Growing Up and Growing Older Across Societies: Harnessing the Power of Comparative Life Course Research Workshop

项目总结

Project Summary Scholars have long understood that despite some common features, many key aspects of how humans grow up and grow older are particulate to one's political, social, cultural, and economic context. Major investments made in large-scale cohort studies have come to fruition, now harmonized with cohort studies in other societies or previous cohorts of the same society. Concerted efforts to make these data publicly available and accessible have produced substantial documentation, new analytic approaches, and online tools. Yet despite the obvious potentials of comparative research to move science forward, the actual implementation of comparative research designs is still at an early stage. Unique challenges to comparative research may hinder productivity. We propose a workshop on Comparative Life Course Research to address the unique challenges in comparative research, presented by senior investigators of those cohort studies (HRS+sibling studies, NLSY, PSID+sibling studies) and featuring exemplar published studies from junior scholars. Innovations of this proposal include scheduling the workshop immediately prior the first US-based meeting of the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, leveraging additional benefits for workshop attendees including: waived registration for the SLLS meeting, one-year access to online methodological workshops, and dedicated symposia to present their own research at the international conference. The specific aims of the R13 grant are: (1) Assemble national experts in large-scale cohort studies and comparative life course research to provide a workshop on the cutting-edge trends in the field. [Commitment letters included in the proposal] (2) Increase the diversity in comparative life course research by facilitating and assisting scholars from URM groups to attend through travel awards. (3) Build the research pipeline in life course and longitudinal scholarship by supporting junior scholars conducting comparative life course research. Case Western Reserve has a strong reputation in the areas of aging and life course through scholarship, grant funding, and training, making it an ideal location for the workshop, with the SLLS meeting following immediately at the same venue. The Co-Investigative team is composed of a diverse (seniority, race/ethnicity, gender) set of age and life course scholars. A separate Early Career and Student Initiatives Committee (co-chaired by two Co-Is) is composed of junior scholars from underrepresented backgrounds in science. Investigators and the committee will be active in recruiting underrepresented minority researchers to the workshop. The Conference Plan outlines these efforts, as well as resources for family care and family-friendly programming.