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Research Tools & Apps

App Allows Users to Explore the Societal Costs of Deploying Vaccines

Charles Manski (IPR/Economics) and Valentyn Litvin, Northwestern University

Using vaccines to stop the spread of infectious diseases is a key tool of public health policy. When deploying them, policymakers and public health experts seek to assess the societal costs of illness and vaccination. But faced with many uncertainties in forming a vaccination policy, how can experts best determine what those might be? A new app, based on a model developed in a recent IPR working paper, provides policymakers and health experts with the computational algorithms to perform their own studies. Users can compare different vaccination rates based on rates for vaccine effectiveness, affected populations, and health risks.

App Explores Seven Key Economic Indicators

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (IPR/SESP) and Natalie Tomeh, Northwestern University

IPR researchers have created a new application for tracking seven economic indicators data across the nation and state by state. Users can find data from April 23 onward from the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey on unemployment, children's schooling, housing, finances, mental health, and food insecurity for American households. Read the summary or the accompanying report.

New Tool Maps Racial Disparity in Arrests Across the Country

Beth Redbird and Kat Albrecht (IPR/Sociology), Northwestern University

With their new police bias map, IPR sociologist Beth Redbird and graduate research assistant Kat Albrecht show county by county the extent to which Black Americans are arrested at a higher rate than White Americans—a trend that has only accelerated in recent decades. They also include data on the arrests of Asian Americans and American Indians, the latter of whom saw an increase in disparity that matches that among Blacks.

'The Generalizer' App Improves the Accuracy of Education Studies

Elizabeth Tipton (IPR/Statistics), Northwestern University

IPR statistician and education expert Elizabeth Tipton created a web-based, user-friendly tool for K–12 education researchers called the “The Generalizer.” It allows users to define their research populations using geographic, demographic, and administrative criteria from the Common Core of Data and the American Community Survey.

Metropolitan & Household Water Insecurity

Sera Young (IPR/Anthropology), Northwestern University

SIWI’s 2020 World Water Week in Stockholm focuses on transforming global water challenges. In the August 26 session on “Metropolitan & Household Water Insecurity,” the panelists presented simple tools to guide water security planning and investments at metropolitan and household levels. They introduced two city-level instruments for water security assessment, as well as the first globally-validated household-level indicator. They concluded by discussing how these tools can be used to advance policy and programmatic priorities in a conversation moderated by Andy Roby of DFID

Read more about the Metropolitan & Household Water Insecurity presentation.

App for Visualizing Food Insecurity

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (IPR/SESP) and Abigail Pitts, Northwestern University

IPR researchers have created a new tool for visualizing food insecurity data across the nation. Users can find data from April 23 onward from the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey on weekly rates of food insecurity for respondents with and without children, which can also be sorted by race and ethnicity for selected states. The complete report can be read here.

View the Dataset and App for Visualizing Food Insecurity.