National Center for Marriage Research

Current Opportunities

Contents

• Background
• Current Opportunities
  • Small Grants — African American Marriage and Stability
  • Pilot Data Collection
  • Visiting Scholars Program

Background

On September 25, 2007 the Department announced a cooperative agreement to establish the first-ever National Center for Marriage Research (NCMR) to improve our understanding of how marriage and family structure affect the health and well-being of individuals, families, children, and communities, and to inform policy development and programmatic responses. The awardee for the national center is Bowling Green State University.

The Center pursues an ambitious vision to build a new capacity for family research by providing intellectual leadership using an innovative, cross-cutting approach that integrates sociological, psychological, developmental, economic, and demographic perspectives to:

• Address key research questions on the relationship between family structure and adult and child wellbeing, the role of family processes and resources, the formation and maintenance of healthy marriages, adolescents' transitions into healthy marriage in adulthood, pathways to family formation outside of marriage, comparisons between married and unmarried families, and the roles of marriage and relationship skills education programs (including faith-based organizations);
• Establish a strong network of multi-disciplinary scholars who focus their research on families by conducting seminars and conferences, running small grants competitions, and developing visiting scholar and postdoctoral programs;
• Develop and train future researchers whose work explores questions of family structure and function by mentoring junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate assistants.
• Improve research methods and data to permit a fuller understanding of the effects of family structure in various domains across the life span by producing marriage and family structure measurement guidelines, piloting survey data, developing databases of marriage and divorce data, and organizing data workshops; and
• Actively disseminate research findings through a dedicated web site, research briefs, conference proceedings, news releases, and targeted e-mail to the policy and research communities as well as program practitioners. The Center coordinates with the Administration for Children and Families' Healthy Marriage Resource Center, particularly around communication with marriage and family strengthening program practitioners.

To learn more about the Center and its current activities, please visit: http://ncmr.bgsu.edu.

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Current Opportunities

Small Grants — African American Marriage and Stability

The National Center for Marriage Research, in consultation with the African American Healthy Marriage Initiative at the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seeks to fund innovative research that contributes to theoretical, conceptual, methodological, or empirical developments about African American marriage and families. Applicants must have completed a Ph.D. in a social science discipline. Preference will be given to new and emerging scholars, including untenured scholars with full-time academic appointments and researchers with less than five years of experience who are employed outside of academia.
Application Deadline: April 6, 2009 (receipt date)
More information: http://ncmr.bgsu.edu/opportunity/aahmi.html

Pilot Data Collection

The National Center for Marriage Research is providing an opportunity for researchers to field test new items using a large, web-based, household survey (Knowledge Networks panel). Investigators are encouraged to explore innovative measures that will help to answer new research questions on families and financial instability. Ideally, this pilot data collection will launch subsequent and more substantial data collections on this timely topic.
Application Deadline: April 6, 2009.
More information: http://ncmr.bgsu.edu/opportunity/pilotdata.html

Visiting Scholars Program

The National Center for Marriage Research (NCMR) invites applications from faculty and researchers for our Visiting Scholars program. The NCMR is able to offer office space, computing support, and opportunities to participate in NCMR seminars and activities on the BGSU campus for up to 2 scholars. Unfortunately, the NCMR does not have funds available to support salary, travel, or research expenses for visiting scholars. Scholars are invited to visit for a variety of lengths of time, ranging from an academic year, semester, summer, or one month.

Visiting Scholars from a range of social science disciplines (e.g., demography, economics, history, human development, psychology, and sociology) are encouraged to apply. The NCMR is especially interested in hosting scholars conducting work in one or more of its research themes.

Please see http://ncmr.bgsu.edu/opportunity/visitingscholars.html for further information.

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Last updated:  02/27/09