Research

Publications in progress


Major Collaborative Projects

Measuring Health Retrospectively

PI: Sarah Burgard

Despite the popularity of retrospective life history data being used to in addition to or in the place of prospectively collected data, the accuracy of retrospective data remains unclear. This project takes advantage of over three decades of prospectively-collected data in the Americans' Changing Lives Study, a longitudinal study of adults as they age through the life course, with a recently collected retrospective life history wave of data among surviving respondents, to compare the quality of prospectively- and retrospectively-obtained survey responses and their differences in measuring various outcomes, including health, relationship, status, and employment. Responsibilities include variable constructing, data analysis, and literature review.

Internet Access, Health Disparities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Faculty Mentor: Jason Houle

Funding: $20,000, Stamps Scholarship, Stamps Scholar Strive Foundation and Dartmouth College Undergraduate Advising and Research

This project sought to understand how the internet has contributed to social inequalities in the COVID-19 pandemic. I was awarded $20,000 from the Stamps Scholar Strive Foundation, in collaboration with Dartmouth College Undergraduate Advising and Research, to develop this project as my senior honors thesis across two empirical chapters. Using data from the American Community Survey, the New York Times, and other sources, I found that internet access was associated with the uptake of masking and a decrease in COVID-19 incidence and mortality in summer 2020. However, I also found little evidence that internet access exacerbated racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in the pandemic. A paper project is under review at an peer-reviewed journal, and I have presented the results of this work at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association and the Eastern Sociological Society, and in guest lectures.

Temporal Heterogeneity in Health Disparities in the COVID-19 Pandemic

PI: Kristin Smith

Funding: $3,000, Sophomore Research Scholarship, Dartmouth College Undergraduate Advising and Research

Social scientists and public health experts know that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed or worsened racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and political health disparities. However, little research has interrogated the role of the pandemic's temporal dynamics on disparate outcomes. In this project, led by Dr. Kristin Smith, we separately analyze the associations between markers of social inequality, community resources, and COVID-19 incidence and mortality across three waves of the pandemic before vaccines were widely available. We find that the strength of health disparities and the role of resources generally grew across the three successive waves of the pandemic. Previous versions of this project have been presented at the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society.