Maryland Population Research Center

PROJECT SUMMARY This application requests a fourth consecutive five-year cycle of NICHD Population Research Infrastructure Program support to the Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC) at the University of Maryland (UMD). The MPRC is an interdisciplinary center at the University of Maryland-College Park that supports the research of 96 population researchers across 8

different schools or colleges and 20 departments. Over the next fiveyear period, MPRC will support the Primary Research Areas of Gender, Family, and Social Change, Health in Social Context, Social and Economic Inequality, and Migration and Immigrant Processes, and will support innovations in data and methods for population research across these substantive

areas. This support will be provided by three cores that are central to increasing the pace and impact of population science research: Administrative, Scientific and Technical, and Development. Their missions are to meet the infrastructure needs of population scientists, to foster an interdisciplinary intellectual environment, and to promote the development of junior

and underrepresented minority scholars in population research. The Administrative core will support the preparation of grant applications, post-award project management, and will assist other cores. It will deploy web-based tools to enhance Center activities and will provide scholars effective means of managing research collaborations and disseminating research. The Scientific

and Technical Core will manage the computing resources, provide confidential data access including the National Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health, and will provide statistical computing short courses and consulting, all vitally supporting empirically-focused population research. The Core will also expand associates’ research using restricted data access across

the federal statistics agencies by participation in the leadership of, and sponsoring symposia on the use of data within, the new Federal Statistics Census Research Data Center (RDC) recently established at UMD. The Development Core will promote the intellectual community of population research at UMD through seed grant programs and by organizing a weekly seminar

series, specialist workshops and working groups, and by cosponsoring conferences and symposia. The Core also supports resident population scientist and visiting population scientist programs that provide a primary institutional and physical home for population researchers permanently and temporarily based at UMD. Taking advantage of our location in the

Washington, DC area, MPRC will promote the research of our associates through linking to the research and data activities of federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., including through support to biennial workshops and conferences on time use research using the American Time Use Survey and its international counterpart surveys. Infrastructural support for data collection

encompasses the large-scale survey research of the India Human Development Survey through to smaller-scale data collections on the reproductive health among women in Delaware and on kin support to low-income single mothers in Nairobi.