The College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE) Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration (ORIC) sponsors a yearly competitive seed grant/mentoring program that offers early stage faculty an opportunity to identify a faculty mentor inside and outside the college/university to partner with them on obtaining pilot data for the development of a future grant application. The program is general in nature in order to be as inclusive as possible of the varied research interests across the College. Special consideration is given to those projects that focus on underserved and under-represented groups including low-and moderate-income populations, recent immigrants, rural groups, communities of color, at-risk youth, the elderly, LGBTQ, and other populations that are traditionally underserved and underrepresented.
The following faculty were awarded seed grants; projects began January 1, 2019 and will continue for two years.
Lauren Jones
Assistant Professor, Consumer Sciences
Department of Human Sciences
Internal Mentor: Tansel Yilmazer, Associate Professor, Consumer Sciences, Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University
External Mentor: David Neumark, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of ESSPRI, Department of Economics, University of California, Irvine
The long-term effects of the earned income tax credit on health outcomes
The focus of this project is to study the long-term effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the United States which benefits underserved and under-represented populations such as disabled individuals and low-income, working parents. The EITC provides significant income support to low- and medium-income working families with eligible children. Since its inception in 1975, the credit has been expanded significantly, especially for larger families and families living in certain states. A long line of literature has demonstrated positive effects of the policy on short-term outcomes; however, no studies have as yet demonstrated the long-term effects of the policy. If year-to-year behavior changes persist, then long-term effects may be very different than short-term effects.
Minjung Kim
Assistant Professor, Quantitative Research, Evaluation, and Measurement (QREM)
Department of Educational Studies
Internal Mentor: Ann O’Connell, Professor, Quantitative Research, Evaluation, and Measurement (QREM), Department of Educational Studies, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University
External Mentor: Oi-man Kwok, Professor, Research, Measurement, and Statistics (RMS), Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education, Texas A&M University
Assessing causal mechanisms in complex educational data: A new approach of multilevel mediation
The focus of this project is to improve the accuracy of the current approach of multilevel mediation analysis when there is a change in group-membership over time. Specifically, this project aims to utilize the developed mediation analysis to understand the causal mechanisms between SES backgrounds and academic achievement outcomes. According to a recent report by the Center for Education Policy Analysis, the achievement gap between students from high- and low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds has increased globally over the last 50 years. Under this circumstance, it is increasingly important to understand the causal mechanisms between SES backgrounds and academic achievement outcomes. Although mediation analysis has been popularly used to investigate causal relationships, it has a limited utility when there is a complexity in the nested structure of data (e.g., students are nested or clustered within schools). More specifically, when there is a change in cluster- or group-membership, clustering has not been appropriately accounted for when analyzing the mediation effect.
Charis Price
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
Department of Educational Studies
Internal Mentor: Laura Justice, Executive Director, Schoenbaum Family Center & Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, Distinguished Professor, Educational Psychology, Department of Educational Studies, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University
External Mentor: Tim Lewis, Professor, Department of Special Education, University of Missouri
Implementation of a multi-component intervention to teach behavioral expectations
With the rising incidence in young children being suspended and expelled from preschool settings, ongoing examination of evidence-based social/emotional/behavioral interventions is essential. The purpose of this study, called “Project HEAR+T”, is to examine the impact of a class-wide intervention to teach behavioral expectations to young children across targeted routines and transitions. Project HEAR+T will also examine the usability, acceptability, and feasibility of the intervention for early childhood teachers who work in inclusive and urban early childhood settings.
Kelly Purtell
Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Science (HDFS)
Department of Human Sciences
Internal Mentor: Laura Justice, Executive Director, Schoenbaum Family Center & Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, Distinguished Professor, Educational Psychology, Department of Educational Studies, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University
External Mentor: Dorthe Bleses, Professor, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhaus University
Understanding parental mindsets: Origins and Implications for early childhood development
The goal of this grant is to conduct pilot work in the U.S. that can be used to submit a larger grant proposal focused on understanding parental mindsets in a cross-cultural perspective. This cross-cultural work will focus on understanding how societal inequality and the availability of social benefits shapes mindsets. Establishing measures and initial information about the predictors and child outcomes of parental mindsets is an important first step in this larger program of research. Ultimately, this work will contribute to our understanding of how parents view their role in their children’s lives and inform future interventions designed to improve the developmental contexts of young children.
Winston Thompson
Assistant Professor, Philosophy and History of Education
Department of Educational Studies
Internal Mentor: Samuel Hodge, Professor, Kinesiology, Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University
External Mentor: Jacquelyn Meshelemiah, Associate Professor and Carole Anderson Faculty Fellow, College of Social Work/Office of Academic Affairs, The Ohio State University
With abiding morality and an enduring sense of justice: An investigation of the meanings health and physical education professionals ascribe to their involvement in the restoration of school programs
This research project explores the meaning health and physical education professionals ascribe to their resilience and involvement in the restoration of school programs following the devastating 2017 Hurricane María in Puerto Rico. In this inquiry, the research team aims to employ philosophical methods of conceptual analysis alongside standard social scientific methods in order to analyze the resources, challenges, stressors, and sustaining moral values within the experiences of the target community. The philosophical arm of the project will draw upon collected data in order to interrogate 1) the sense of moral obligation to one’s vocational duties as expressed under conditions of resource scarcity and 2) the degree to which a conception of restorative justice animates these professionals in their response to the socio-political context and aftermath of a natural disaster.