Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

This is a proposal for a small grant concerning continuation of data dissemination and data analysis capacity building program in Nepal. This proposal has three goals. The first goal is to provide an overview of Population Studies Center (PSC) researchers led program of research in Nepal including research design, data collection, and data sets. The second goal is to disseminate the recently collected data on (a) 2008 individual interviews concerning ideational influences on marriage and childbearing; (b) 1996-2008 panel interviews concerning ideational influences on marriage and childbearing; (c) 2009 survey data on migrant values, behaviors, and plans collected from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; and (d) promote the use of existing multi-level longitudinal data on social change, family dynamics and population and environment relationships. All of this data has been generated through PSC researchers led programs of research in Nepal. The third goal is to provide an overview of appropriate analytical techniques for the data sets and to provide hands-on experience with computing techniques to the researchers and graduate students from collaborating universities, research institutions, and non-governmental organizations in Nepal and the South Asia region.

The proposed project stems from PSC’s broader and continued interest to foster social demographic research in developing countries and to promote durable ties between the Center and overseas scholars and institutions in enhancing social science research capability around the world, particularly in countries of long term collaborative focus such as Nepal. These research programs have been highly successful to generate a wealth of ethnographic, survey, environmental and spatial data. However, despite PSC’s substantial investment both through the extramural research funding and researchers’ efforts, these unique data sets have not been explored to their full potential. Moreover, the lack of understanding about the data and analytical skills here in the US and in Nepal, in particular, has been the major obstacle to facilitate their use.

This proposed project will be a collaborative effort between the PSC and the Institute for Social and Environmental Research-Nepal (ISER-N), Chitwan, Nepal, PSC’s long term collaborative partner in Nepal. PSC researchers led programs of research in Nepal are carried by Population and Ecology Research Laboratory (PERL), a joint venture between PSC and ISER-N.

To accomplish this important goal, we propose a 5-day workshop to be organized in Nepal. The participants will include 15-20 researchers and graduate students from collaborating universities, research institutions, and non-governmental organizations in Nepal, who are already working or have interest on quantitative analysis of social and environmental data.

Dr. Ghimire and Dr. Bhandari will lead this research capacity building project in close collaboration with the research staff, Bishnu Adhikari and Binoj Shrestha, in Nepal. With this modest support, we will be investing resources in developing research capability that will ultimately strengthen and reinforce ties between the Population Studies Center and its collaborating institutions in Nepal. All of these things, we feel, will directly serve the PSC’s goal of international population training and research.