Michigan Research Infrastructure for Population Sciences

OVERALL: SUMMARY
This application requests five years of research infrastructure support for the Population Studies Center
(PSC) at the University of Michigan (U-M). The PSC has and will continue to use this funding to create an
environment and resources that would not otherwise be available, including: (1) a vibrant intellectual
community of collaborative, interdisciplinary population scientists; (2) multimodal training and start-to-finish
support for scientists to enhance their competitiveness for peer-reviewed external funding in priority areas for
the NICHD Population Dynamics Branch (PDB); (3) small grants to fund high-priority pilot projects, methods
development, and computing resources; (4) seminars, hands-on workshops, and curated consulting across a
range of resources to advance methods for collecting and analyzing data; and (5) end-to-end research project
management support. In all activities, we focus particularly on the needs of junior scientists, and in the next five
years we will enhance the broader research community’s access. Since its founding by Ronald Freedman in
1961, PSC has united and supported an exceptional group of population scientists in the design, creation, and
use of new, publicly available data to advance population science. The Center continues to be unified by long-
term, signature projects, such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Chitwan Valley Family
Study (CVFS) in Nepal—each representing major PDB investments. Together, they have produced more than
5,250 peer-reviewed publications, 300,000 citations, and thousands of data users. These highly significant
projects also serve as engines of collaboration within PSC, helping to spawn a new generation of innovative
projects focused on NICHD-PDB priorities. A key example is the American Family Health Study (AFHS), an
innovative U-M data collection project designed to provide content previously available from the NSFG, but
using a more flexible and cost effective web survey. Our objective in this application is to use P2C resources to
stimulate and support: new research on significant and emergent questions in population science; the use of
innovative approaches to data collection and analysis; and the development of a new generation of population
scientists within this productive environment, equipped with the tools to engage successfully in PDB research
priorities. PSC’s Administrative, Development and Scientific and Technical Cores currently provide innovative
administrative, intellectual, career development and technical resources to 69 affiliates from 14 disciplines and
8 schools and colleges across U-M, as well as a growing number of population dynamics researchers at other
institutions. Their work advances science in PSC’s three substantive PRAs: (1) Family and Intergenerational
Influences on Health and Wellbeing; (2) Reproductive Health, Fertility, and Romantic Relationships; and (3)
Population Health, the Life Course, and Biosocial Processes.

Grant Number: 5P2CHD041028-24
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Sarah Burgard