NYU Silver PhD student Daniel Baslock and PhD candidate Sabrina Cluesman have been awarded highly competitive scholarships to attend the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research’s (ICPSR) 2022 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research at the University of Michigan. The prestigious program, held over the course of eight weeks, offers a comprehensive curriculum of intensive courses in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social methodology.
Daniel, whose research interests include co-occurring mental health and substance use disorder, implementation science, and rural health equity, received the program’s Scholarship for Public Administration, Public Policy, and Public Affairs. The scholarship is awarded annually to a small number of students conducting empirical research to enhance their statistical and methodological skills through study at the ICPSR summer program.
“I plan to only use quantitative methods for my dissertation,” said Daniel, “and my mentors encouraged me to pursue the ICPSR summer program to gain advanced statistical training.” He noted that he was particularly compelled to attend the program this summer because a number of courses are being offered that pertain to his planned dissertation research and the research he is doing with Professor and PhD Program Director Victoria Stanhope.
Now in the process of finalizing his dissertation proposal, Daniel plans to conduct an analysis of electronic health record data and Medicaid claims data from a statewide community mental health system to see if the state’s shift to a capitated payment structure for mental health services while maintaining fee-for-service funding for substance use treatment has incentivized agencies to provide co-occurring mental health and substance use treatment.
“Should I be given access to these large, statewide datasets, it will be an extremely complex quantitative analysis,” said Daniel. “I believe that the training I receive at ICPSR plus the ongoing mentorship from Dr. Stanhope and my other mentor, Dr. Jennifer Manuel, will enable me to be really successful in my research.”
Sabrina, a transgender and gender expansive youth and HIV researcher committed to antiracism, intersectionality, and resilience, has been awarded the Diversity Scholarship, annually awarded by ICPSR to a small group of students to promote quantitative training among graduate students from underrepresented groups to acquire additional preparation in quantitative analysis with the objective of bolstering their academic performance and optimizing their professional advancement.
“I am eager to attend the ICPSR Summer Program for the first time to strengthen my quantitative analysis skill set and learn specific methodologies related to my upcoming dissertation,” said Sabrina, who recently defended their dissertation proposal “Using mixed methods to understand barriers to PrEP use among Black and Latinx transgender and gender-expansive youth and emerging adults: The impact of gender minority stress and gender affirmation.”
“I have three aims for my dissertation study, the first of which is quantitative,” Sabrina noted. “I intend to gain the statistical skills needed to complete my dissertation and bolster my competence in regression, data visualization, and structural equation modeling with mediation and moderation. The advanced training at the ICPSR will provide a strong foundation for my future independent research career focused on HIV prevention with transgender and gender-expansive populations.”
Sabrina expressed appreciation for her mentor and dissertation chair, Dr. Marya Gwadz, and dissertation committee members, Drs. Charles Cleland and Michelle Munson, “for their constant encouragement and letters of recommendation to support my scholarship application to the ICPSR. I would also like to sincerely thank Dr. Ramesh Raghavan for discussing the importance of the ICPSR program with me early on in my PhD journey.”