QSS thesis research during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Date: 04/13/2020
One of the key components of the Program in Quantitative Social Science (QSS) at Dartmouth College is student research. All QSS students complete research projects during their last year on campus, either a one-quarter project or an honors thesis. This year, eight students are writing theses, projects which take an entire academic year to complete. Each QSS thesis is publicly presented and defended before a committee consisting of the QSS Director of Undergraduate Research, the main advisor of each student, and a second reader. QSS thesis defenses are open to the Dartmouth community at large.
QSS theses are guided by Professors Robert Cooper and Ahra Wu. Professor Cooper has been at Dartmouth for two years and is the current QSS Director of Undergraduate Research. Professor Cooper teaches a regular QSS course on data visualization (QSS 17), and his research focuses on American political institutions. Professor Wu, who recently finished her doctorate at Rice University and also has a masters degree in statistics, is a visiting professor who teaches and researches quantitative methods and comparative politics, focusing on international conflict.
Spring 2020 at Dartmouth has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. During this time, QSS students continue to work hard on their honors theses even under trying conditions. Grace Sherrill, one of the eight QSS majors working on an honors thesis this academic year, wrote of her remote learning experience so far, "While it took some time to adjust to the new work environment, I'm finding that working from home has given me a valuable new perspective on my thesis. Describing my project to my parents has made my ideas clearer and improved my writing. In our thesis course in the fall, we learned that the best papers are intelligible to people with little background on the subject we are studying. Translating the results of my analyses into less technical terms for my parents has allowed me to better articulate what I'm studying and why the results are important. Though I miss seeing my QSS peers and professors on campus, frequent Zoom calls have allowed me to maintain a dialogue and receive important feedback. I'm looking forward to presenting my results over Zoom in the coming months!"
Each QSS thesis has a formal advisor, and these advisors are key to the QSS thesis program. Advisors provide regular guidance relative to their areas of expertise and encourage students during the yearlong arc of their original research projects. Good relationships between advisors and students provide a foundation to successful honors theses.
Sunny Drescher, another QSS student working on a thesis, writes "I feel lucky that much of my thesis work has been unhindered by working remotely. My advisor, Professor Horiuchi, has been available to meet frequently via Zoom and to give me feedback via email. I have been working on a survey experiment to try to understand how women's support for various policies impacts voters' support for those policies. A lot of gender and politics research focuses on women's viability as political candidates, but there has been less work done on the extent to which gender impacts voters' perceptions of and support for policy. This project uses survey experiments to estimate the impacts of different gender-related cues on respondents' support for various policy issues. While the Covid pandemic has not affected my ability to complete my thesis (so far), the crisis influenced the policy issues I was testing; I intended to use paid family leave as one of the issues, but since that type of policy has become much more practically salient in the past weeks, I had to exclude it from my survey. This research aims to provide insight into the extent to which women's support influences voters' opinions on policy issues, and I look forward to completing it with (hopefully) no additional pandemic-related issues."
As to the challenges for working remotely, Kevin Hu writes, "For me, this had made it challenging to communicate with professors and actively receive feedback on my thesis work. My thesis advisor, Professor Feng Fu, challenged me to prepare my thesis manuscript in parallel to an abridged version for potential journal submission. We discussed expectations and goals during the winter term, and I've been doing my best to execute remotely. I plan to meet with him over Zoom next week to do a walkthrough on both drafts. My thesis is a game-theoretical exploration of market, technology and policy influences on labor strategies in the gig economy. In recent years, scholars have extensively studied the gig economy, producing academic works that address labor preferences, policy design, the role of technology and wide-ranging socioeconomic implications. Applying methods from evolutionary game theory, we consolidate several of these areas of inquiry into a comprehensive model. We extend the replicator equation to model oscillating dynamics in two-player asymmetric bi-matrix games with time-evolving environments, introducing concepts of the attractor arc, driven oscillation, trapping zone and escape."
This year, QSS students are writing honors theses on wide-ranging topics. These range from public attitudes on long-term healthcare, labor-market relations and outcomes in the gig economy, public policy changes and intergenerational socioeconomic mobility, luxury property environmental exemptions and cancer rates, pharmacological advertising and prescription rates, and the effects of gender on public attitudes and voting preferences. Below is the list of current QSS theses students, their advisors, and tentative thesis titles.
Sarishka Desai. Advisors: Michael Herron (Government) and Jonathan Skinner (Economics). Variation in Opioid Prescription Response to Physician Targeted-Marketing
Sunny Drescher. Advisor: Yusaku Horiuchi (Government). The Effects of Gender Cues on Support for Policy
Kevin Hu. Advisor: Feng Fu (Mathematics). Oscillating Replicator Dynamics with Attractor Arcs: A Game-Theoretical Exploration of Technology, Policy and Market Influences on Gig Economy Labor Strategies
Jenna Salvay. Advisor: Richard Howarth (Environmental Studies). Can student activists differentiate themselves from other climate change communicators?: A study on the role of messaging and messengers in the era of climate change
Andrea Sedlacek. Advisor: Kimberly Rogers (Sociology). Interactions of Structure and Culture in Collaborative Groups
Aidan Sheinberg. Advisor: Jason Houle (Sociology). The Effect of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits on Intergenerational Mobility
Grace Sherrill. Advisor: Dean Lacy (Government). What impacts support for public long-term care and its beneficiaries in the U.S.?
Kathryn Shiber. Advisor: Carl Renshaw (Earth Sciences). Not-So-Fairways? The Impact of Golf Course Water Run-Off on Local Cancer Rates