Research Opportunities

HAS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
(candidates have been chosen for 2009-2010)

The Department of Sociology at Rice University offers annually a two-year postdoctoral fellowship, whose primary focus is to conduct research using the Houston Area Survey (HAS), in collaboration with department faculty. Fellows are also encouraged to collaborate with the faculty on other topics of mutual interest. Teaching responsibilities are limited to one undergraduate course during the two years. In addition to a yearly salary each postdoctoral fellow receives medical coverage, office space, computer equipment, and a yearly research expense and travel account.

Please visit the department’s website (www.ruf.rice.edu/~soci/) for more information about the postdoctoral program, the sociology faculty, and for instructions regarding application materials. Questions about the postdoctoral position can be emailed to soci@rice.edu. Rice University is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

HAS Summer Fellowships
(candidates have been chosen for summer 2009)

Houston Area Survey Summer Fellowships offer stipends to encourage and support graduate student research using data from the Houston Surveys.

Students who are enrolled in an accredited graduate program in sociology or related fields are invited to submit proposals for a two-month summer research project that uses data from the Houston Area Survey to investigate important substantive issues of social theory or policy. The survey web site gives a detailed description of this valuable source of empirical data. Check below for examples of substantive research questions for which the Houston surveys provide particularly rich and relevant data.

The proposal should outline, in no more than five double-spaced pages, the research question(s) to be addressed and methods of analysis, as well as plans for presentation or publication and a timetable for meeting these goals. At least one letter of recommendation should accompany the application, from a faculty member in the student’s department who can speak to the applicant’s qualifications for the successful completion of the proposed research and who will affirm a personal willingness to provide advice and supervision during the term of the project.

Proposals will be evaluated on the quality and importance of the research plan and the strength of local institutional and faculty support. Each successful proposal receives a stipend. Additional support is available to cover the costs of travel—contingent on the paper being accepted for presentation—to one or more professional meetings, during the 12-month period following completion of the summer research.

Research Questions

The overall objectives of the Houston Area Survey are two-fold. First, the project seeks to clarify the nature of ongoing social change by measuring systematically, using identical questions repeated periodically over the course of 24 years, the way successive representative samples of Harris County residents are responding to some remarkable societal changes. In particular, the surveys measure public responses (a) to the accelerating immigration and growing ethnic diversity of the Houston (and American) population, and (b) to the economic restructuring that has resulted in widening income inequalities and in the growing importance for a city's prosperity of the public schools and the “knowledge industries,” and of the environment and other quality-of-life issues.

Second, the project explores the bases for individual differences in the way area residents are responding to these ongoing societal changes. It pays particular attention in this regard to the impact of age or cohort effects; of gender, ethnic backgrounds, and immigrant generation; of educational attainment and household income; of political perspectives and religious orientations; and of the demographic characteristics of respondents’ neighborhoods -- as these personal and contextual attributes interact to account for individual differences in the attitudes and beliefs that area residents have developed.

Listed here are some of the more specific substantive research questions for which these annual surveys provide particularly rich and relevant data:

A. The New Ethnic Diversity.

(1) Changes over time in the distributions and attitudinal correlates associated with assessments of interethnic relations, as measured on 10-point scales, for the relationships that exist between the respondent's own ethnic group and each of the other three communities -- among all four ethnic populations and across six years of expanded surveys.

(2) The nature and distribution of the contemporary forms of ethnic prejudice (a.k.a., "modern," "symbolic," "laissez-faire," or "color-blind" racism) -- as indicated, for example, in beliefs about discrimination, attitudes toward intermarriage, explanations for intergroup inequalities, the impact of a neighborhood’s ethnic composition on the decision to purchase a home, the actual patterns of residential segregation in neighborhoods, etc.

(3) The determinants of individual differences in attitudes toward and beliefs about the new wave of immigrants, both across and within Houston’s four major ethnic communities.

(4) Intergroup differences in the attitudes and beliefs that are associated with increases in SES (INCOME, EDUC) among Anglos, African Americans, and Latinos. Why, for example, do Anglos and Latinos become Republicans with increasing incomes, but African Americans do not? Why are the more affluent African Americans more sensitive to discrimination and more pessimistic about the economy in general than the less affluent African Americans?

(5) Explorations of the differences in socioeconomic status and in patterns of cultural and attitudinal assimilation among first-, second-, and third-generation Latinos.

B. The Restructured Economy.

(6) Changes over time in the distributions and determinants of economic optimism and pessimism with regard to personal, local, and national prospects (e.g., PAST3YRS, NEXT3YRS; JOBOPPS, HOCHANGE; OUTLOOK, UNFAIR).

(7) The evidence for and determinants of the growing income gap between rich and poor across the 24 years of Houston surveys.

(8) The “social location” of personal well-being in the Houston area, based on asking respondents in each of the past five years: “Is your overall state of health these days excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?” (OWNSTATE). This question is generally considered to be the single most reliable indicator of an individual's actual state of health.

(9) Changes over time in the distributions and determinants of environmental concern and of support for new initiatives to improve the quality of air and water in this famously free-enterprise, laissez-faire metropolis.

(10) Changes over time in the distributions and determinants of attitudes toward other quality-of-life issues (e.g., traffic problems and proposed solutions, preference for city vs. suburban living, support for downtown revitalization, urban amenities and beautification, etc.) -- as Houston seeks to become a “destination of choice” for the new knowledge workers.

(11) The determinants of individual differences among area residents in their reported participation in volunteer activities, as one measure along with other indicators of the extent and distribution of “social capital” within the general Harris County population.

C. Other Dimensions of Social Change.

(12) Age-Cohort-Period Effects: Did the respondents who were 30 to 40 years old in 1985 express attitudes and beliefs that are similar to those of 30- to 40-year-olds in 2005 (reflecting the effects of age or life stage--e.g., NEXT3YRS) or are they more similar to the 50- to 60-year-olds in 2005 (cohort effects--e.g., WIFESJOB), or do both age groups in 2005 differ in similar ways from the 30- to 40-year-olds in 1985 (period effects--e.g., ENVMT)?

(13) Changes over time in the distributions and determinants of attitudes toward capital punishment and criminal sentencing in Harris County, the “Death Penalty Capital of America.”

(14) Changes over time in perspectives on abortion rights and on homosexuality: the important role of the “tolerant traditionalists,” the differential propensity for “single-issue” voting, etc.

(15) Changes over time in the distributions and attitudinal correlates of political perspectives, as measured by political ideology -- “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative” (POLITICS) and/or by party affiliation -- “Republican,” “Independent,” or “Democrat” (PARTY, TRUPARTY).

(16) Changes over time in the distributions and attitudinal correlates of religious orientations, where BIBLE and RELIMP might be combined into three categories of religiosity -- the "”Biblical Fundamentalists,” the “Religious Progressives,” and the “Secularists” (NEWRELIG).