Social Sciences – Page 25 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Social Sciences

Vision Zero implementation and how to improve its effectiveness in underserved communities

The Center for Health Disparities Innovation and Studies (CHDIS) team at EMU has begun working with the city of Hamtramck, a predominately ethnic and minority city on the outskirts of Detroit, in a mission to address public health deficiencies and disparities in underserved communities through policy change, community outreach/education, and general health promotion.  A core part of their proposal to the city is the implementation of a Vision Zero (VZ) strategy to combat the growing numbers of traffic accidents that has disproportionately affected the pedestrians/civilians of Hamtramck. VZ requires a complete overhaul on the relationship shared between road/transportation infrastructure and pedestrians/.

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Wicked Solutions Domain

Rohan Agrawal Pronouns: he/him/his Research Mentor(s): Audrey Bennett, Professor Research Mentor School/College/Department: Stamps School of Art & Design, Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 2 (11am – 11:50am) Breakout Room: Room 19 Presenter: 2 Event Link Abstract Authors: Rohan Agrawal, Tawsif Habib, Audrey Bennett Research Method: Survey Research

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Wicked Solutions Domain: Building a Data Modeling and Visualization Tool

The solutions to the problems that plague our society today arguably are rooted in data. This research will go through the development of a platform that allows for the collection, analysis, and interactive display of data as it relates to societal issues, similar to the Hopkins Medicine COVID-19 platform. To do this, scholarly articles relating to similar projects were assessed to understand what frameworks to use/what functionalities were important and then replicated to match the problems being focused on by the WISDOM research team, which are sustainability, obesity, and poverty. As a result of this, a website-based platform was created where users could interact with data collected about these issues with the intent that it would inform users about the problem and provide insights to enable change. This allows for smarter problem-solving for issues that impact large groups of people and will be accessible to the masses. This will likely help make huge strides in solving problems because it will provide evidence to inform the methodology upon which users can act. The main purpose of the research project is to help users find interventions to wicked societal problems and in return enable them to add their interventions. A digital platform that enables participants to find the solution to their problem will also help designers refine the solution to wicked problems and implement it in the digital platform.

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The Relationship between COVID-19 Racial Discrimination and Mental Health among Asian Americans

Racism and discrimination is a persisting dilemma that has affected people of color in the United States on many levels, including employment, housing, and health. Specifically, there is multiple evidence that indicates cultural racism (including stereotyping) connected to an increased prevalence of mental health concerns and poor overall wellness. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an influx of anti-Asian racism and violence towards Asian American populations. In addition to the implicit and explicit bias that Asian populations have been facing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this current anti-Asian sentiment has the potential to have a toll on their mental and physical health. This research project explores the relationships between encountered racism during the COVID-19 pandemic and mental state among Asian American populations. The method used in this study is a quantitative survey; data collected were based on online survey questions that include demographics, experiences related to racism and/or discrimination after the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, mental state, and actions taken as results of racism experiences. The results and conclusion of the survey are yet to be reviewed and determined. I expect to identify an association between negative COVID-19 racism encounters/heightened fear for one’s safety and worsened mental health. With these results, we can address the need for prevention and intervention strategies to eliminate acts of racism/discrimination and to provide safe and comfortable environments for Asian Americans.

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Personality, Sexuality, & Externalizing: A Review of the Literature among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men (GBMSM)

Background: This literature review explores the publicly available scholarship relating to personality, the externalizing spectrum of psychopathology, and sex-related substance use in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Method: Academic articles dating back to 1981 were identified using keyword searches on databases such as PsychInfo, Google Scholar, and JSTOR. Studies that exclusively utilized open-ended unstructured interviews or grouped GBMSM with women were excluded. Results: A general pattern across a majority of the identified scholarship on personality is that GBMSM men score equal to or slightly above heterosexual men on all of the Big Five Personality Domains. Literature also suggests that GBMSM males partake in specific maladaptive substance use, sexual, and suicidal behaviors at higher population levels than heterosexual men; these behaviors are correlated with particular personality domains. The two-factor Externalizing-Internalizing model offers one framework with which to understand these behaviors. Discussion: These findings have important implications for de-pathologizing and de-stigmatizing GBMSM men’s sexual and substance use behaviors and can increase clinicians’ understanding of the underlying pathways by which minority stress and stigmatization lead to potentially maladaptive behaviors.

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Mapping Innovation Ecosystems in High-Tech US Metros

A study was undertaken to investigate the relationships between the U-M Business Engagement Center (BEC)’s relationships with societal and industrial organizations. The goal of this study is to analyze the varying relationships (units of analysis: hard ties, and soft ties) between U-M and innovation institutions within the modern high-technology sectors of the world-system. In order to operationalize the units of analysis (hard ties, and soft ties), we collected over 10,000 Twitter accounts in the social network of the U-M BEC, the U-M Office of Tech Transfer, and the U-M Office of Vice President for Research, and expanded the database with further meta-data. Thus, our units of observation were Twitter accounts and their associated primary and secondary meta-data. In the current phase of work, we aim to use these units of observation to analyze the institutional social network of the U-M through a focus on: industry, region, and human capital. After the analysis, we found that many of the connection’s affiliated institutions are established a long time ago and the main industry of U-M BEC’s connection is university institutions. The advice for U-M BEC is to connect with more startups as these companies which started their business need more resources to carry out research. U-M BEC can, therefore, connect and create cooperation opportunities with these institutions. In conclusion, this study helps U-M BEC to understand their own connections better in order to create more cooperation opportunities between the University of Michigan and other societal and industrial organizations.

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Mapping Innovation Ecosystems in High-Tech US Metros

A study was undertaken to investigate the relationships between the U-M Business Engagement Center (BEC)’s relationships with societal and industrial organizations. The goal of this study includes understanding and analyzing the varying relationships (units of analysis: hard ties, and soft ties) that bind the 200+ year old research and innovation institution within the modern high-technology sectors of the world-system. In order to operationalize the units of analysis (hard ties, and soft ties), we collected over 10,000 Twitter accounts in the 2nd and 3rd-degree social network of the U-M BEC, the U-M Office of Tech Transfer, and the U-M Office of Vice President for Research, and expanded the database with further meta-data (e.g., account type, region, year founded, industry categorization, R&D budget, etc.) — thus, our units of observation were Twitter accounts and their associated primary and secondary meta-data. In the current phase of work, we aim to use these units of observation to analyze the institutional social network of the University of Michigan through a focus on: industry, region, and human capital.

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Wicked Solutions Domain – Poverty

Across the world there are certain “wicked” problems that face us including poverty. The goal this term was to compile existing design interventions that address this wicked problem among others towards providing access to them by professional designers and lay communities. After we find the solutions that already exist for these problems the plan is to create a central location that will serve as a resource for communities wishing to tackle these issues themselves. This term, we conducted secondary research by scouring scholarly articles and books for design interventions that could populate our database, as well as other articles that can serve as background information for the problem as a whole. After we compile the list of solutions to the wicked problems we will visualize them in a format similar to that of the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus pandemic map. The format will be based on Professor Bennett’s “wicked solutions” diagram and will be called Wicked Solutions Domain (WISDOM). The aim with the WISDOM platform is to make a long lasting and meaningful impact on the aforementioned wicked problem that is impacting communities globally, and aid designers around the globe in combating it.

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Programmable Tools for Teaching Data Literacy in Social Studies Classes

Participation in high school computer science classes has always been low, especially among students from traditionally underrepresented or underserved groups. This research project aims to explore an approach of creating opportunities to integrate computer science into existing non-CS classes which creates the opportunity for students to engage with computer science and gain an introduction to programming. By creating curriculum and proprietary data visualization tools for high school social studies classes, this project hopes to create computational tools that social studies teachers will actually adopt, and that will then identify an increase in student’s self-efficacy in regard to computer science. Our procedure to obtain student success data in learning data visualizations will be conducted through data logging of the proprietary software DV4L (Data Visualizations for Literacy). The product created for this study includes our own proprietary tool DV4L, as well as curriculum for high school teachers to understand and teach existing data visualization tools. I have been working to create minimal manuals hosted on the project web book that help teachers use data visualization tools. Additionally, I have been working on creating slow reveal graphs that allow students to understand the components of various data visualizations. Finally, I have been supporting the underlying infrastructure that hosts these manuals and tools by creating a new server platform for the project web book. With these products we hope to be able to change high school social studies instruction in the state, and eventually change the social studies classes on a nationwide basis. Our project hopes to see an increased understanding of data visualizations in high school students, and in the future see an increase in computer science class participation.

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Programmable Tools for Teaching Data Literacy in Social Studies Classes

A missed opportunity in K-12 education is the introduction of computer science principles and data literacy. The research project, Computing for Data Literacy, aims to give educators the ability to teach data literacy in their social studies classrooms. This is a design based research project in which we are introducing a potential solution to a problem and then analyzing how well our solution works. This is different from traditional hypothesis testing research. Our solution is through the prototype web tool named DV4L, “Data Visualization for Learning”. DV4L allows for students to ask historical driving questions and then get the relevant data visualizations so they can inquire about the answer. The contribution that my team and I are making is tracking the activity of each user on the website to determine whether they are gaining educational curiosity. My team and I make sure to never attach student identification information to our log files as to maintain the privacy of the students.”Gaining educational curiosity” is measured through many different fields. First, the student would be gaining educational curiosity if they were asking driving questions that were out of the syllabus or assignment given to them. It also tracks whether they write down notes to go along with their new graphs. Lastly, it also checks if the students were looking inside the underlying script, or source code, for each of their graphs. With those measures and more we are going to be able to analyze whether students are benefiting from data visualizations. This project is still ongoing, and we are hoping to have our tools in actual classroom settings sometime this semester.

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