Academic Research Centers

Analyzing the Relationship Among Early Childhood Conditions, Reproduction of Socioeconomic Inequalities and Adult Health Disparities. This project analyzes the relationship between early health conditions, adult socioeconomic attainment, and adult health. The first goal of this study is to document the impact of early health conditions on adult socioeconomic and adult health outcomes. More

Biodemography of Exceptional Longevity in the United States. This project proposes to investigate why some people manage to survive to extreme old age (100+ years) and what are the biological and social correlates of exceptional longevity. These are important issues not only for demographic forecasts of human mortality and population aging, and the policy implications on health-care and pension expenditures, but also for improving our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of human aging and longevity. The project proposes to explore the effects of early-life living conditions, adult physical characteristics, marriage, and reproductive history on exceptional longevity, and will test a number of related biomedical and social hypotheses.  The project is designed as an interdisciplinary study of exceptional human longevity. To contribute to the research infrastructure for subsequent longevity studies world-wide, a database with integrated, matched information on longevity predictor variables will be developed, and made available to the research community on the Internet. More

Getting on Track Early for School Success: An Assessment System to Support Effective Instruction. Stephen W. Raudenbush and a team of co-investigators from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Education, Urban Education Institute, Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education, and NORC at the University of Chicago are developing objective, valid, and instructionally relevant tools for assessing the literacy and math skills of children of ages three and four.   More

Men’s Assessment of Social Support and Risk Networks. The goal of the Men’s Assessment of Social Support and Risk Networks was to pilot test recruitment procedures and questionnaires to assess the influence of social networks and norms and beliefs of a racially and ethnically diverse sample of men who have sex with men (MSM) on their sex and sex-drug risk and risk reduction practices.   More

State-specific Design Parameters for Designing Better Evaluation Studies.  More