Major Research Projects

The Panel Study on American Religion and Ethnicity (PS-ARE)

Currently funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., this national-level study follows 2610 adult Americans through their lives. Interviewing these respondents every three years, the PS-ARE allows researchers at CORRUL to study how changes in one area of life are related to changes in other areas. Like the Houston Area Survey, the design of PS-ARE allows for interracial and ethnic comparisons. An additional benefit of the study is that because it adds children of the respondents to the sample when the children turn 18, generational comparisons can be made.  This study is being directed by Dr. Michael Emerson and Dr. David Sikkink at the University of Notre Dame.  It is also known as PALS, Portraits of American Life Study.  For information on a 2010 National Student Paper Contest utilzing this data, go to www.ps-are.org.

News - The PS-ARE data set was publicly released on October 24, 2009 at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) conference, Denver, CO.  If you would like information on five public presentations given utilizing the data, please click here and select "publications." 

The Religion, Immigrant, Civic Engagement Project (R.I.C.E.)
Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Principal Investigator (with Dr. Michael Emerson) on a study of religion, immigration and civic life.  This study is funded by a major grant from the Russell Sage Foundation. They have conducted over 200 in-depth interviews with a random sample of first and second-generation immigrants as well as a group of native born (third generation or higher) Americans. Just focusing on the immigrant population, Ecklund, Emerson, and a team of researchers around the country also observed 15 organizations. Knowledge gained from this new data collection will increase public and scholarly knowledge about immigration, religion, civil society and the connections between these.  Release of preliminary results from the study will occur early in 2010. Watch the video below for some early insights.



Religion Among Academic Scientists
For the past four years, Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund has conducted a study exploring the nexus of faith and reason among natural and social scientists at twenty-one elite US research universities. The study involved 1,646 survey respondents, achieving a high response rate of 75 percent, and 275 in-depth interviews with scientists.  Preliminary results show that respondent differences in attitudes about religion and spirituality do not fall entirely along disciplinary boundaries, (with distinctive differences between natural and social scientists), as previous research has claimed. Rather, there are some respondents who see the two realms as overlapping, some who see them as completely distinct, and still others who create niches of varying overlap.  A small pilot study was also conducted to examine approaches to religion, spirituality, and their connection to medicine among 300 professors of medicine and doctors who teach at research hospitals.

Women in Science
Women’s lower rate of participation in the academic sciences draws considerable attention from public and scholarly commentators.  In September 2007, Elaine Howard Ecklund, along with Anne Lincoln, Southern Methodist University, received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a study of women’s and men’s self-reported reasons for pursuing academic science careers and the perceptions both genders have of major influences in the science career path.  This study included a survey administered to 3,500 individuals (which achieved a 72% response rate) coupled with 150 life history interviews.  Expanding research on this topic will provide new directions for understanding the origins of and remedies for the under-representation of women in academic science.
 

• From the Blood of Race to the Chromosomes of Gender: Comparing Transgender Identity and Biracial Identity
  When the U.S. Census unveiled the “new race question” in 2000 allowing respondents to mark one or more races, the change announced the possibility of a “multiracial identity” to all Americans.  This shift reflects a transformation in the way our government defines racial identity.  This is particularly noteworthy because it represents an alteration from the past approaches to where racial identity was based on physical human differences such as skin color to a more modern notion of social construction.  That is to say, individual identity may be defined and interpreted in a variety of ways. Similarly, we are witnessing a parallel transformation in gender identity, with the emergence of “transgender” identity (i.e. individuals who claim a gender identity different than the one they were assigned at birth).  However, we as a society have been more resistant to embracing transgender identity.   What does this difference say about how we think about “race” vs. “gender”? Ultimately, what does this difference say about the potential to identify ourselves in the way we see fit?  Although many biracial individuals see possibilities of being “both” races, do transgender individuals similarly see themselves as “both” genders?  This project conducts an in-depth exploration of transgender identity to assess how it parallels biracial identity.  Using data drawn from a sample of 167 transgender individuals (collected in 2008) as well as 25 in-depth interviews (data collection on-going), the authors explore how individuals truly see the possibilities of blending.  This study is being led by Jenifer Bratter, associate director, CORRUL and Kristen Schilt, assistant professor, department of sociology, University of Chicago. Click here for more information. 

• Two Schools
  Dr. Alexander Byrd is working with Dr. Madlene Hamilton to study the transformation of two urban high schools—Jack Yates and Sharpstown in Houston, Texas—and their surrounding neighborhoods from the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board to the present.  Called “Two Schools,” the study focuses on Houston's Sharpstown and Third Ward neighborhoods chronicling, comparatively, each area's transformation in a series of documentary, digital, and traditional scholarly projects:  1) a physical and digital archive of interviews, photographs and educational and demographic data documenting  key transformations in each neighborhood since about 1960, 2) an oral history tentatively entitled Sharpstown and the Future of the American City: Education, Urban Hope, and the Dilemmas of Development from Eisenhower to Obama, and 3) a monograph on the exigencies of race and urban life in the post Brown South centered on coming to terms with four decades of change and continuity at Yates and Sharpstown high schools, and their respective environs.  Dr. Alexander Byrd, associate professor, department of  history, Rice University and Dr. Madlene Hamilton, post doctoral fellow, Rice University are affiliated faculty members of CORRUL. 
  

U.S.-China Coastal Cities Project - Challenges and Prospects for Sustainability
CORRUL and the Shell Center for Sustainability at Rice University have begun a research program on Coastal Cities which seeks to assess the dimensions of the challenges facing major, low-lying estuary metropoles. In its first phase, the study focuses on major U.S. and Chinese coastal cities with a large petrochemical industrial base, including Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenzhen. Initial research activities included the development of a comprehensive and fully comparable survey of public attitudes and beliefs, conducted jointly in both the United States and China.  Click here for more information. 

NASA Photo