Conference: Support for Conferences and Mentoring of Women

Understanding how social systems work as a quantitative empirical phenomenon is vital to the future success of the United States in terms of both its domestic politics and its relations with other countries in the international system. Methodology is at the core of social science; this project seeks to engage, attract and retain a diverse array of scholars to the subdiscipline of political methodology. Specifically, the focus of this proposal is to recruit women to the study of political methodology by explicitly funding education, conferences and other networking opportunities for them. A diverse field that more equally draws on the talents of all its potential participants leads to better science. This project helps the United States be the preeminent place to study social science research methods. It also aids society by improving the quality of the research and public work those social scientists perform. The objective of this project is to meaningfully diversify the subfield of political methodology. This will be done in four main ways: by providing excellent methods education for a cohort of undergraduates; by providing explicit support for a women’s conference in methodology; by providing explicit support for women to attend events and to network with methodologists; by supporting graduate students in their efforts to join the broader methods community. Support here will not only contribute to diversifying the field, but it will also contribute to a better understanding of the strategies that are most effective. By pairing our work with meaningful measurement and data collection efforts, we can ensure that we not only build a community of scholars but also that we can measure the growth of that community. Each scholar that joins the community of scholars who are studying political methodology not only increases the potential impact of our research but also increases the potential impact of our teaching. Building a diverse cohort of methodologists is important for us to have our work reach a diverse cohort of students, both graduate and undergraduate. By attending to each step in the pipeline, we maximize the chances that our efforts will be successful. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.