This award allows a cultural anthropologist doing research on the elderly in Philadelphia to spend time at the University of California at Irvine studying "consensus theory" with the faculty there. This theory is a form of multivariate analysis which allows one to specify the domain of shared knowledge that characterizes a group and to pinpoint the degree of expertise this knowledge held by each member. The award will help the anthropologist develop skills in psychometric theory, Bayesian statistics, and statistical computing required for application of consensus theory. The PI will then use this theory in a study of the household production of care or impaired elderly living with adult children. This activity is important because it will spread the expertise at a leading research university to social scientists involved applied research.
