The Institute for Policy & Social Research is a faculty-driven research center supporting social scientists who focus on social problems and policy-relevant questions. IPSR fosters independent researchers and collaborative teams within our network of faculty affiliates and seven interdisciplinary research centers.
What's New
COVID-19 Research & Resources
The Institute for Policy & Social Research has been tracking the impact of COVID-19 on the state of Kansas and, as a public service, IPSR has created a website that provides resources for people to see how COVID-19 is affecting the state and its economy. This website includes research presentations by economics professor Donna Ginther (and director of IPSR) that explain how policy has an economic impact on the state. Other links provide background data on demographics and healthcare and broadband access. Please visit https://ipsr.ku.edu/covid19/ for regular updates as new information becomes available.
KU leading program to boost digital literacy among women leaving incarceration
KU's Center for Digital Inclusion has received a three-year, $249,857 grant through the Kansas Health Foundation's Kansas Digital Equity and Inclusion Collaborative program to strengthen partnership between researchers, departments of correction, public libraries and other organizations in northeast Kansas to reach women before they leave incarceration and continue training afterward to aid a successful transition. Hyunjin Seo, Oscar Stauffer Professor and founding director of the Center for Digital Inclusion in the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, is the grant's principal investigator.
Link(s): https://today.ku.edu/2021/07/27/ku-lead-program-boost-digital-literacy-skills-employment-health-women-after-release
Study: Hundreds of lives saved in Kansas counties that adopted mask mandates
Despite facing cultural and political pushback, the evidence remains clear: Face masks made a difference in Kansas. Donna K. Ginther's article "Association of Mask Mandates and COVID-19 Case Rates, Hospitalizations and Deaths in Kansas" examines the effect of masks on the state's 105 counties. It appears in JAMA Network Open, a journal published by the American Medical Association. Co-written with Carlos Zambrana, an associate researcher at the Institute for Policy & Social Research, Ginther estimated masks saved about 500 lives in adoptive counties. And, yet, other counties often refused to adopt the mandate, citing personal freedoms and lack of scientific evidence as reasons.
Link(s): https://today.ku.edu/2021/06/28/study-hundreds-lives-saved-in-kansas-counties-with-mask-mandates
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2781283
Tulsa's jazz-style evolution on flood control shows importance of collaboration, empathy, study says
Tulsa may not be the first town one thinks of when talking about jazz, and flood management may not be the first vocation one compares to the musical genre. But the success Tulsa displayed in going from one of the nation's most flood-prone cities to a nationally recognized model of long-term risk reduction in just two decades is analogous to the evolution of one of the most American styles of music, University of Kansas associate professor of public affairs & administration and director of the Center for Compassionate & Sustainable Communities points out in a new study.
Link(s): https://news.ku.edu/2021/06/21/tulsas-jazz-evolution-flood-control-shows-importance-collaboration-empathy-study-says
https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29NH.1527-6996.0000480
Please visit IPSR's News page for more.
Research Spotlight
Economic Inter-dependence and National Security in the 21st Century
Dr. Jiakun Jack Zhang, with researchers at the University of California – San Diego and the US Air Force Academy, is investigating the relationship between economic interdependence and national security. He manages and mentors a team of KU undergraduate research assistants who contribute to the project. These students are involved in data collection, analysis, literature review, and drafting working papers. They also have an opportunity to present at conferences. For this project, the team is developing case studies involving economically interdependent ties with China. These case studies will evaluate the relationship between interdependence and coercive power. More information about this research is available on Zhang’s Trade War Lab website (https://sites.google.com/view/jackzhang/home).
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The 54th Edition of the Kansas Statistical Abstract is now available! The abstract is available EXCLUSIVELY online as a PDF file with individual pages available in Microsoft Excel and PDF. For more information and access to the data, please visit https://ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/ksah/. The Kansas Statistical Abstract was featured in a radio spot on the Jayhawk Radio Network, tune in or click the button below to play the clip now:  |
SAVE THE DATE
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Please check back for additional details. Recent Publications
Ginther, Donna K, Nancy Cayton Myers, Thomas Becker, Lindsay Elliot Jorgenson, "Growing New Ventures and Jobs in Kansas: An in-depth Review of Entrepreneurship Activities and Policies in Kansas and How We Compare." Institute for Policy & Social Research, The University of Kansas (January 2020).Maynard-Moody, Steven with Charles Epp and Donald Haider-Markel,“Beyond Profiling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing,” Public Administration Review (forthcoming).
Maynard-Moody, Steven, “Punishing the Poor.” Book review essay, Social Service Review, vol. 90, no. 4 (Dec 2016).
Maynard-Moody, Steven with Michael Musheno, “'Playing the Rules’: Discretion Social and Policy Context”. In Peter Hupe, Michael Hill, and Aurélien Buffat, eds., Understanding Street-Level Bureaucrats (Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, 2016).
Schwarz, Corinne, Erik Unruh, Katie Cronin, Sarah Evans-Simpson, Hannah Britton, and Megha Ramaswamy. “Human Trafficking Identification and Service Provision in the Medical and Social Service Sectors.” 2016. Health and Human Rights Journal 18(1): 181-191.
Ginther, Donna K., Pat Oslund, Genna Hurd, and Xan Wedel. The Status of Women in Kansas and the Bi-State Region, sponsored by The Women's Foundation, February 2016.
Schwarz, Corinne and Hannah Britton. “Queering the Support for Trafficked Persons: LGBTQ Communities and Human Trafficking in the Heartland.” 2015. Social Inclusion 3(1): 63-75.
Weller, Travis and Allison C. Reeve. "Empirical Legal Research Support Services: A Survey of Academic Law Libraries", Law Library Journal, 107:3, 2015
Weller, Travis and Amalia Monroe-Gulick. "Differences in the Data Practices, Challenges, and Future Needs of Graduate Students and Faculty Members", Journal of eScience Librarianship, 4:1, 2015, DOI: 10.7191/jeslib.2015.1070
For other publications please visit our Publications Page.
Links on this page:
- ipsr@ku.edu