on various research projects with faculty members for fellow undergraduates in the Foundations in
across campus. These research collaborations vary Social Science Research course within the sociology/
in academic discipline and range from mapping anthropology major. With the leadership of their
the tuberculosis genome to assessing critical think- course instructor and our research advisor, Ryan
ing skills to analyzing ethics in the computing pro- Sheppard, the students conducted a cross-sectional
fession. Additionally, CIR students hold weekly study during the fall semester of 2008, investigating
office hours to help faculty and students with their social and intimate relationships on campus through
independent research projects. The students also a randomized campus survey. Within the study,
meet as a group every Monday night to develop sociology students in the research methods course
research and consulting skills and listen to speak- formed seven research groups, and each group chose
ers with statistical experience while enjoying food to investigate specific topics ranging from dating and
from local establishments. hook-ups to homophobic attitudes.
In addition to CIR, St. Olaf offers a strong cur- Each of us was assigned to work with 2–3 of the
riculum of about a dozen statistics courses across research groups individually from the beginning
several departments that can lead to a four-course stages of forming research questions and hypoth-
concentration in the subject. Because statistics is not eses to the final presentation of the findings at the
a major at St. Olaf, all three of us on the statisti- Midwest Sociological Society Conference that was
cal consulting team have different areas of expertise: held in Des Moines, Iowa. All three of us had mini-
Seth’s major is chemistry, Kate’s is mathematics, and mal exposure to sociological studies, thus we start-
Lizzy’s is psychology. ed our consulting experience by learning some of
the basics of sociological research from Sheppard,
Starting Our Consulting Project
Roback, and previous studies.
During the 2008–2009 academic year, our CIR We began with a review of the campus survey
team was guided by statistical mentor and professor from last year’s sociology research methods course
Paul Roback as we served as statistical consultants that investigated electronic and World Wide Web
social networking. We discussed last year’s survey
to search for ways to improve the campus survey.
Our team came to a consensus with Sheppard and
Roback that we would administer the campus survey
Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology
to a randomly generated list of students over the St.
Olaf network this year, rather than issue paper cop-
2009 Research Conference
ies as in previous years. Our decision to administer
November 2–4, 2009 the survey electronically produced a response rate of
The 2009 Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) Research
approximately two-thirds, compared to a response
Conference will be held November 2–4, 2009, at the Washington Convention
rate near one-third last year. The electronic survey
Center, 801 Mount Vernon Place NW, Washington, DC. The conference also saved us time that would have been spent enter-
provides a forum for experts from around the world to discuss and exchange
ing data by hand. We also learned from last year’s
current research and methodological topics relevant to federal government
survey that it would be important for us to advise
statistical programs. Each day of the conference will offer papers on a
the research groups to ask questions in ways that
wide range of topics, including the use of advanced technologies for survey
design and data collection, processing and dissemination, data mining, data
yielded outcomes relevant to their primary and sec-
warehousing and metadata, treatment of missing data, improving coverage
ondary research questions. To create relevant survey
and response rates, confidentiality and disclosure issues, record linkage, questions, we found ourselves communicating the
sample design and estimation, cognitive research and usability testing, and
fundamental differences between quantitative and
data quality.
categorical data and soon learned the importance of
Technical demonstrations will run concurrently on the second day of the
ordinal data in sociological studies.
conference during the first morning session. Applications will include While reviewing the literature of other published
demonstrations on Q-Notes, Field Interviewer (Fl) Tracker Tool, Statipedia, and
sociological survey studies, we discovered many of
Census Coverage Measurement Clerical Matching software. Sessions feature
the responses are ordinal in nature, often from a
papers and demonstrations by government, private sector, and academic
researchers from eight countries. Katharine Abraham from the Joint Program in
Likert scale. The use of Likert scales to measure lev-
Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland will be our guest speaker in
els of agreement or disagreement is a beneficial tech-
the opening plenary session. All paper sessions will include an open discussion, nique in sociology because it more accurately quanti-
and some sessions will include a formal discussion.
fies responses that are inherently difficult to quantify.
conference fee: Registration is $195. for a copy of the advance program and
Examples of such responses from this project include
registration information, please refer to www.fcsm.gov/events.
feelings of intimacy and emotions involving loneli-
ness. From these Likert responses, we often created
Likert indexes by summing related Likert responses,
48 AMSTAT NEwS SEPTEMbER 2009
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