Program Highlight | Fall 2004
QMSS Launches Research Fellows Program
Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS), now in its sixth year as Columbia's interdisciplinary social science master's degree program, is launching a new Research Fellows Program this fall. When QMSS joined ISERP in 2002, the Institute's links with faculty members across Columbia's departments and schools opened up opportunities for QMSS students to gain valuable experience working on faculty research projects. The new QMSS Research Fellows Program is designed to allow even more students to hone their skills in quantitative social science research.
QMSS Director Christopher Weiss explains, "We realized that there were faculty members, particularly those at the junior level, with interesting research questions and data, but no funds to hire research assistants, and that there were students who wanted to work on faculty projects, so we found a way to connect them." In order to make this possible, QMSS created a dedicated fund to support the student Research Fellows. Weiss continues, "This is a win-win proposition; junior faculty members get research assistants who are trained in statistical methodology, allowing them to develop projects that can help advance their careers, and students get research experience that will serve as the basis of their theses and may lead to publishable papers, which will help them find a great job or continue in their graduate education."
QMSS students with director Christopher Weiss in their weekly seminar
This year's QMSS Research Fellows are working on the following faculty projects.
Tanisha Fazal, Assistant Professor of Political Science, is working on a project that asks a fundamental question for international relations: under what conditions do states die? She argues that geography plays a key role in determining state survival and death. Using the emerging technology of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this project collects and analyzes historical data on terrain roughness for states in the international system over the past 200 years.
Nicole Marwell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is researching the role of nonprofits in providing government-funded social services in New York City. Using data from a public database of contracts for social service provision and new spatial analysis tools, she is particularly interested in the inequity in distribution of agencies and funds and what factors are related to over- and under-representation.
Pablo Piccato, Assistant Professor of History, is undertaking a project that focuses on statistics of crime in Mexico during the twentieth century. The central questions of this research concern the reporting of crime, particularly as it relates to police and judicial corruption and public perceptions of crime.
Randall Reback, Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard, is working on a project related to the political economy of local public school expenditures in the United States. States and districts vary by direct versus representative voting and local versus state control in how school expenditure levels are determined. Reback's empirical work investigates whether there are important interactions between these political institutions and other factors, such as demographic trends, that influence public school expenditures.
Julien Teitler, Assistant Professor of Social Work, is part of a research team directing the Fragile Families study, which follows a birth cohort of (mostly) unwed parents and their children over a five-year period. This project will examine survey, medical, and contextual data to learn about the circumstances leading to parent and child health in a subsample of the Fragile Families sample.
QMSS students have a diverse range of experiences and interests, and are well prepared for work in the social sciences. A number of them are eager to get involved in research opportunities with Columbia faculty, and many students are workstudy eligible as well.
For more information about the QMSS Research Fellows Program or to inquire about hiring a QMSS student research assistant, contact Christopher Weiss.
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