Roper Center awards announced

The winners of the 2009 Mitofsky Awards for Excellence in Public Opinion Research, given annually by the Roper Center, were announced recently by Mark Abrahamson, executive director of the Roper Center, and Suman Singha, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School.

Named for the former chairman of the Roper Board, Warren J. Mitofsky, these awards provide graduate students with a stipend of $1,200 to conduct research during the summer, using data in the Roper Center archives. Recipients are chosen based on the potential theoretical or methodological contribution of the proposed research to the applicant’s field of study.

This year’s award winners are:

Ioannis Kareklas and Jeffrey Carlson, Marketing, School of Business, “Propensity to Purchase Organic Foods,” faculty sponsor Robin Coulter;

Sylvie Tchumtchoua, Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Statistics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, “Modeling Associations Between Multivariate Longitudinal Categorical Variables in Survey Data,” faculty sponsor Dipak Dey;

Annie Wisnesky, Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, “The Impact of Social Capital on Gender Differences in Health,” faculty sponsor Michael Wallace.