Bar consultants with the relevant

expertise, listing upcoming workshops, and offering

online resources available at your convenience.

18 Workshops offered

16 Consultants

35 help Topics (over 145 links)

< 30 SECONdS Wait for online Chat

< 5 MINUTES Wait at Connection Bar

“The SSRI team has done a fine job in creating an

on-line attendance information system for use in our

experiment with truancy prevention. We are more

than satisfied with the technical competence and

helpful spirit of the team, and the result is everything

that we had hoped.”

— Philip J. Cook, ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy

duke university

Social Science Research Institute

Campus Box 90989

Durham, NC 27708

Phone: 919.681.6019

Email: ssri@duke.edu

www.ssri.duke.edu