Skip to main content

Search NYU Steinhardt

A collection of seedlings in dirt

2019-2020 IHDSC Seed Award Recipients

Science Education Through a Radical Citizen Science Approach

The goal of this project to work with visitors to a science museum on a scientific study on some language science topic of interest to them. We will invite them to come up with research questions, hypotheses, and experimental design, and help us carry out data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

Disrupting the Narrative: Mobilizing Collective Action to Reduce Racial, Economic and Gender Inequality

Narratives and stories are often used to legitimize the status quo and justify social injustices; but they are also at the heart of all social change movements. This research will examine how narratives about the group’s past and narratives about past social movements can be leveraged to mobilize collective action for reducing inequality along racial and class divides. First, the project will investigate how social movement activists use narratives about the past to mobilize collective action. Then, we will experimentally test narrative interventions to increase participation in collective action to reduce racial and class inequalities.

Optimizing a Daily Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Stress from Discrimination among Sexual and Gender Minorities of Color

Emerging adult sexual and gender minorities (SGM), especially SGM of color, experience a disproportionate burden of mental health disparities as compared to their older SGM and non-SGM counterparts. Recent research has shown mindfulness interventions as a relevant and promising method through which to reduce the impact of stress and increase well-being in young adults. Given the range of mindfulness interventions and their components, however, this project will work to determine the most effective, efficient, and scalable combination of components to build awareness, purpose, connection, and positive reappraisal among SGM of color.

Reexaming the Link Between Pregnancy Intentions and Early Life Outcomes

Unintended pregnancies are associated with adverse outcomes for both mothers and their infants. This well-known association is the cornerstone of numerous policies, including the contraceptive coverage expansion in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Recent research, however, has questioned whether these relationships are causal or merely that pregnancy intentions are highly correlated with other factors that have a causal effect on maternal and infant well-being such as poverty. This research hinges on finding no statistically significant relationship between pregnancy intentions and outcomes of interest. We are skeptical of these results because this research is limited by small sample sizes, measurement error, and outdated statistical methodology. We propose to reexamine these findings using updated statistical methods and a large, well-established  survey of mothers of newborns which is linked to birth certificate data Additionally, we propose to go beyond previous work by conducting analyses by maternal subgroup.  By linking to 2-year follow-up data from multiple states, we can test whether any effect of pregnancy intentions on newborns or their mothers extends into early childhood.

The Black Suburban Governance Project

The Black Suburban Governance Project examines the political and social realities facing Black suburbs in the United States. Through survey data and interviews with political actors, we will build a data set that will allow us to look at a range of issues within Black suburbs: political representation in local governance and schools, spatial inequities within and between jurisdictions, ethnic and racial diversification, as well as the suburbanization of poverty.

It Takes a Village: Understanding the Interactive Roles of Families, Schools, and Communities in the Student Discipline Process

The study focuses on the New York City context as an empirical case to understand the extent to which out-of-school factors contribute to exclusionary discipline practices. Using a convergent mixed methods approach, the study conducts parallel quantitative analyses of administrative and survey data alongside more in-depth qualitative interviews of parents and guardians to unearth linkages between family characteristics and perspectives, community and school attributes, and student suspension rates and disparities.

IHDSC Seed Award Program

IHDSC is committed to funding new projects that bridge multiple domains of expertise and further the mission of the Institute.

IHDSC Initiatives

IHDSC hosts a range of initiatives aimed at catalyzing new programs of multidisciplinary research, linking people across divides to solve social problems, building intellectual community, and disseminating research evidence to policymakers, practitioners, and general audiences