Center for Social Research

President of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment Visits Calvin

The Byker Chair and the Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies invite you to hear Dr. John Baden’s presentation: “Revelations and Institutions: The theology and political economy of Hutterite and Mormon experiments with intentional communities.”  Political economy offers insights into why one communal order ended in absolute failure and another has survived for almost 500 years. 

Tuesday Sept. 30, 3:30 p.m.                                                                                                   
North Hall B78

     
The same evening, Dr. Baden speaks on “The Political Economy of Endangered Species.”  Baden discusses the Endangered Species Act passed by Congress in 1973 and outlines the struggle between enacting law while dealing with the necessity of environmental trade-offs and the declining support of policies as costs escalate.

Tuesday Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.
Commons Lecture Hall

Sara returns from a summer internship at ICPSR

One of our very own student researchers, Sara Achauer, was chosen out of an elite group of applicants to spend her summer as an intern for the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.  Read what she had to say about her experience:

“This summer I was an intern at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ICPSR is one of the largest dative archives and their mission statement is to: ‘Acquire and preserve social science data, provide open and equitable access to these data, and promote effective data use.’

I was a data processor for the Child Care and Early Education Resource Connection, one of the specialized archives within ICPSR. I personally worked with the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey 1988 and the Survey of Income and Program Participation 2004 data. It was my job to acquire the correct data and related documents, write the metadata for each study, and produce formatted files for the use of member institutions.

While working at the internship, I was provided the opportunity to participate in ICPSR’s Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. I took two graduate classes: Regression Analysis I Introduction and II Linear Models. For more information see http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog/index.html . The skills I learned over the summer gave me a more holistic view of data and research that will positively influence my work at the Center for Social Research and my personal research as a Sociology major.”

We’re glad to have you back after this great opportunity, Sara!

Congratulations Graduates!

The CSR congratulates five of our student workers who graduated from Calvin this year. Gwen Einfeld, Kirsten Anderson, Jeremy Chacko, Gerald Egede and Emily Oosterhouse were each at the CSR for over a year, and now they seek to employ themselves in various exciting fields:
• Gwen, an Engineering graduate, is pursuing a graduate degree in Engineering at Purdue University.
• Emily, having completed Calvin’s Psychology, Pre-Law and Business programs, is going on to study Forensic Psychology at the University of Denver
• Gerald, an Accounting major, is pursuing a graduate degree in Business or Accounting in the United Kingdom.
• Kirsten, graduating with a degree in English will be teaching English in Cairo, Egypt and may continue working in the field of social research in English.
• Jeremy, graduate of Calvin’s History and Political Science programs, will be working at Yellowstone National Park.

During their time at the Center, the graduates handled projects ranging from data entry to survey design and administration. The CSR bids farewell to the graduates, who will be sorely missed.

KCCS Progress

With over 500 interviews completed, we have transitioned to the next phase of the Kent County Congregations Study. Over the next few months, we’ll be busy analyzing the data and organizing key findings for our reports. We also plan on having a public event later this year to celebrate the completion of the project and share some of the findings.

KCCS is as a study of educational and social service provision by religious congregations in Kent County, Michigan. Many of the congregations we interviewed reported involvement in a variety of programs aimed at benefiting their communities.

We used several different measures in an attempt to document these programs, and one item that helped us greatly was our program type list. While not exhaustive, this list contained many types of programs that congregations in other similar studies have mentioned. 

If you have questions about this study, please contact the .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

VanAntwerp presents engineering retention findings at ASEE

Engineering professor Dr. Jennifer Jewett VanAntwerp will present findings from a pilot study of engineering student retention at Calvin at the annual conference of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) on Tuesday, June 24 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The presentation will describe a new measurement model that attempts to document students’ experiences of seven important dimensions of engineering education, including recruitment efforts, the cultural setting, and others. CSR staff assisted in survey design, deployed the online survey for engineering students, and used AMOS 16.0 software to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement model. We will post a link to the paper here as soon as ASEE makes a public version available.