In 2025, the Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI) launched a new research incubation initiative Surveying the Social World (SSW).
SSW will provide select researchers with funding and support to collect high-quality, nationally representative survey data.
Each researcher will submit a series of survey questions to a panel of 1000 adults. The survey responses will be used to drive forward the investigators’ research projects, which all address relevant and timely social concerns. As a part of the award, CSSI will subsidize the survey data costs.
The CSSI research services team will also provide the researchers with end-to-end survey support, including survey administration, programming, testing, deployment, and IRB compliance.
Each participant will disseminate their survey in late spring, followed by data collection and analysis, and eventual curation of a book chapter or peer-reviewed manuscript.
“Our first cohort of researchers for Surveying the Social World are addressing a range of important social science questions concerning health and healthcare, problematic behaviors, and social relationships,” says CSSI associate director, Ethan Rogers. “I am excited to see their projects unfold with CSSI’s support.”
Meet the winners of the 2025 Surveying the Social World initiative, who come from two different colleges.
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Julianna Pacheco, professor in the Department of Political Science, will develop a survey that examines how patients perceive physician partisanship and its impact on the quality of patient care. Survey respondents will be asked to view various images of doctors adorned with partisan cues (e.g. an American flag pin) and then will report their expectations regarding the doctors’ partisanship, behavior, and credibility, as well as predicted patient response and comfort. Pacheco plans to incorporate the survey results into a full-length book titled “Partisan, MD: How Politics Infects the Doctor’s Office.”
Isaac Petersen, associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, will inspect whether aggressive and disruptive behaviors are more reliably assessed through relative (e.g. “sometimes”) or absolute (e.g. “five times per week") questionnaires. Petersen’s survey will include the same questions delivered in both formats. Petersen hopes to use survey results to guide the development of more comprehensive and accurate clinical screening tools for these behaviors, which he will seek future grant funding to achieve.
Melissa Tully, professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will create a survey to explore the connection between social isolation and one-sided relationships with political influencers, two phenomena that are increasing in prevalence across the country. She will also inspect how conspiracy-rich thinking and support for social media regulation fit into this dynamic. Tully looks to use the survey data to support the development of a peer-reviewed journal article.
College of Public Health
Paul Gilbert, associate professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health, will survey adults about their awareness of, attitudes towards, and participation in temporary alcohol abstinence challenges, such as “Dry January.” While these challenges have increased in popularity amongst the public, little research attention has been given to their effect at curbing the population health burden of excessive drinking. Gilbert plans to use the survey data to inform the sample recruitment for a larger study about temporary alcohol abstinence challenges.
Julie Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy, will assess how perceptions of healthcare affordability and quality impact support for public health initiatives. She is also interested in understanding how personal health attitudes and behaviors play a role. Lee’s survey will address all three components – healthcare, public health, and health behavior – to ascertain their interconnection. Lee aims to publish the survey results in open-access, peer-reviewed journals.
Learn More
Surveying the Social World is facilitated by a subscription purchased from Verasight, an external entity that collects high-quality survey panel data.
Through this subscription, University of Iowa researchers can coordinate with CSSI staff to distribute surveys to a panel of verified respondents at a low cost. Researchers interested in these survey research services offered by CSSI are encouraged to contact us for further information.
For emails about CSSI news and opportunities in support of social science research across the University of Iowa campus, within our communities, and beyond, subscribe here.
