By Stephen M. Gavazzi, Ph.D.

The Latest News, Views, and Announcements

What’s New at CHRR

As of September 1^st, I have taken over the role of Principal Investigator (PI) of the American Population Panel (APP). The role of PI for the APP initiative is not unfamiliar to me, as I took on that responsibility once before when former CHRR director Elizabeth Cooksey first retired (and I was in the role of interim director). Dr. Cooksey regained the PI role for APP when she returned to CHRR as a Senior Research Scientist. Now, however, she is turning full attention to her role as the PI on the NLSY79 Young Adult Survey, so it was time for me to step into the PI role once again. I am happy to do so! Among other things, I had been a satisfied “customer” of the APP long before I took on my current administrative role. Some readers may know that the APP was the research tool of choice for the survey work I did in partnership with West Virginia University president E. Gordon Gee, which resulted in the book “Land-Grant Universities for the Future” that was published in 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

So that readers gain some appreciation for the range and depth of the APP, here is a list of projects either in the field or recently closed:

• Alternative Therapies (with Doug Berman, Ohio State College of Law and Drug Enforcement and Policy Center Director)
• Keto Prescribed Plus (with Audra Hanners, Ohio State College of Nursing)
• Occupational Choices (with Jin Jun, Ohio State College of Nursing)
• Suicide Bereaved project (with William Feigelman, Nassau Community College Emeritus and Julie Cerel, University of Kentucky)
• Validity of the Self-Administered TBI-ID Test Survey (William Corrigan, Ohio State College of Medicine)

Stepping into the PI role of APP also meant that I have now become a regular member of CHRR’s Special Projects Team (SPT). For all intents and purposes, the SPT handles just about every initiative that is not connected to our two other major program areas (the National Longitudinal Surveys and the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive). Hence, the APP is just one of many projects large and small that the SPT handles on a regular basis. Co-led by Jen Hoffman and Lucy Herrera, the SPT will continue to play a critical role in the expansion of CHRR’s reach within the realm of research.

Again, so readers can better understand the reach of the SPT, here is a list of initiatives either in the field or recently closed include:

• Family Caregiver Survey and Direct Support Professional Compensation Surveys (with Jill Dannemiller*, Ohio Dept. of Developmental Disabilities)
• Puget Sound Study (with Nathalie Williams, University of Washington)
• Ohio Study (with Baldwin Way, Ohio State Psychology and Chris Browning, Ohio State Sociology)

* Special shout out to Jill, who is a former CHRR team member!

CHRR's Leadership Team

The CHRR Leadership Team was focused on several issues and topics over the course of the last several weeks. Each of my direct reports had the opportunity to meet with me as part of our Quarterly Check-In (QCI) process, something that we initiated one full year ago. As I have mentioned in several newsletters, this is meant to be a process for supervisors and direct reports to touch base on issues surrounding professional growth and innovation. My hope is that QCIs are now becoming a regular way that CHRR team members are communicating with one another as part of our drive to create a high-performance culture.

The Strategic Doing/Strategic Planning Team also met several times, building on the draft mission and vision statements I discussed in last month’s newsletter. This work resulted in a new set of “not yet ready for primetime” values, principles, and behaviors that I wish to test out with readers of this month’s newsletter. With our university’s own values-based work as a starting point, we came up with the following:

• Excellence and Impact
  • Our research projects and activities promote the long-term goal of improving decision-making in the public/non-profit sectors of our state, nation, and society at large.
• Diversity and Innovation
  • We continue to push the envelope on using technology to improve access and opportunity across the spectrum of human experience.
• Inclusion and Equity
  • We develop data and survey tools that represent the human experience broadly and ensure that any dashboards, surveys, scorecards, or other data products are inclusive of our experiences as a community.
• Care and Compassion
  • We put people at the center of all we do, and tailor our services to the individual needs of our clients.
• Integrity and Respect
  • We are good stewards of our and others' data and resources.

We look forward to gathering continuous feedback from CHRR members about these statements in the weeks and months ahead!

Things You Might Want to Know

Podcast Focus on the National Sports and Society Survey

The National Sports and Society Survey (NASS) used the American Population Panel (APP) to capture the viewpoints of approximately 4,000 U.S. adults on sports-related attitudes and the dimensions and context of sports involvement experiences. The NSASS research team is led by Chris Knoester (Ohio State Sociology), who recently was interviewed through the new “Voices of Excellence” podcast here at our university. Professor Knoester discussed the ways in which politics, economics, patriotism, and other influential forces impact the world of sports and the ways in which people perceive and enjoy them. You can listen to that interview by clicking here: https://podcast.osu.edu/voices-of-excellence/2023/09/07/knoester-discusses-research-on-impact-of-sports-in-daily-life/.