Social Scientist
Knowli Data Science, Tallahassee, FL
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Telling Stories Using Data Visualization
The immense diversity of tools and programs available for visualizing data only highlights the need for social researchers to better understand how to leverage them for telling clear and concise stories. Below, I present some examples of how I leveraged tools such as ggplot2 to tell a clear story using figures and images.
It's Not Personal: Understanding Resilience from a Structural Perspective
This data story stems from my dissertation research on the interrelations between psychological resilience and its racialized benefits for physical health. I find that this psychological resource is not universally associated with better physical health, when ignoring the structural factors that could modify the extent to which individuals can maintain their own health and well-being. However, accounting for inequalities in early life disadvantage shows that psychological resilience is associated with better physical health for everyone under the right structured conditions. This data story was designed to concisely present this message to a general audience (2 minute Presentation).
Measuring Intersectional Patterns in Early Life Disadvantage
This data story stems from my dissertation research on the interrelations between early life disadvantage, psychological resilience, and physical health in adulthood. I find that early life disadvantage uniquely shapes physical health in adulthood according to intersections of racialized and gendered statuses. I argue that one reason for these variable health consequences is that early life disadvantage accumulates in different ways across these specific groups. Using nationally representative data, I estimated the relative prevalence of social versus material forms of early life disadvantage across race/ethnicity and sex. The full figures and methods employed can be accessed below.
Social Isolation and Achievement of Students with Learning Disabilities
This figure compares middle and highschool students with and without learning disabilities to illustrate how disability stigma leads to inequalities in social isolation. In the published paper, Dr. John Reynolds and I find that students with learning disabilities experience higher levels of social isolation in five out of the six measures considered. We later found that these differences in social isolation accounted for nearly 25% of the high school graduation gap between students with and without learning disabilities, net of other factors like grades and family SES.
