| Time | Presenter | Department | Title |
| 3:30-4:00pm | Francisco Pedraza | Political Science | "The effect of uncertainty: the importance of actual and perceived race of interviewer in survey responses."
(co-authored with Matt Barreto, Loren Collingwood & Chris Parker) |
| 4:00-4:30pm | Dan Berliner | Political Science | "Rational Adoption of the Transparency Norm: Political Competition and the Passage of Freedom of Information Laws" |
| 4:30-5:00pm | Pizza break | ||
| 5:00-5:30pm | Jason Thomas | Sociology | "Estimates of HIV Incidence Profiles for sub-Saharan Africa with Projected Declines in Fertility" |
| 5:45pm | CSSS pub night
College Inn 4000 University Way NE |
||
1. Francisco Pedraza, Political Science
The effect of uncertainty: the importance of actual and perceived race of interviewer in survey responses.
(co-authored with Matt Barreto, Loren Collingwood & Chris Parker)
Existing models of race of interviewer (RoI) effects on racial attitudes privilege perceived over actual RoI, restrict the analysis to discrete racial categories (i.e. "White" or "Black") and exclude cases in which the respondent replies, "don't know." Using date from the 2008 Washington Poll, a non-partisan, academic public opinion survey, we model racial attitudes as a function of the statistical interaction between the actual and perceived RoI, including "don't know" responses, among a subset of white respondents. We argue that the interaction between these two measures of the RoI provides useful insight into the categorization process and a basis for comparing the racial attitudes expressed by participants who say "don't know" with those who say their interviewer is "Black" or "White." Our findings show that the perceived RoI effects are moderated by the actual RoI. Among white respondents interviewed by an African American, those who perceive their interviewer to be "White" are more likely to express conservative racial attitudes than those who correctly gauge their interviewer's race. Furthermore, respondents who say they "don't know" their interviewer's race, express racial attitudes similar to respondents who correctly gauge their interviewer's race to be "Black." These findings bring into question the prevailing wisdom that measures of perception are all that matter in sorting out race of interviewer effects.
2. Dan Berliner, Political Science
Rational Adoption of the Transparency Norm: Political Competition and the Passage of Freedom of Information Laws
Why do political actors pass transparency laws, when such laws oppose their interests in staying in office and maintaining flows of private goods to themselves and their supporters? This study tests competing explanations for the passage of freedom of information laws, and argues that high levels of domestic political competition create incentives for rational political actors to increase transparency. Passage of a freedom of information law comprises adoption of an international norm prescribing institutional transparency, yet adoption of this norm is explained to a greater extent by a simple measure of legislative competitiveness than by either level of democracy or membership in intergovernmental organizations. These results favor a domestic-level rationalist argument over a sociological learning hypothesis, and support the analysis of transparency as a phenomenon distinct from democracy.
3. Jason Thomas, Sociology
Estimates of HIV Incidence Profiles for sub-Saharan Africa with Projected Declines in Fertility
In this study we explore the impact of the HIV epidemic on total fertility for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Data on HIV prevalence from the Demographic and Health Surveys are used to estimate age profiles in HIV incidence for several geographic regions using a multi-state cohort-component model for population projection developed by Heuveline (2003), namely CCMPP. This model incorporates important links between the demographic and epidemiological components of population growth and disease spread. In particular, sub-fecundity among HIV-infected women, conditional on time since infection, is explicitly included in the model. This allows us to assess the influence on fertility by comparing population projections to simulations in which no sub-fecundity is experienced by HIV-positive women. It is crucial that CCMPP partitions the population into five-year age groups because fertility, incidence and the age distribution are all dependent on age.
Archive of seminars for past quarters.
The CSSS student seminar is an informal meeting open to all UW graduate students with interests in interdisciplinary quantitative social science research. The seminar aims to create a friendly supportive environment for students of all disciplines and all levels of technical sophistication to learn from each other. It serves this function in two ways:
(1) By providing a venue for students to practice giving a 'conference style' presentation, present their research at any stage, and receive feedback from fellow graduate students.
(2) By fostering a cross-disciplinary community of graduate students with interests in quantitative research. Fellow graduate students are a great resource for learning about new methods and statistical techniques, and for discussing the 'every day' problems one confronts in research. C6S is a forum for dialogue with and feedback from students in other disciplines. It can be very useful to talk with researchers studying similar questions through other disciplinary lenses, or to see familiar methods used in different disciplinary contexts.
The student presenter is encouraged to talk about their research for ~20 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for questions, feedback, and discussion.
To get a wide range of speakers and participants from different departments, students of different departments act as coordinators. Currently the coordinators are:
| Anthropology | Siobhan Mattison | smc56@u.washington.edu | |
| Epidemiology | Kristin Miller | kamiller@u.washington.edu | |
| Geography | Arnisson Andre Ortega | aaortega@u.washington.edu | |
| Political Science | Francisco Pedraza | fpedraza@u.washington.edu | |
| Psychology | Mara Sedlins | sedlins@u.washington.edu | |
| School of Social Work | Xiang Gao | gaoxiang@u.washington.edu | |
| Sociology | Brittin Wagner | blwagner@u.washington.edu | |
| Sociology | Blaine Robbins | adduct@u.washington.edu | |
| Statistics | Gail Potter | gail@stat.washington.edu |
We encourage involvement of all departments with interests in research that deals with statistical
issues in the social sciences. If you are interested in being a coordinator for your department,
send an email to
fpedraza@u.washington.edu.
If you are interested in presenting at the seminar, read the
guidelines and send an email with a short abstract of your talk to the
coordinator of your department or to
fpedraza@u.washington.edu.