Seed Grants Awarded in 2008-2009
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Frauke Kreuter, Joint Program in Survey Methodology
Errors in Housing Unit Listing and their Effects on Survey Estimates
Rising income inequality in the United States has sparked concern about disparities in not
only economic well-being but also political participation and efficacy. These concerns have prompted
inquiries into the consequences of inequality for national politics and policies, such as federal taxation
and immigration (e.g., McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2006; Bartels, 2004). To date, however, there
has not been a comparable effort to study the political consequences of income inequality at the local
level. This proposal seeks funding to initiate a research agenda on links between income inequality,
political behavior, and policy outcomes in local government. The first project in this agenda will be an
examination of whether income inequality in California cities affects the level and composition of local
public spending as well as the prevalence of so-called “private governments,” or homeowner
associations performing municipal functions. -
Kenneth Leonard, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Measuring the Link between Medical Effort and Patient Outcomes in a Low-Resource Health Setting
Doctors in Tanzania and most developing countries face constraints on their time, abilities
and resources. As a result, the quality of care in these settings is typically low. Studies show that the
average doctor in Tanzania adheres to only half of the items required by national protocol. At the
same time, 100,000 children die every year in Tanzania from illnesses for which there are known and
inexpensive treatment options. Not providing patients with appropriate care may play some role in
this high mortality rate. Yet differences in medical quality across doctors are not independent of
patient and illness characteristics. Thus, it is difficult to show that high or low quality causes good or
bad outcomes. We propose to augment a current project, studying doctors in Tanzania, to collect data
on patient outcomes tied to exogenous changes in quality. The currently funded study will test the size
and duration of the Hawthorne effect—the fact that professionals increase effort (and therefore
quality) when they are observed by peers. -
Bo Xie, College of Information Studies
Improving Older Adults' E-health Literacy: A Pilot Study
Health literacy is a critical issue for our rapidly aging population. The long term objective
of this study is to advance scientific knowledge about optimal training intervention methods in
informal educational settings (e.g., public libraries) that can effectively promote the use of quality
Internet health information by older adults with varying levels of prior computer experience. Specific
aims are: 1) Examine the effects of collaborative versus individualistic learning in informal
educational settings on older adults’ learning and use of quality Internet health information; and 2)
Examine how the effects of collaborative versus individualistic learning interact with those of
heterogeneous versus homogeneous group composition based on prior computer experience. The
experiment is a 3 x 2 x 2 mixed factorial design, with group composition based on prior computer
experience (experienced; new; mixed) and learning method (individualistic; collaborative learning) as
the between-participant variables and time of measurement (pre-training; post-training) as the
within-participant variable. Outcome measures will focus on: 1) knowledge and skill acquisition in
Internet health information searching; and 2) health literacy.