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Public Affairs Update
Changing of the “sociological guard” at NSF . . . .
Sociologist Edward J. Hackett, Arizona State University
(ASU), will be in a position to influence the direction of
social sciences on a national scale as the newly appointed
director of the Division of Social and Economic Sciences
(SES) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). His term
began in mid-July. He will replace another sociologist,
Richard Lempert, the Eric Stein Distinguished University
Professor of Law and Sociology at the University
of Michigan. Hackett, a professor in the School of Human
Evolution and Social Change at ASU, previously
served as an NSF program officer, panelist, and principal
investigator of several research and training grants. As
director of the SES division, Hackett will oversee the NSF unit that supports
research in a range of social sciences, including economics, political science,
sociology, law and social science, methods and statistics, and studies of science
and technology. SES has an annual budget of approximately $100 million to
fund basic research in these areas. Hackett’s own research and publications have
been concerned with the social organization of science, research collaboration,
peer review, academic organizations and careers, and environmental justice
and stewardship.
University of Michigan to continue major survey on older adults’ health,
retirement . . . . The National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of 27 research
institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has recently renewed its
cooperative agreement with the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social
Research (ISR) to continue the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a major
data resource on the combined health and economic conditions of Americans
over age 50. The HRS, now in its 14th year, follows more than 20,000 people
at two-year intervals, providing data from pre-retirement to advanced age. A
major goal of the study is to help address the scientific and policy challenges
posed by the nation’s aging population. The renewal will provide approximately
$70 million in funding over the next six years to continue the study.
The U.S. Social Security Administration also will provide funding for such
activities as collecting and developing data on pensions and consumption.
The HRS paints a detailed portrait over time of older Americans’ physical
and mental health, insurance coverage, financial well-being, labor market
status, retirement planning, support systems, intergenerational transfers of
time and money, and living arrangements. Visit
for more information about the study as well as an online bibliography of
publications using the HRS, user registration, and data links. Sociologist
James Jackson, ISR’s director, visited Washington, DC, to participate in a
public announcement of the award on Capitol Hill. U.S. Rep. John Dingell
(MI), NIA Director, John Hodes, and the study’s co-directors were among
those who made comments at the event.
Well-being of American children has improved generally, except in education
. . . . According to the 2006 Child Well-Being Index (CWI), one of the
nation’s most comprehensive measures of trends in the quality of life of
children and youth, reading and math scores for U.S. high schoolers began
to decline in the 1990s. Possible culprits include a nationwide shift from
phonics to whole language instruction; the lack of resources for handling the
influx of English language learners; and the influence of video games and
other forms of high-tech entertainment. CWI developer and Duke University
sociologist Kenneth Land is particularly troubled by the CWI’s 30-year
flatline in education, because it appears that the quality of public education
is impervious to the many reforms made over that time period. However, the
CWI suggests several leading indicators that may predict higher academic
performance among U.S. students, citing an increase in nine year olds’ math
and reading performance, which corresponds with the dramatic expansion
of pre-kindergarten since the mid-1990s. Groups of indicators show improvements
in safety, family economic well-being, community connectedness and
emotional/spiritual well-being, while there has been a decline in children’s
health and social development. The full report is available at www.soc.duke.edu/~cwi/.
Report connects problems inside prison facilities to public health and
safety . . . . Violence, poor health care, and inappropriate segregation inside
correctional facilities can endanger corrections officers and the public, asserts
a report from the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons,
release this summer. Weak oversight, lack of political support for labor and
management, and flawed data about intracorrectional violence and abuse
were cited in Confronting Confinement. However, the 20-member commission
concluded that there are promising practices and strong leadership
that contradict the notion that violence and abuse are inevitable behind
bars. Among the 30 recommendations are: changing federal law to extend
Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement to correctional facilities and ending
prisoner co-pays; reducing the use of high-security segregation; developing
standardized reporting nationwide on violence and abuse behind bars; and
creating an independent agency in every state to oversee prisons and jails.
The bipartisan commission visited jails and prisons, consulted with current
and former corrections officials and a wide range of experts working outside
the profession, and reviewed available research and data. For more information,
visit www.prisoncommission.org/report.
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