IThe Berkeley Population Center consists of three core functions, each designed to assist Center affiliates in their research endeavors. These are:

• Research
• Grant Administration
• Data and Computing

If you have any questions or comments regarding any aspect of services and operations of the Berkeley Population Center, feel free to contact Leora Lawton, 642-9671 or email her at llawton@berkeley.edu.

Research

In the Research core we want to emphasize the word Center in our name. Ultimately the purpose of BPC is to foster innovative research that may not have happened otherwise. BPC seeks to give affiliates a central place to go to find out how they can best achieve their goals for population-related research. To that end we offer affiliates a number of services.

• Issue pilot grant funding, that ideally will lead to a subsequent R01 or other funding, and possibly a unique data collection project.

• Keeping affiliates informed of grant announcements relevant to their fields.

• Letting affiliates know of possible complementary research interests that they may share with other affiliates in different departments and schools. We will soon have more detail in the People section of the website about affiliates' research interests, by theme and within theme.

• Providing opportunities to network at brownbags, colloquia and other events.

• Internal review of grant applications and peer-reviewed research. While you may have colleagues and mentors, they may not always be available. Other Population Centers offer this service and have found that faculty do avail themselves, particularly of grant review.

• Offering GSR's space and training in order to assist on pilot projects and other funded research.

• The BPC listserv (POPCENTER) which provides timely information about research activities, grants, calls for papers, etc. Be sure to sign up using your CalMail Account, or email Leora Lawton (llawton@berkeley.edu) to be subscribed.

• Review of grant proposals

• Review of articles to be submitted for peer-review research

Grant Administration

As part of the Institute for Business and Economic Research (IBER) we are able to provide grant administration for all internal and external grants. Grants can be submitted through the BPC and IBER. We will:

• Review grants prior to submission (internal and external).
• Prepare formal budgets with calculations for overhead.
• Provide advice on Human Subjects Research and IRBs.
• Submit grants to the Sponsored Projects Office (SPO).
• Distribute funds as specified in the grant approval

For more information, visit the Grants Information section of the website.

Data and Computing

Since population research is data-intensive, part of our Center includes a Data and Computing Core. This Core provides affiliates and their GSR's consulting, advice, assistance and training in finding and optimizing use of data sets.

There are three main areas of support available to you - Data, Computing, and Survey research.

DATA

This service is provided by Jon Stiles of the Survey Research Center (where all UCB faculty, staff and students have 2 hours/ye ar of consulting in addition to what they provide to the BPC). Rather than spending hours searching online or elsewhere for the appropriate data set for your research, you can simply ask Jon Stiles (jons@berkeley.edu, 642- 6571). He is a "fountain of knowledge" about data, a veritable treasure trove of information. He can:

• Find suitable data sets for research, for example, which data set has both work and family career histories?
• Preparation of data into system-readable files for SPSS, SAS, STATA, or pooling multiple waves of panel studies.
• Extract a subset of a larger data set.
• Provide you access to printed codebooks for your reviewing ease. The SRC has a HUGE library of printed codebooks of many datasets.
• Prepare requests for and make accessible the use of US Census and survey private use micro-data.
• Provide training workshops on data and research use.
• Work with faculty who have their own data that they would like to make available to the research public.

If you are interested in making your own data set accessible, then Jon can:

• Put it on SDA for public analysis
• Put in UCDATA (http://ucdata.berkeley.edu)
  • For download in different format, or
  • To make available upon written request.
• Examine data for potential issues of breach of confidentiality, licensing, etc.

COMPUTING

Carl Mason will assist affiliates and their GSR's perform statistical analysis of data by providing the following services

• Instruction on how to get started in certain statistical software, or certain kinds of statistical analyses.
• GSR's are encouraged to work in the lab here where they can take advantage of the camaraderie and helpfulness of fellow g raduate students.
• Use of the Demography Department's computing facilities and remote access.
• Provide space for GSRs, subject to availability.

SURVEY RESEARCH

Leora Lawton will provide consulting regarding a variety of aspects of survey research

• Sampling
• Questionnaire design
• Calculating a budget for data collection
• *Training in questionnaire design.

Vendors suitable for data collection

• Differences between mail, internet, phone and face-to-face methods, and various kinds of qualitative research practices. Mixed methods and multi-methods.
• Training in questionnaire design