ICPSR is pleased to announce the winners of our 2013 Research Paper Competitions.

Alexander Janke (B.S., Economics) of the University of Michigan earned first-place in the Undergraduate Competition with his paper "An Empirical Look at Malpractice Reform and the Intensive Margin of Physician Supply." The paper used Community Tracking Study Physician Survey to estimate the effect of noneconomic damage caps on physicians' willingness to accept Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance patients and on hours worked. While an undergraduate, Janke was named a James B. Angell Scholar and awarded University Honors. He will enter the School of Medicine at Wayne State University in the fall.

Natasha Yurk (M.A., Sociology) of Indiana University - Bloomington won the Master's Competition with her paper "The Strategic Parent: How School Performance Affects Parental Investment." The paper uses the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to analyze whether reading test results and teacher assessments of language and literacy skills predict a range of parental investment in the later grades. Yurk won first place in the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA) 2013 Student Paper Competition, Graduate Division for this paper. She was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation for her Ph.D. work in Sociology which commences in the fall.

The first-place award in the Resource Center for Minority Data (RCMD) Paper Competition was won by Sarah K. Allsberry (M.S.W.) of Washington University in St. Louis for her paper "The Unbanked in the U.S.: Similarities and Differences between Previously Banked and Never Banked Households." The paper used data from the 2009 Current Population Survey, Unbanked/Underbanked Supplement to explore differences and similarities in the history of bank account ownership among several groups, including Hispanics as compared to non-Hispanic households, single parent households, households in the South, and households that patronize Alternative Financial Services such as payday loans.

The second-place winner of the ICPSR Undergraduate contest was awarded to Ryanne Kikue Fujita-Conrads (B.A., Sociology) of Reed College for her paper, "Accepting the Foreign: Perceived Threat, Foreigner Exclusionism, and Social Distance from Immigrants in the United States and Spain." The paper used data from the 2009 Transatlantic Trends: Immigration Survey and tests Allport's contact hypothesis and Blumer's group position theory in regard to respondents' perceptions of economic and cultural threat and the effects of perceived economic and cultural threat on respondents' social distance from immigrants and immigration policy preferences.

The ICPSR Master’s Student second-place winner is Christine Y. Zhang (M.A., Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences) of Columbia University for her paper, "An Exceptional Dream: Aspiration as a Determinant of Self-Reported Happiness in the US." The paper uses data from the 2010 United States General Social Survey to examine the linkage between respondents' perception of upward mobility and belief in hard work as a path to success and self-reported happiness level.

Second-place in the Resource Center for Minority Data (RCMD) Paper Competition went to Lauren Marks (B.S., Sociology) of Santa Clara University for her paper "Perceived Sources of Racial Inequalities and Class Standing: Impact on Justice Values of American Whites." The paper used data from two decades (1990-2010) of the General Social Survey to investigate the manner in which race and class inequalities were viewed depending on the perceived sources of the inequality. Lauren is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, graduated magna cum laude. Additionally, she earned the Witold Krassowski Sociology Award, Honorable Mention for this paper.

The first-place winners received $1,000; the second-place prize is $750. All the papers used data from the ICPSR or RCMD archive.

We are pleased to announce the 2014 ICPSR Research Paper Competitions for Undergraduates and Master’s Students and invites submissions from students and recent graduates at member institutions. The purpose of the competitions is to highlight exemplary research papers based on quantitative analysis. The awards are $1,000 for first place and $750 for second place in each category and publication on the ICPSR Research Paper Competition Winners Web site and in a special edition of the ICPSR Bulletin for the first place winners. See the competitions Web site for details. Deadline for submissions is January 31, 2014.