By Stephen M. Gavazzi, Ph.D.

The Latest News, Views, and Announcements

What’s New at CHRR

The very first longitudinal study utilizing the American Population Panel (APP) was recently completed by CHRR’s Special Projects Team in partnership with Brittany Shoots-Reinhard, a Research Assistant Professor in Ohio State’s Psychology Department. Known as the Ohio Driver Survey, this project was designed to monitor the traffic safety knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of Ohioans. More specifically, the survey sent to APP members specifically targeted knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors about distracted driving before the implementation of new phone use restrictions in April 2023 and again after the law had been in effect for over a year in May 2024. Ohio Driver Survey Round 1, fielded in March/April of 2023, had 1,058 respondents, and 93% (n = 987) of those APP panelists were still eligible when Round 2 launched. Of those eligible panelists, fully 75% (n = 724) elected to participate in the second round of data collection taking place over the last couple of months.

While there are no results to report at the time of this newsletter’s publication, Dr. Shoots-Reinhard noted that “we are hoping to compare how many Ohioans are currently aware of the cellphone laws in Ohio relative to how many were aware before it went into effect April 2023. Cellphone data suggests that cellphone use has fallen since the law went into effect, so we’re interested to see whether Ohioan’s self-reports show similar results.”

On a staffing note, please help me in welcoming Aashi Varia, our newest high school student intern who will be working here at CHRR throughout the summer months. In her own words:

“Hi, my name is Aashi Varia, and my position at CHRR is research and marketing intern. I live in Powell, Ohio and go to school at Columbus Academy. Some hobbies of mine are chess, piano, and soccer. I also love to hike and bike, as well. I hope to go to college as a pre-med or biology major. I also like doing research and hope to continue to do research in the future.”

Aashi will be working directly with Clare Jellick and other CHRR team members on a variety of projects over the summer months. Welcome aboard!

CHRR's Leadership Team

Last month’s newsletter noted that the CHRR Leadership Team had been engaged in discussions surrounding the need for follow-up on the topic of setting performance objectives (in large part because the new performance review tool implemented by ASC during the most recent AMCP process did not mandate that action). The Leadership Team has decided to put these performance indicators in place through our Quarterly Check In (CQI) process, the next installment of which should be taking place next month. At present, I am scheduling my CQI meeting times during the week of August 12th through the 16th, and I have asked that all my reports complete a first-round discussion on performance goal setting BEFORE they meet with me. So, all CHRR employees should be on the lookout for a CQI meeting request from your direct supervisor in the very near future!

The previous newsletter also mentioned that a document co-created by the Leadership Team that outlined all our strategic planning activities to date had been shared with ASC Leadership. While this document circulates with the appropriate administrative leaders inside of the college, we are now moving forward with the compilation of a document that discusses the Research and Development (R&D) needs that stem naturally from the Strategic Doing efforts we have undertaken. Big thanks to Nick Ramser, our IT Director, for providing leadership to this effort! This R&D document also will be shared with ASC Leadership and will provide the blueprints for our growth-related activities over the next decade. Once submitted to ASC, our plans are to share this document with all CHRR employees. Stay tuned!

CHRR Team Member Celebrations

“If you take the team out of teamwork, it’s just work. And who wants that?” -Matthew Woodring Stover

This month we are observing the work anniversaries of six valued employees:

• Omar Durvesh, 6 years of service to CHRR.
• Steven Evans, 17 years of service to CHRR.
• Tennison Gray, 5 years of service to CHRR.
• Lisa Neilson, 12 years of service to CHRR.
• Brittany Poast, 2 years of service to CHRR.
• John Stevens, 13 years of service to CHRR.

That’s a total of 55 years of service to our center. Thank you for your commitment to the CHRR mission!

Things You Might Want to Know

New Chapter on APP Scholarship

Elizabeth Cooksey and Special Projects Team members Lucy Herrera, Jenifer Hoffman, and Laura Rusnak have co-authored a chapter in a new book published by Oxford University Press that highlights work done using the American Population Panel (APP). This chapter begins by highlighting various panels used by researchers over the past couple of decades, and then narrows its focus on the APP itself. The mechanics underlying panel initiation, growth and maintenance are discussed along with problems (such as fraud detection) encountered along the way. The ways in which the APP can serve specific research needs such as questionnaire pilot testing, finding specific population subgroups, and following the same respondents over time also are discussed.

Here is the full citation for the article:

Cooksey, E., Herrera, L., Hoffman, J., & Rusnak, L. 'Innovations in Survey Research: The American Population Panel', in Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Dino P. Christenson, and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman (eds), Oxford Handbook of Engaged Methodological Pluralism in Political Science (Vol 1) (2024; online edition, Oxford Academic, 23 Oct. 2023). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192868282.013.58.

These authors also acknowledged other “indispensable members of the APP Team,” including Justin Smith, Lori Stevens, Kathryn Haley, and Tammy Zimmerman.