Stephen A. Matthews
Associate Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, and Demography
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Office: 507 Oswald Tower |
| Telephone: (814) 863-9721 Fax: (814) 863-7216 | |
| Email: | |
EDUCATION:
- Ph.D., University of Wales, Cardiff (United Kingdom), 1991
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS:
Matthews is an Associate Professor of Sociology (75%) and Anthropology (25%) and is a member of the Demography faculty at Penn State. He has served as the Director of the Geographic Information Analysis Core at the Population Research Institute (PRI) since its formation in 1996 and is a Senior Research Associate in PRI (The GIA Core webpage can be found at http://www.pop.psu.edu/gia-core/). Matthews has a long standing interest in spatial demography and the use of GIS in applied and basic research.
Research: The central tenets of my teaching and research scholarship are population health and health inequality in community contexts. More specifically, I am interested in the distribution of resources, risks, and opportunities (food, anchor institutions, social networks) and how accessibility and utilization of these resources, risks, and opportunities impact health and wellbeing (e.g., diet and obesity-related outcomes, welfare status). A focus on race/ethnicity and income inequalities cross-cut all of my major research projects. Moreover, my work pays close attention to conceptual and methodological issues, specifically with regard to neighborhood research. I developed and contributed to new methodological approaches (geoethnography) and tools (spatial segregation profile) and have used advanced spatial analytical techniques (spatial regression modeling) and innovative research designs (quasi-experimental) in my work.
My primary research project is an NIEHS-funded study of neighborhood food environments, diet, and health among low-income residents in Philadelphia; a collaboration between myself (PI) and Steven Cummins (London). The study is an evaluation, using a quasi-experimental design, of the impact on diet and obesity of a state-government funded program (the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative), which aims to improve the local food environment by promoting the development of food superstores in underserved areas. The baseline survey was completed in Fall 2006 and I am currently cleaning this data. I will use the time between baseline and follow-up to work on descriptive and methodological manuscripts. I am planning a data validation paper based on data that emerged from a study of price and food availability that was funded through an SSRI Level II. Based on complete data (i.e., after follow-up) I aim to produce several papers of interest to academic and policy groups that will focus on the intervention effect; for example, the effect on respondent fruit/vegetable consumption; respondent psychological health; changes in respondent perceptions of food access; the impact on the local food economy; and, a policy paper on implications of built environment change on diet, food access, and health. As a result of the SSRI Level II support, I anticipate a paper exploring changes in price and food availability and the effects of these changes on food purchase and consumption patterns; this type of study has never been undertaken within a controlled study design. This project, though new, has attracted interest. During October 2006 it was discussed in USA Today and earlier this year have been interviewed by the Washington Post and New York Times for articles on food environments and obesity.
My second area of research involves collaboration with Linda Burton (Duke) and Debra Skinner (UNC) on two large family and child wellbeing ethnographic studies. My unique contribution to the ethnographic work has been to explore and develop new methods for integrating GIS and ethnography; geoethnography. In my work to date, geoethnography has been used successfully to help situate families’ actions and experiences in time and space, and to enhance data analysis and interpretation, specifically with respect to the complexity of disability management and child wellbeing. Currently I am looking to push the method and the applications of geoethnography into new territory to both question the conceptualization and measurement of neighborhood as used in sociology and other social sciences and to investigate questions regarding exposure to neighborhood by looking at the dependence of individuals and families on extra-local resources, opportunities, and social support networks. I am writing a paper using ethnographic data on urban families that will explore the degree to which families use extra-local resources and show that the assumption of 24/7 exposure to the census tract of residence, as typically encountered in multilevel neighborhood models, is not tenable. A follow-up manuscript will explore a similar set of conceptual and methodological questions but will use superior data collected on neighborhood environments, social support networks, and the activity logs of families living in small towns.
My third area of research is based on the NSF collaborative project on measuring spatial segregation with Reardon (Stanford, PI). As PI at Penn State I am responsible for all administrative and financial matters and for directing the GIS, data, and programming components of the project. The research team includes Lee and Firebaugh (Penn State), O’Sullivan (Auckland), and Farrell (Alaska-Anchorage). See project website http://www.pop.psu.edu/mss/. To date the team has generated four manuscripts. The first manuscript is a methodological paper introducing the segregation profile, an approach that offers a scale-sensitive alternative to standard practice in sociology (Reardon et al.). The second manuscript applies the Farley-Frey framework to look at patterns and determinants of racial residential segregation using the segregation profile (Lee et al.). A third manuscript focuses on measuring income segregation with the rank-order information theory index and the rank-order variation ratio index as well as spatially-explicit versions of these indices (Reardon et al.). In the fourth manuscript, spatial segregation profile data is used to describe changes in racial residential segregation patterns in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2000 (Reardon et al. under review). The research team is planning a new grant submission to NICHD on the consequences of race/ethnic segregation. A focus on local health consequences may provide opportunities for me to combine aspects of the Philadelphia study with this project.
Since joining the Department of Anthropology I have collaborated with Ken Hirth on a successful application to NSF on “GIS and spatial analysis of the Basin of Mexico” and I am a member of the research team led by James Wood and Patricia Johnson on the “Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Population Change in the Northern Orkney Islands, c. 1735-2000;” also funded by NSF (See http://www.anthro.psu.edu/noph/index.htm).
In addition, Wilbur Zelinsky (Emertus Professsor of Geography) and I recently completed a book-length manuscript on the religious landscape of Chicago based on our earlier National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The monograph describes and seeks to explain the complex religious landscape of the Chicago metro area; it includes over 80 maps and 80 photographs.
Teaching: My teaching and instructional development activities do not fit a typical profile. My instructional contributions are both inside and outside the classroom, on-and-off campus, and include the development of materials for web-based instruction and learning. I have experience at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Penn State and UCLA. In the past two years I have served on 9 Ph.D. committees, including one as chair. I also supervise 4 graduate students per year in their research assistantships in the GIA Core, and interact with many others offering advice on geospatial data and methods.
Although seen as a methodologist (GIS and spatial demography), my substantive teaching interests focus on health inequalities and the relationship between health outcomes and environmental context (social, built, and/or physical). During 2007-2008 I envision developing a new undergraduate course at the intersection of urban, medical, and environmental sociology focusing on ‘neighborhoods and health inequalities.’ At a later date I would be interested in teaching in the areas of social demography, urban ecology, and urban sociology.
I am committed to providing high-quality instruction in GIS/spatial analysis applications to demography and other population health-related sciences. I have been invited to organized and lead pre- and post-conference spatial demography workshops for the PAA each year between 1998 and 2003 and for the Family Research Consortium IV in 2004 and again in 2007. Moreover my R25 training grant on GIS and Population Science (GISPopSci) in collaboration with the Center for Spatially integrated Social Science is highly regarded and perhaps one of the most successful training programs supported by NICHD (see project website: http://csiss.ncgia.ucsb.edu/GISPopSci/). In January 2007, I submitted a new 5-year training program application to NICHD on ‘advanced spatial analysis for population scientists.’ This was recently scored at 112 and assuming funding is secured, I will coordinate up to 8 week-long workshops for early-career demographers on cutting-edge techniques (e.g., spatial regression, geographically weighted regression, spatial pattern analysis, and the integration of spatial and multilevel modeling).
In addition, I have been involved in two other funded projects with unique instructional development components. The first is with geographers in the U.K., known as the DIALOG project (NSF). I developed materials based on U.S. Census data for looking at race/ethnic segregation in U.S. cities, paralleling work by Phil Rees and colleagues at the University of Leeds (this will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book). The second is a multidisciplinary collaboration between faculty at Penn State and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The primary aim of ‘The Global Health and Georesource Management in Africa project’ (Airhihenbuwa (PI) Biobehavioral Health) is to develop a program based on a multidisciplinary educational framework for addressing African health issues in the context of georesources management, environmental protection, and sustainable development and will lead to the creation of undergraduate courses at both institutions. I am the demographer and GIS expert on the project.
Service: My service to the University and especially beyond has been quite extensive. I have served on committees at all levels within the University. For almost four years I was the chair of the Penn State University’s GIS Council (2001-2004), and I currently represent both the College of the Liberal Arts and SSRI on that Council. During the past academic year I am serving on five department-level committees. In Sociology I have served on the Demography search, the MOST, and the Quantitative Methods committees, and in Anthropology, I chair the Computer committee and serve on the GIS search committee. This service to the University is in addition to that provided to the SSRI and PRI (1994-present). Above and beyond the GIA Core duties, the latter includes frequent requests to read/review grants, grant ideas and papers. External to Penn State I provide mentoring and advice to faculty in the medical sciences who are re-tooling in spatial analysis techniques (mentor on both a KO1 application & K07 award), and I regularly field questions from GISPopSci attendees.
Although the hardest and most time consuming, the most rewarding level of service to the academy is my reviewing for the National Institutes of Health. I have been a reviewer for what was the SNEM-1 panel since 2000; now known as the Community Influences on Health Behavior panel. In addition, I have served on Population Infrastructure panels, specialist panels on ‘Cancer and GIS,’ ‘health, environment, and economic development,’ and ‘data archiving’ among others for NIH. Similarly, I have served as a reviewer for NSF and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I currently serve on the editorial board of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and until fairly recently had served ten years on the editorial board of Health and Place. I regularly review for academic journals – increasingly for sociological, demographic, and public health journals – and publishing houses. I am currently a member of the Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Network’s Research Committee and until recently I was an advisor to Macro International on Measure+GIS (geocoding DHS clusters). Finally, I am an active participant in professional meetings and associations; I have organized sessions, workshops, and been a discussant numerous times.
SELECT PUBLICATIONS:
- Matthews, S.A. (1990) Epidemiology Using a GIS: A Need for Caution. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 14(3): 213-221.
- Matthews, S. A., D. Ribar and M. Wilhelm (1997) "The Effects of Economic Conditions and Access to Reproductive Health Services on State Abortion and Birth Rates" Family Planing Perspectives 29(2): 52-60.
- Clogg, C. C., T. Rudas, S.A. Matthews (1998) “Analysis of Model Misfit, Structure and Local Structure in Contingency Tables using Graphical Displays based on the Misture Index of Fit” pp. 425-439 in Visualization of Categorical Data edited by Jorg Blasius and Michael Greenacre, Academic Press: New York.
- Matthews, S.A. (1999). Working with PopMap: Integration of Population, Reproductive Health and Geographic Databases. New York, NY: United States, Statistics Division.
- McLaughlin, D.K. , D.T. Lichter and S.A. Matthews (1999). Demographic Diversity and Economic Change in Appalachia. Washington, D.C.: Appalachian Regional Commission.
- Matthews, S. A., Shivakoti, G. P. and Chhetri, N. (2000). “Population Forces and Environmental Change: Observations from Western Chitwan, Nepal. Society and Natural Resources, 13: 763-775.
- Matthews, S.A. and B. Gubhaju. (2004) Contextual influences on the use of antenatal care in Nepal. DHS Geographic Studies 2. Calverton, MD, USA: ORC Macro International.
- Skinner, D., Matthews, S. A., and Burton, L.M. (2005). “Using Ethnography and Geographic Information Systems Technology to Examine Constructions of Developmental Opportunities in Contexts of Poverty and Disability.” In T. Weisner (Ed.) Discovering successful pathways in Children’s development: Mixed methods in the study of childhood and family life (MacArthur Foundation: University of Chicago Press).
- Kaduri, P., T. Gilreath, J. Mbwambo, G. King, G. Kilonzo, A.J.Flisher and S.A. Matthews (2005). “Social Networks' Influence on Tobacco Use among Students in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania." Promotion & Education 12 (2):10-14.
- Matthews, S.A. , J. Detwiler and L.M. Burton (2005). "Geoethnography: Coupling Geographic Information Analysis Techniques with Ethnography Methods in Urban Research." Cartographica 40 (4): 75-90.
