CSA

Strategic city planning can help reduce urban heat island effect

The tendency of cities to trap heat — a phenomenon called the “urban heat island,” often referred to as the UHI effect — can lead to dangerous temperatures in the summer months, but new Penn State research suggests that certain urban factors can reduce this effect. The study found that trees had a…

Wildfire proximity associated with asthma cases in rural Alaska

Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Penn State researchers are examining the resulting impacts, such as wildfires, and how they are linked to health conditions like asthma. In a new study, they found that wildfires are associated with asthma prevalence, and the association is…

Backlash to racial justice movements may boost risk of high BMI, obesity

Since its inception in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement has helped raise awareness and mobilize efforts against racial inequality. It also has spurred controversy, and new research found that experiencing backlash to the movement may have negative health consequences for Black Americans. The…

The Americans Already Suffering Most From the Fall of Roe

SSRI cofund and CSA Director Guangqing Chi and Jessica Miller wrote this opinion peice for The Slate on limiting access to abortion increases social inequality and puts disproportionate burdens on women of lower income and minorities. Read more here.

Penn State researchers to study political content sharing on Facebook

As the 2020 election draws closer, political content on social media is becoming more and more prevalent. A group of Penn State researchers is examining spontaneous sharing of political content on Facebook. According to principal investigator S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media…

Penn State researchers evaluating Twitter data during pandemic

By collecting global Twitter data from the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, Penn State researchers have developed a dashboard that tracks geotagged tweets to allow researchers and policymakers assess public reactions to the pandemic. “Geotagged Twitter data provides significant opportunities to…

Registration now open for seminar on generalizability of Twitter data

Guangqing Chi, associate professor of rural sociology and demography and public health sciences and SSRI co-funded faculty, will present “The Generalizability and Replicability of Twitter Data for Population (and Health) Research” at the next Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD)…

Seed grants awarded to projects using Twitter data

Penn State’s  Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), in collaboration with the Institute for CyberScience (ICS) and the College of Information Sciences and Technology, has awarded over $100,000 in funding to support six new interdisciplinary teams of Penn State researchers whose work is aimed at…

Teams sought to develop innovative research programs using Twitter data

Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) is seeking teams to develop innovative research programs using Twitter data. Proposals are invited for pilot projects aimed at using Twitter data in social science research. Twitter offers one of the most rapidly growing and accessible Big Data…

Using social media to solve social problems

Social scientist rely on data to study social problems, however data from traditional surveys can be difficult and time consuming to collect, as well as inaccurate since not all factors can be measured well. A National Science Foundation-funded Penn State project will evaluate the accuracy of using…

Well-being of 'left behind' children in Kyrgyzstan focus of study

Growing up can be hard no matter what a family's circumstances, but it is often more so for children living in the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia, one of the poorest countries in the world, known for its dry environment, high mountains, nomadic culture and animal-husbandry heritage. Isolation,…

Twitter resources available for Penn State researchers

The Computational and Spatial Analysis (CSA) Core of the Population and Social Science Research Institutes has built the infrastructure for collecting and managing Twitter data and has capacity in processing and analyzing the data for social science and population research. The Core has collected…