REU Site: Undergraduate Research in Race, Ethnicity and Family Demography

该项目由社会、行为和经济科学局(SBE)的本科生研究经验(REU)站点计划资助。它兼具科学和社会效益，它将研究和教育融为一体。美国家庭正在发生变化，反映了社会在经济、政治、人口和技术方面的快速变革，并预测了未来。这些变化可以从成年人如何结伴和生育，以及性别关系的不断发展的规范、儿童的经历以及扩大的支持和义务网络中看出。家庭生活的变化反过来又错综复杂地与美国人口的多样化有关，这是几十年来移民增加以及不同种族/民族之间生育率差异的结果。在许多方面，家庭行为的改变对所有美国人来说都是适应的。然而，这些变化的影响在不同的种族/民族群体中表现不同。为了了解美国人口的不同部分对家庭变化的不同体验，种族/民族多样性如何加速或减缓家庭变化，以及种族主义家庭变化如何反映、强化和减少更广泛的不平等和歧视模式，家庭人口学领域需要培养和支持新一代学者，他们能够产生理论上有根据和方法上严格的知识，并将其用于政策和实践。德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的种族、民族和美国家庭人口项目旨在探索这些问题。这个REU网站是一个为期八周的暑期项目，旨在帮助学生发展家庭人口学和定量分析方面的研究技能和技能，并为毕业后的研究生学习或就业做好准备。使用基于团队的教学方法，在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校人口研究中心(PRC)，该网站将挑选优秀的学生，让他们接触到人口统计学、种族/民族和家庭的科学研究，并培训他们进行数据分析，包括使用大型数据集，估计回归和人口预测，并指导他们撰写报告。学生将接受中国顶尖学者的授课和指导，帮助他们发展特定的研究兴趣。学生还将与儿童-家庭研究伙伴关系(CFRP)和德克萨斯人口统计中心的学者合作，这两个地方和州一级的研究机构进行人口研究，用于制定有效和有针对性的公共政策。到暑期结束时，学生们将完成一项独立的研究成果，要么是一篇研究论文，可以在全国学术会议上提交，要么是一份政策简报，可以提交给当地的利益相关者。学生还将参加旨在为他们在数据分析领域的研究生院和/或专业就业做准备的讲习班。综上所述，该计划将有助于发展和支持关于家庭变化的研究，并使在一系列专业背景下进行基础和应用研究的下一代学者多样化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). It has both scientific and societal benefits, and it integrates research and education. U.S. families are changing, reflecting the rapid economic, political, demographic, and technological transformation of society and forecasting the future. These changes can be seen in how adults partner and have children as well as evolving norms of gender relations, children's experiences, and extended networks of support and obligation. Changes in family life is, in turn, intricately related to the diversification of the U.S. population as a result of increased immigration over many decades coupled with differential fertility across racial/ethnic groups. In many ways, changes in family behaviors are adaptive for all Americans. The implications of these changes, however, play out differently across racial/ethnic groups. To understand how family change is differentially experienced across diverse segments of the U.S. population, how racial/ethnic diversity accelerates or slows family change, and how racialized family change reflects, reinforces, and reduces broader patterns of inequality and discrimination, the field of family demography needs to train and support a new generation of scholars who can produce theoretically grounded and methodologically rigorous knowledge and use it to inform policy and practice. The Race, Ethnicity, and Demography of U.S. Families Program at the University of Texas at Austin aims to explore these questions. This REU site is an eight-week summer program designed to help students develop research skills and technical abilities in family demography and quantitative analysis, and to prepare them for graduate study or employment following graduation. Using a team-based pedagogical approach based at the Population Research Center (PRC) of the University of Texas Austin, this site will select top students and expose them to the scientific study of demography, race/ethnicity, and families, and train them in data analysis, including working with large data sets, estimating regressions and population forecasts, and guide them in report writing. Students will be taught and mentored by top scholars at the PRC, assisting them as they develop their specific research interests. Students will also work with scholars at Child-Family Research Partnership (CFRP) and the Texas Demographic Center, local- and state-level research institutes that conduct demographic research used to create effective and targeted public policy. By the end of the summer, students will complete an independent research product, either a research paper, which can be presented at a national academic conference or a policy brief, which can be presented to local stakeholders. Students will also participate in workshops designed to prepare them for graduate school and/or professional employment in the data analytics field. Taken together, this program will help develop and support research on family change and diversify the next generation of scholars conducting basic and applied research in an array of professional settings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.