EVENTS
Wednesday, September 5, 12-1:10 PM. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks (UC Berkeley) will present, “How We Count: Why Quantitative Social Science Matters.” 2232 Piedmont Ave. Cookies and refreshments served.
To view past brown bag presentations: http://www.vimeo.com/
For the fall 2018 brown bag schedule: https://events.berkeley.edu/
Wednesday, September 5, 2018 • 5:30pm–7:00pm. Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture; the Goldman School of Public Policy; and the Berkeley Food Institute for a discussion on immigration and the future of agriculture in California. Alumni House
Thursday, Sept 6, 12-1:00 David Ragland and Tracy McMillan from SafeTREC will be talking about: “Aging in Place in Contra Costa County: How current conditions and future trends in mobility can inform policy and programming. 5101 Berkeley Way West.
EVENTS
Wednesday, September 5, 12-1:10 PM. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks (UC Berkeley) will present, “How We Count: Why Quantitative Social Science Matters.” 2232 Piedmont Ave. Cookies and refreshments served.
To view past brown bag presentations: http://www.vimeo.com/
For the fall 2018 brown bag schedule: https://events.berkeley.edu/
Wednesday, September 5, 2018 • 5:30pm–7:00pm. Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture; the Goldman School of Public Policy; and the Berkeley Food Institute for a discussion on immigration and the future of agriculture in California. Alumni House
Thursday, Sept 6, 12-1:00 David Ragland and Tracy McMillan from SafeTREC will be talking about: “Aging in Place in Contra Costa County: How current conditions and future trends in mobility can inform policy and programming. 5101 Berkeley Way West.
SAVE THE DATE
Monday, Sept 10, 2-3:30 PM. Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart, Adam Reich. 402 Barrows Hall.
September 13 | 12-1 p.m. Leveraging big data to assess health effects of changes in physical and social environments, and policy and program implementation. With Jennifer Ahern. 5101 Berkeley Way West Bldg.
Tuesday, October 2, 4:10 – 5:00 PM. “The challenge of big data and data science for the social sciences” Henry Brady, Dean, Goldman School of Public Policy. BIDS, 190 Doe Library.
ANNOUNCEMENTS.
NIH is discontinuing its online Protecting Human Research Participants course on Sept 26. UC Berkeley has long required that investigators get compliance through CITI, as do many other institutions. Anyone wishing this certification should do so soon.
CONFERENCES
Call for Participation at the 2018 Annual Conference of the Pacific Chapter of American Association for Public Opinion Research. December 6-7, 2018, Marines’ Memorial Club & Hotel, San Francisco, CA. The 2018 PAPOR Annual Conference welcomes paper, poster, and panel proposals on any topic related to public opinion research, theory, or methodology. We welcome participation from all sectors engaged in public opinion and public policy research, including academia, government, private sector, and non-profit. For full submission instructions, please visit: http://www.papor.org/wp-
DATA
D-Lab is hosting a trove of Zillow data (The Zillow Transaction and Assessment Dataset, or ZTRAX). Several researchers on campus are already making use of it in their projects. CEDA is looking into the possibility of supporting ongoing access to this data, with the associated hardware, software, and technical expertise, much as we already do with the full count 1940 census and other datasets. To allow us to make a well informed decision on the costs and benefits, we would like to gauge the interest among you in potentially using this dataset for research with an aging angle. While not demographic per se, the data include tax assessments, rents, home value, and year built, among other items, for 110 million homes, down to the neighborhood level. Current UC studies using the data are examining gentrification, displacement, environmental quality, and tax assessment patterns, to mention only a few. Is ZTRAX something you can envision using in your research in the near future or the medium term (next 5 years)? Please let Liz Vasile know (evasile@berkeley.edu), either way. A “yes” or “no” will suffice, but if you have a minute and would like to elaborate, she’d be interested to know more.
D-LAB
D-Lab offers training in Data Science this fall for students as well as pedagogical training for instructors. Visit the D-lab website for more information. D-lab regularly offers workshops and training in courses, one-on-one consulting for faculty, grad students and undergraduates, and working groups of focuses topics. One-on-one consulting also available. For more information and registration, visit http://dlab.berkeley.edu. You can now add D-Lab workshops to your bcalendar directly from D-Lab workshop description.
JOBS
All jobs and postdoctoral fellowships are posted as we receive them on the Demography Department Jobs Listserv, http://lists.demog.berkeley.
MIGRATION MAILING LIST
Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI.berkeley.edu) is a research center for the study of immigrants and immigration. BIMI has a mailing list (immigration_group@lists.
APPENDIX
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
NIH Delays Enforcement of “Clinical Trials” Reporting for Basic Research
August 8, 2018
On July 20, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a Guide Notice (NOT-OD-18-212) outlining its plans to delay enforcement of key clinical trials reporting requirements for projects traditionally considered basic research.
The Notice, Delayed Enforcement and Short-Term Flexibilities for Some Requirements Affecting Prospective Basic Science Studies Involving Human Participants, follows months of feedback and pressure on NIH from the external research community, including COSSA and several COSSA members, to rescind or at least delay implementation of NIH’s clinical trials policy announced in 2016. As previously reported, in an effort to enhance its stewardship of and increase transparency over the clinical trials it funds, NIH established a new definition of “clinical trials,” which now captures some basic behavioral and social sciences research and comes with new reporting requirements (see COSSA’s Hot Topic piece for details). In response, the basic research community, including in the behavioral and social sciences, has registered major concerns not only with the reporting requirements that are designed for traditional clinical trials and therefore a poor fit for basic research studies, but with the agency redefining some areas of basic science as a clinical trial under the new policy.
Registering & Reporting
The Notice states that NIH will “[delay] enforcement of registration and reporting policies for prospective basic science studies involving human participants… throughSeptember 24, 2019,” presumably until a more appropriate registering and reporting system can be established for basic science projects involving human subjects. However, in the interim, basic science studies involving human participants are still expected to be registered and reported, just in a portal of your choosing. The original policy would have required all newly defined clinical trials to register and report findings on clinicaltrials.gov; the basic science community has argued that clinicaltrials.gov is not the best reporting system for this research, so this delay is welcome news.
Watch for New FOA
Unfortunately, the notice issued last month does not address the primary concern of the basic behavioral and social science community—that some basic research studies are now considered “clinical trials” in accordance with the original definition (NOT-OD-16-149), requiring proposals to be submitted to clinical trials-specific Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). However, the notice states that “NIH has instituted a temporary period of leniency for applications submitted to an incorrect FOA… In this initial phase (for due dates through September 24, 2019), NIH will not administratively reject any application for submission to an incorrect FOA based on study-type designation.” Further, NIH is reportedly developing new FOAs for what it is calling “prospective basic science studies involving human participants” for due dates starting onJanuary 25, 2019. However, leniency will still be exercised until September of next year. More information on the basic science FOA is expected in October/November 2018.
NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) Director William Riley has published a blog post with additional analysis of the July Guide Notice and its implications for the behavioral and social science research community. Check it out here.