小蓝视频

Claire Griggs, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology

Description

Professor Claire Griggs of the Department of Justice, Law, & Criminology, and Destiny Fullwood-Singh of Solid Ground Law PLLC, seek to engage in research of IRAA and JRA populations in the District of Columbia and Maryland respectively. Predicated on the legal argument that in re-entry determinations, when assessing future dangerousness judges should stop looking at risk prediction and instead take into consideration risk management, this research project will focus on a population of roughly 300-400 individuals who fall under Second Look Legislation in DC and MD. It aims to evaluate the impact of specific services available to these individuals 鈥� in particular housing, employment, financial and/or welfare aid, and other social services.

The returning citizens who are the focus of this research are the 鈥渨ar on drugs and crime鈥� generation. As their incarceration occurred between the ages of 16-25, anecdotally we see the insufficiency of support services for this demographic. Not only were they incarcerated during pivotal years for socialization, but the advancements in technology made while they were incarcerated pose an additional substantial hurdle during transition. While numerous different non-profits and organizations exist to assist individuals with discrete parts of the re-entry process, this research project will also look at to what extent does the lack of a standardized 鈥渢hrough process鈥� pose a legal burden on returning citizens. To what degree and under what formula should judges take these factors into consideration when assessing future dangerousness? What legal components are necessary in the crafting of optimal models and policies, and how can we best prepare communities for re-entry of Second Look offenders?

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

An undergraduate research assistant could contribute to the project in the following ways. The researchers and authors plan to seek IRB approval to conduct evidence-based research directly in the population that is the subject of the project. The use of surveys and interviews are anticipated. As such, a student researcher would help to conduct and transcribe interviews, as well as help with the qualitative methods of assessing the interviews and data entry. Additionally, the student researcher will help with the pre-emption check process and conduct comprehensive research on the landscape of social services that currently exist and serve the re-entry community.

David Miller, Department of Government

Description

Every four years when presidential candidates select their running mates, politicians, pundits, and political observers discuss at length the ways in which those selections might affect electoral outcomes. However, little rigorous political science research exists on this topic in large part because we observe running mate selection and electoral outcomes so rarely; with only 60 presidential elections held in American history by the end of 2024, and those elections being held across dynamic political environments that are difficult to compare, we are hard-pressed to parse apart the effect of running mate selection on electoral outcomes from other political factors.

My coauthors and I seek to provide insight on whether running mate selection affects electoral outcomes by moving focus away from the federal level and to the state level. Approximately 1/3 of states have (or had in the recent past) systems whereby gubernatorial nominees selected their running mates. By collecting information about gubernatorial candidates and their running mates and ultimate electoral outcomes, we will be able to assess outstanding questions about the effect of running mates such as: 1) do running mates boost support for gubernatorial candidates in their localities of residence?; 2) do gubernatorial candidates benefit from selecting running mates who provide balance on descriptive characteristics?; and 3) do gubernatorial candidates benefit from selecting running mates who provide balance on policy preferences? We hope that this analysis can then provide insight on how running mate selection may inform electoral dynamics at the national level.

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

To facilitate this project, we need to collect biographical information about gubernatorial candidates and their running mates to match with our electoral data (1968-present). As no central repository for this information exists, an RA would be responsible for researching each gubernatorial and lieutenant gubernatorial candidate and recording information such as their place of residence in the state at that time, gender, race, and age.

Public service professionals hold distinct identities, some of which 鈥渟how up鈥� to work while others remain hidden or intentionally suppressed. For decades, an uneasy 鈥渕yth of separate worlds鈥� has defined the identities relevant to work鈥攕uch as managerial and occupational identities鈥攁nd those that are seen as unrelated, like religious, national, gender, and family identities. However, factors like declining job stability, rising workforce diversity, the spread of communication technologies, increased politization of public work are now blurring the lines between work and nonwork life. As a result, many employees, organizations and occupations are now having to renegotiate how work and nonwork identities intersect.

Scholars of organizational behavior and diversity have argued that there are advantages to employees bringing their identities to work. Those with a strong organizational identity tend to engage in behaviors aligned with their social identity, prefer working for organizations that embrace these identities, and demonstrate greater cohesion and commitment.

But the nature of public work does not always allow for that. Public employees must satisfy many different stakeholders and navigate work conditions that may not support the integration of their identities. For example, while sharing a personal identity with clients can enhance connections, public employees are also often expected to maintain political neutrality, act rationally, and execute the directives of those in power within a legal framework. In other words, professional identity can overshadow the impact of personal identity and that there are perceived tradeoffs between expressing different identities. However, the mechanism by which these different identities function to influence motivation and behavior of public employees is still not well understood.

In this project, we will look at how non-work and work identities interact to influence performance, decision-making and motivation among public employees. We will use a mixed methodology approach to answer our research questions. These methods include interviews, qualitative and quantitative surveys.

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

Student assistants may be required to perform the following tasks:

• Conducting extensive literature review on the topics of identity processes, bureaucratic decision making and representative bureaucracy.
• Assisting in design of study by formulating research materials.
• Assisting in data collection by interviews or surveys.
• Students who have an interest in identity research and mixed methodology approaches are highly encouraged to apply.

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

1-2 research assistants (RAs) will contribute to creating a unique, first-of-its-kind dataset detailing the biographies, career paths, and political connections of Chinese overseas ambassadors. This project requires RAs who are fluent in reading simplified Chinese characters. Specifically, RAs will:

1. Collect detailed biographical information for about 200 Chinese overseas ambassadors using search engines (e.g., Google, Baidu), government websites, and AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT). Data to be gathered includes individual ambassadors鈥� birthplace, age, gender, educational background, graduating institution, and all prior full-time work experiences (i.e., government agencies/firms/other institutions they were affiliated with before becoming ambassadors).

2. Identify and document the number of connections each Chinese ambassador has with members of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee (China鈥檚 top governing body). An ambassador is considered to have a connection with a Central Committee member if they:

• Share a birth city, or
• Graduated from the same college, or
• Worked at the same institution in the same city and year.

The faculty lead will provide RAs with biographies and work experience information for Central Committee members to support the second task.

Ryan Moore,听Department of Government

Description

Randomized field experiments represent the best way to infer causality in realistic political and policy environments. However, different experimental designs have different strengths and weaknesses. This project will examine 1 or 2 problems in experimental design (depending on time), when applied to real-world field experiments. One possibility will employ an "adaptive" design in an experiment communicating with social policy beneficiaries. Another will demonstrate how traditional experiments can fail to capture highly heterogeneous effects, for example, in campaign settings where emails do not appear to influence donations on average, but some emails greatly affect some potential donors, or, for example, in mental health settings where treatments do not appear effective on average, but greatly help some patients. The goal of the PAPL is to produce and submit a short paper about experimental methods for peer review.

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

An undergraduate can contribute formatively to the idea development, analysis, and production of the paper. In particular, an undergraduate could co-author the paper and participate fully in its development. Potential collaborators should have completed GOVT-310 or equivalent.

Khaldoun AbouAssi, Department of听Public Administration and Policy

Description

With 20 people newly displaced every minute (that鈥檚 30,000 displacements per day) and a projected 150-200 million individuals displaced by climate change by 2050, the problems and challenges of creating and coordinating effective multilateral humanitarian response programs for refugees will only grow. There are 6 million refugees living in camps worldwide in which decisions are made and services are provided by a complex, multi-organizational network of actors (governments, nonprofits, international organizations). Studying these arrangements are the bread and butter of Public Administration. However, the topic of refugee camp management is not explored. The purpose of my research is to study refugee camps management by applying public administration concepts and frameworks. At this stage, I need to develop a dataset of organizations operating in refugee camps around the world and code articles that have academic publications that mention the management of refugee camps.

How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?

Building on the work from previous year, the student will work on building database of organizations (public agencies, nonprofits, transnational NGOs or international organizations) serving or operating in refugee camps in different parts of the world (Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Europe). These organizations will be categorized based on their type and role and will then be contacted in a later stage of this research project to participate in a survey.

In addition, the student will work with me on coding articles that refer to refugee camp management (around 150). Coding texts in articles involves systematically analyzing and categorizing textual data to identify patterns, themes, or concepts within the content. We will use open coding (create categories as we read through the text). Using a spreadsheet, we will highlight or tag relevant text passages (or sentences). As we do that, we will look for patterns, repetitions, or variations within the coded data. We will then group related codes together to form broader patterns, analyze the patterns to identify overarching themes. The student will then write a comprehensive report that discusses the identified themes, providing examples from the coded texts to support the findings.