Tag: Fall 2017 Research Assistantship

Professor: Danny Hayes
Department: Political Science
Title: Measuring the Erosion of Local Political News
Description: The local news environment in the United States has withered in recent years. As revenues have fallen, newspapers have devoted fewer resources to public affairs reporting or shut down altogether. According to a growing body of research, these trends have resulted in declines in civic engagement. Yet our understanding of changes to the local news environment – and their consequences – remains incomplete, largely because of the
lack of longitudinal data. As a result, many questions remain unanswered: Has the erosion of local news been steady, or have there been a series of precipitous declines? Have the trends been similar throughout the country, or
have some papers been able to weather the storm better than others? Do cuts in circulation result in less political coverage, or do other topics take the hit? In this project, we rely on two new data sets to document changes in the volume of local political news between 1980 and 2016. We start with an examination of four decades worth of circulation and newsroom staff data at the largest circulating newspaper in each state. We then turn to a content analysis of the local political coverage in these papers over time. Although the patterns across the papers are not entirely uniform, the results paint a picture of an increasingly impoverished local news environment. Given this evidence of the erosion of local news, observers’ concerns about political engagement in communities across the United States appear very much justified.
Duties:
– Help collect data from the Library of Congress on the newsroom staff of local newspapers around the country
– Help conduct a content analysis of local and state political news coverage, using newspaper archives in LexisNexis and other databases
– Help analyze data from the content analysis to contribute to an ongoing book project
* Please note that I am flexible about the time commitment. Below, I have estimated that a student would spend 4-6 hours per week on the project. But if a student would like to work more and thus gain additional credit, I am happy to discuss that. Likewise, if a student would prefer to work less, for 1 credit, I am open to that as well.
Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dwh@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Katrina Pariera
Department: Organizational Sciences and Communication
Title: Sexual Communication with Parents and Peers
Description: I have two related research projects that require additional assistance. One study, “Critical Moments In Sexual Communication: Young Women’s Memories Of Mother-Daughter Sexual Communication” is a content analysis of the messages young women remember receiving from their mothers about sexuality. This project will assess dimensions of successful and unsuccessful sexual communication from parents. The data for this study has been collected, but because it is a content analysis I need a research assistant to help me develop and assess codes. The second project, “A Diary Study of Daily Sexual Communication Among Emerging Adults” is an evaluation of everyday discussions with friends, partners, parents, and colleagues about sex and sexuality. The data for this study has also been collected, but not yet analyzed. A research assistant would help with content analysis development and coding.
Duties: My research assistant would mostly help with developing codes for content analysis, then coding data. This entail reading through data (in this case, research participants’ comments) and analyzing patterns among them. We would work together to come up with a set of codes. The research assistant would then go through each response and apply the appropriate code. For example, the research assistant and I might determine that many participants recall their mother emphasizing the importance of saving one’s virginity for marriage. The research assistant would then go through each statement and indicate whether or not this code applies.
Note. I have indicated that this could be a 1-credit opportunity. However, this is flexible and I am open to offering more credit and providing more work on these projects.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: klp@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Jozef Przytycki
Department: Mathematics
Title: Knot Theory: Editing and Programming
Description: Knot Theory is a discipline of modern mathematics, part of
topology (geometria situs). Student(s) will assist me with editing programing and doing research in Knot
Theory.
Duties: Students under my supervision will be involved in tasks as below:
1. Student would assist in preparing/editing research paper for arXiv submission (and eventual publication). Student has to learn LaTeX and how to draw figures in xfig or other similar program.
2. Many invariants of graphs and knots require pattern testing which require to wrote simple (or not that simple) programs. Also programs are needed to analyze simple algebraic structures related to knots.
I assume student would assist me 4-6 hours a week (2 credit) but I am flexible, so more, or less is possible.
Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 2
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: przytyck@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Jody Ganiban
Department: Psychology
Title: Boston University Twin Project
Description: The Boston University Twin Project (BUTP) is a multi-method, multi-situation, longitudinal study of early child temperament and related behaviors. The first phase of this project focused primarily on activity level and comprised over 300 twin pairs assessed in the home and lab at ages 2 and 3. Subject recruitment, sample characteristics, and study procedures are described. A second phase broadens our focus to the development of multiple temperament dimensions and developmental outcomes in a new cohort of 300 twin pairs to be assessed at 3, 4, and 5 years of age.
Duties: Research assistants will be involved in the collection of data through analysis of videos of parent-child dyadic interactions. Each RA will be assigned videos weekly to code. Much of the work would be done independently and on the research assistant’s schedule. One hour each week would be dedicated to a meeting with other research assistants and the supervisor in order to discuss anomalies in videos and necessary modifications to the coding manual and procedures.
Time commitment: 7-9 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 3
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: ganiban@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Adam Dean
Department: Political Science
Title: Voicing Opposition: Labor Repression and Trade Liberalization in Developing Countries
Description: One of the most important developments in the world economy over the past few decades has been the decision of developing countries to open their economies to the global market. Governments around the world lowered their tariffs and other trade barriers so rapidly that scholars began to puzzle over what explained this new “rush towards free trade.”  In the field of international relations, the conventional wisdom holds that this dramatic policy shift was caused by a wave of democratization, which enfranchised the world’s poor, who then rose up and demanded the free trade policies that would help to lift them out of poverty.  In short, many scholars hold that democratic governments in developing countries chose to pursue trade liberalization because they were accountable to workers.  In contrast, this research project offers a much needed corrective to this common narrative by introducing a number of missing factors including the roles of labor unions, state repression, and the free trade demands made by the United States.
Whereas previous scholars assume that workers in developing countries all favored free trade, my new book demonstrates that labor unions in developing countries regularly opposed trade liberalization.  Some unions feared
competition from imports, others argued that increased exports would only increase profits for capital, still others joined societal coalitions that opposed broad liberalization packages extending far beyond trade policy.
Despite the common prediction that all workers in developing countries benefit from free trade, it is extremely rare to find labor unions in developing countries that actually support trade liberalization.  Where labor rights were well protected, these unions effectively slowed down the rate of trade policy reform.  Unions were particularly influential when democratization opened up public debates about economic policy.  Unions called general strikes and pushed back against the liberalization demands of export-oriented businesses and pro-reform technocrats.  Such labor union opposition in developing countries even blunted the liberalization demands made by the United States.
Labor unions failed to influence trade policy, however, in countries where workers’ rights were less protected and labor mobilization was actively repressed.  When countries democratized but did not protect workers’ rights, labor opposition was squashed and liberalization proceeded rapidly. Similarly, the United States’ efforts to open markets were more successful when focused on developing countries that lacked powerful unions.  In short, where unions were granted a voice in policy debates they managed to push back against both domestic and international demands for free trade.  The international politics literature therefore mischaracterizes the trade policy preferences of labor unions in developing countries and also exaggerates the responsiveness of democratic governments to organized labor’s demands.
Duties: I am looking for a research assistant to help with archival research at the Library of Congress and National Archives.  We will be looking for primary documents (pamphlets, newspapers, meeting minutes, etc) from labor
unions in India, Bolivia, and Argentina.  The research on India can be conducted in English, but Spanish language skill are needed for the research on Bolivia and Argentina.  The research assistant will help locate, collect,
read, analyze, and summarize these and other related primary documents. There will also be opportunities to read more broadly about these three cases.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: adamdean@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Chris Warshaw
Department: Political Science
Title: The policy effects of county executive and legislative elections
Description: County governments spend nearly 400 billion dollars each year and employ over 2 million people. However, there has been little previous research about the effect of elections on county fiscal policies. For instance, how much does it matter whether Democrats or Republicans are elected to the county commission? In this study, we are in the process of examining the policy consequences of partisan control of county executives and legislative bodies (“commissions”). Our findings will contribute to a growing literature on the policy consequences of partisan control of state and local government. There will be opportunities for the RA to conduct their own original research using this new dataset (e.g., for a thesis project) if they desire.
Duties: Collect county election data from websites and news archives, and conduct preliminary analysis of it.
Time commitment: 7-9 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 3
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: warshaw@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Mary Rothemich at rothemich@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.