1998-05-07: Spring 1998

Minutes: Meeting of May 7-8, 1998 - CSU Northridge

Present: Anagnoson (LA), Barkan (SB), Chico (HA), Ebeling (CH), Emenhiser (HU), Gerber (SD), Korey (PO), Lascher (SA), Nelson (FR), Ross (BA), Tabb (SF), Taketa (SJ), Turner (NO), Chair.

Guests: K. Stewart and I. Zaslovsky (San Diego Supercomputing Center).

Call to order -- the business meeting was called to order at 9:30 a.m. Friday, February 8, 1998, in Room 245 of the Sierra Building at CSU Northridge. Anagnoson volunteered to be secretary.

  1. Approval of agenda - m/s/p. Change in order because of the need of some to leave.

  2. Winter meeting minutes - m/s/p. Taketa commended for the quality of his minutes the last two meetings.

  3. Announcements:
    • Gerber stated that the reflective teaching book could still use some contributors. See him.
    • Jon Ebeling announced that he had FERPed and will be teaching half time for the next five years.
    • Ted Anagnoson meant to announce but forgot that he had seen a demonstration of Archipelago (http://www.archipelago.com) on his campus - this company is a subsidiary of HBJ and is producing 4-8 CD-ROMs for whole classes in introductory economics, physics, biology and others - these will include 28-40 45-minute lessons to replace both the instructor and the book used for the course - for distance learning. Lots of animations, etc. The company has also done www sites and CD-ROMs for inclusion with conventional textbooks.

  4. Student conference - Turner stated that some 13 of 16 scheduled paper givers showed up, with some quite good papers among the group. Discussion of the competition of the conference in Spring quarter with other conferences, including the all-CSU all-disciplines conference and others based on disciplines. Some possibilities:

    • Higher monetary awards
    • More publicity on the part of local reps
    • Hold the conference at a different time
    • More recognition for paper givers - put either complete papers or abstracts up on the SSDBA web site or another SSRIC web site.

    This year's conference cost approximately $1,000, almost all of which was for lunch and rental of the room for lunch.

    • m/s/p - to explore the possibility of getting additional support and legitimacy for the Student Research Conference from CSU, including travel funds for students.
    • m/s/p - to put the abstracts and program up on a SSRIC web site.
    • m/s/p - to hold the conference at Sacramento State University during the Winter meeting instead of the Spring meeting.
    • m/s/p - to explore the possibility of having faculty present papers or presentations on how they have used SSDBA data. The precise way of doing this is to be left to the committee in charge of the conference.

    Committee to work on the above possibilities and coordinate the conference for next year: Nelson, Lascher, Korey.

  5. Next year (98-99) meetings:

    FallHayward, October 8-9,1998
    WinterSacramento, February 25-26, 1999
    Note: This will be the Research Conference
    SpringPomona, April 29-30, 1999

  6. Ebeling letter for State Senator Mike Thompson circulated for signatures.

  7. ICPSR Summer Program: Ebeling circulated a memo regarding the summer workshops (attached to the hard copy of these minutes) recommending that the two candidates who applied for summer support receive the following amounts: Ms. Vicki Zeitner, MA in Political Science graduate student at Cal State LA, $1,800 to attend several workshops over an 8 week period. Ms. Roditti, a doctoral student at Case Western Reserve and currently teaching and doing administrative work in the Department of Social Work at San Francisco State University, $1,200 to attend a one-week workshop on social network analysis to be used for her dissertation. Approved.

  8. Social Science Data Base Archive - Colin Campbell distributed the following:

    • A CD-ROM with the 1972-1996 General Social Surveys on it, along with documentation - to each member of the SSDBA
    • The second and third quarter combined report of the SSDBA
    • The December/January, 1997-98, Public Perspective (from the Roper Center)
    • The April/May, 1998 Public Perspective

    Campbell demonstrated the workings of the CD-ROM. Stanislaus and San Jose do not subscribe to the SSDBA - all other campuses except Monterey Bay and the Maritime Institute subscribe. Colin reported that current costs are holding; that the SSDBA wishes to upgrade Venus (the Cal State LA computer upon which the SSDBA is located) this summer with a new computer; and that Ingres (the old DBMS used to store data information) will be abandoned and the whole operation shifted to the World Wide Web.

    The policy on ordering information and data from Roper is to order others requested by faculty first, and the Los Angeles Times surveys and the Voter News Service, in that order, on a routine basis.

  9. AOF Grant Report - Nelson described the outcomes of the AOF grant for this year, including 25 instructional data sets with appropriate modules, all to be up on a web site operated by Jim Ross at CSUB. Copies of the McGraw-Hill SPSS for Windows version 7.5 Basic Tutorial, with data disk, authored by Richard Shaffer, Edward E. Nelson, Nan Chico, John L. Korey, Elizabeth N. Nelson, and James Ross, were distributed. The URL is http://www.csubak.edu/ssric

    Issues and problems:

    • Field will not allow any current Field data to appear in modules to be used outside CSU or UC. Data prior to 1993 might be possible, however.
    • Field is now stating that all data sets resulting from surveys done in election years will not be sent to San Diego for processing until after the election in November.
    • Lack of documentation on weights used on surveys.

  10. The Education Center on Computational Science and Engineering at San Diego State University - Kris Stewart and Ilya Zaslovsky presented information, publications, and a demonstration of the capabilities of the Education Center on Computational Science and Engineering.

  11. AIRC/CLRIT - Ed Nelson discussed the CLRIT subcommittee report on data base applications and the extent to which the Chancellor's Office should support them. Discussion ensued.

    CLRIT has met and reviewed AOF proposals recently. Discussion of the current status and implications of CETI.

  12. Field Report - Ed Nelson stated that we have an intern from CSU Bakersfield who will be at Field this coming summer. The question credits and faculty fellowship from this year are proceeding. Discussion re Field's being too busy to send the polls from this year until after the election.

    Field Institute Workshop is on Friday, May 29, 1998 at the San Francisco World Trade Club, Ferry Building, San Francisco. Reply to workshop@field.com

    Another problem is lack of documentation for weighting schemes in older data, mentioned by John Korey.

Meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.

Ted Anagnoson, Scribe
anag999@silcom.com
Professor, Political Science
Cal State Los Angeles
(323) 343-2245