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About PRISM

The creation of PRISM within the Political Research Lab (PRL) launches a renewed focus on methods training in the Department of Political Science. Our goal is to create a close community of faculty and graduate students who are interested in methods, and to move beyond the department by fostering ties with other departments. In addition to its Director, Professor Janet Box-Steffensmeier, PRISM includes a senior and a junior methods fellow:

Byungwon Woo currently holds the Senior Methods Fellowship and his duties include:

  1. Providing technical assistance to advanced methods classes, including lecturing in those classes.
  2. Presenting his own research during the year for the PRISM Paper Series and the departmental Methods Luncheons.
  3. Holding regular consulting hours on methods and data analysis programs for advanced graduate students and faculty -- be sure to come to him with your hard questions.
  4. Being a resource for people in the department on data acquisition and manipulation problems.
  5. Collaborating with OSU faculty members on a research paper.

Yoon-Ah Oh holds the Junior Methods Fellowship and her duties include:

  1. Providing technical assistance to the students and instructors in methodology courses.
  2. Organizing the PRISM luncheons.
  3. Working with first-year students on methods topics.
  4. Holding regular office hours where graduate students may come to ask methods questions -- be sure to send her an email description of the questions in advance of the meeting.
  5. Collaborating with OSU faculty members on a research paper.

PRISM co-sponsors departmental methods brownbags with PRL; all are welcome, so please join us. Our presentations include methods topics, software, articles and books, speakers from the department and outside the department, as well as problem-solving sessions for those using statistics in their own work. An archive of past brownbag notes and streaming video of past PRISM speakers is available by clicking on their corresponding links. Please let Yoon-Ah know if you would like to present your work, if there is a particular article you would like to discuss, or if you have other suggestions for PRISM.

PRISM frequently engages in interdisciplinary activities with other fields such as sociology, statistics and communications. Aside from brownbags, PRISM regularly participates in workshops held by the Initiative in Population Research, as well as cosponsors an annual methods speaker with the sociology department.