John Robert Warren

Associate Professor ~ Director of Undergraduate Studies

University of Minnesota ~ Department of Sociology

909 Social Sciences ~ 267 19th Avenue South

Minneapolis, MN 55418

612.624.2310 (Office) ~ 612.624.7020 (FAX)

Click Here to Email Me

Current CV

(Page last updated 2/16/09)

Interest Areas

Social Stratification; Sociology of Education 

Current Research

PANEL CONDITIONING EFFECTS IN LONGITUDINAL STUDIES (with Andrew Halpern-Manners)

Longitudinal (or panel) surveys provide great methodological leverage in establishing causality and in understanding processes that unfold over time.  Despite their tremendous value for research in innumerable academic and applied fields, longitudinal surveys also present a variety of unique methodological problems.   Among the least well-understood of these problems is known as “panel conditioning,” or bias introduced when participation in one wave of a longitudinal study alters respondents’ subsequent reports of their attitudes and/or behaviors. 

Does participation in longitudinal surveys affect respondents’ subsequent reports of their attitudes and/or behaviors?  If partaking in a longitudinal survey does alter participants’ responses to subsequent attitudinal and/or behavioral survey questions, then this calls into question the validity of information derived from any number of widely-used data resources.

We will use data from the Current Population Surveys and the German Socioeconomic Panel to estimate the magnitude of panel conditioning or “time-in-survey” effects.  Previous assessments of the magnitude of panel conditioning effects have typically utilized methodologically weak or flawed non-experimental research designs which conflate panel conditioning effects with panel attrition effects.  Furthermore, previous efforts to estimate the magnitude of panel conditioning effects have focused on consequences for a limited range of attitudinal or behavioral measures.  In this project we will estimate the magnitude of these effects across a very broad range of measures obtained in a lengthy omnibus survey.  What is more, few previous investigators have tested theoretically-derived hypotheses about the conditions under which panel conditioning effects will be large, small, or non-existent.  The breadth and variety of survey items under consideration in the proposed analyses allow for a better theoretical understanding of the circumstances under which panel conditioning effects may be more or less serious.  This project has been supported by the National Science Foundation; other grant proposals are now in preparation.

THE WISCONSIN LONGITUDINAL STUDY (with colleagues at UW-Madison and elsewhere)

The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The WLS provides an opportunity to study the life course, intergenerational transfers and relationships, family functioning, physical and mental health and well-being, and morbidity and mortality from late adolescence through middle age. WLS data also cover social background, youthful aspirations, schooling, military service, labor market experiences, family characteristics and events, social participation, psychological characteristics, and retirement.  Survey data were collected from the original respondents or their parents in 1957, 1964, 1975, 1992, and 2004; from a selected sibling in 1977, 1994, and 2005; from the spouse of the original respondent in 2004; from the spouse of the selected sibling in 2006; and from widow(er)s of the graduates and siblings in 2006. 

We are currently planning in-home interviews in 2009 of the surviving members of the graduate sample; they will be about 70 years old when re-contacted.  We are also planning (a) physical examinations, in collaboration with the Survey of Health Outcomes in Wisconsin; (b) parallel in-home interviews in 2009-2010 of about 5,500 randomly selected siblings of the graduates, mainly aged 60 to 80; (c) parallel in-home interviews with spouses of graduates and siblings; (d) interviews with adult children of WLS graduates and siblings; and (e) continuing links to Medicare/Medicaid records and to the National Death Index. The WLS is unique as a large scale longitudinal study of adults and their families that covers more than half a century. It is a valuable public resource for studies of aging and the life course; intergenerational relationships; family relations; non-normative parenting outcomes (disabilities and mental illness among adult children); long-term effects of education and cognitive ability; occupational careers; physical and mental well-being; health literacy; cognitive change; and morbidity and mortality. 

Since 1991, the WLS has been supported principally by the National Institute on Aging (AG-9775 and AG-21079), with additional support from the Vilas Estate Trust, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A public use file of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study is available here.

WORK AND FAMILY ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE (with Jim Raymo, UW-Madison)

We are investigating the extent to which work and family trajectories across the life course affect physical and mental health and financial well-being in later adulthood either directly or through their effects on more proximate predictors of these outcomes.  To what extent are health and financial well-being among older adults affected by individuals’ contemporaneous work, family, and other circumstances and to what extent are such outcomes due to life-course patterns of experiences in the family and the labor market?  How do all of these processes differ for women and men?

The meaning and nature of the retirement years has changed in fundamental ways in recent decades.  Given that successful aging has increasingly come to depend on individuals’ own planning and resources at earlier ages; given broad social changes that have redefined employment relationships, women’s rates of participation in the paid labor market, and rates of marital dissolution; given growing heterogeneity in men’s and women’s work and family trajectories; and given growing heterogeneity in the well-being of older Americans in recent cohorts, our investigation of the impact of life course patterns of work and family circumstances on health and financial well-being in later adulthood is timely and important.  Our work is fundamentally concerned with understanding the determinants of the well-being of older Americans in an era of changing social, economic, and policy contexts.   

We will utilize data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS).  The WLS data include detailed information about family circumstances and transitions across the life course; labor force experiences across the career; and physical and mental health and financial well-being at two points between ages 54 and 65.  We will use group-based trajectory modeling techniques to characterize the trajectories of family circumstances and transitions from birth through age 65 and trajectories of labor force experiences and exposures from age 36 through age 65.  Cognizant of the complexities and endogeneities in the causal relationships involved, we will then estimate the impact of these work and family trajectories (separately for men and women) on health and financial well-being in later adulthood before and after controlling for more proximate influences on these outcomes. 

Grant proposals are now under review.

STATE HIGH SCHOOL EXIT EXAMINATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL AND LABOR MARKET SUCCESS (with Eric Grodsky)

This long-term project is designed to assess the consequences of state-mandated high school exit examinations for high school completion, educational achievement, and post-high school labor market outcomes.  This project has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education / Institute of Education Sciences, and the National Science Foundation.  Several papers from this project have been published.  Others are under review or in preparation. 

Click here to be directed to the “State High School Exit Examination” web site.

Recent Papers

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Eric S. Grodsky, John Robert Warren, & Erika Felts. 2008. “Testing and Social Stratification in American Education.” Annual Review of Sociology 34:385-404.

John Robert Warren, Eric S. Grodsky, & Jennifer C. Lee. 2008. “State High School Exit Examinations and Post-Secondary Labor Market Outcomes.” Sociology of Education 81:77-107.

John Robert Warren, Peter Hoonakker, & Pascale Carayon. 2008. “Changes in Health Between Ages 54 and 66: The Role of Job Characteristics and Socioeconomic Status.” Research on Aging 30:672-700.

John Robert Warren & Andrew Halpern-Manners. 2007. “Is the Glass Emptying or Filling Up? Reconciling Divergent Trends in High School Completion and Dropout.” Educational Researcher 36:335-343. (Click here for the technical appendix)

John Robert Warren & Elaine M. Hernandez. 2007. “Did Socioeconomic Inequalities in Mortality and Morbidity Change in the U.S. over the Course of the 20th Century?” Journal of Health & Social Behavior 48: 335-351.

FORTHCOMING

John Robert Warren. “Socioeconomic Status and Health across the Life Course: A Test of the Social Causation and Health Selection Hypotheses.” Social Forces.

John Robert Warren & Andrew Halpern-Manners. “Measuring High School Graduation Rates at the State Level: What Difference Does Methodology Make?” Sociological Methods & Research.

John Robert Warren and Caitlin Hamrock. “The Effect of Minimum Wage Rates on States’ High School Completion Rates.”

Eric S. Grodsky, John Robert Warren, & Demetra Kalogrides. “State High School Exit Examinations and NAEP Long-Term Trends in Reading and Mathematics, 1971-2004.” Educational Policy.

Andrew Halpern-Manners, John Robert Warren, and Jennie Brand. “Dynamic Measures of Primary and Secondary School Characteristics: Implications for School Effects Research.” Social Science Research.

John Robert Warren & Eric S. Grodsky. “State Exit Exams Harm the Students Who Fail Them and Do Not Benefit the Students Who Pass Them. Now What?” Phi Delta Kappan.

UNDER REVIEW

John Robert Warren & Amelia Corl. “State High School Exit Examinations, Retention in Grade 9, and High School Completion.”

James Raymo, John Robert Warren , Robert M. Hauser, Megan Sweeney, and JeongHwa Ho. “Later-life Employment Preferences and Outcomes: The Role of Mid-life Work Experiences”

James Raymo, John Robert Warren , Megan Sweeney, Robert M. Hauser, and JeongHwa Ho. “Mid-life Work Experiences and First Retirement”

IN PROGRESS

Elaine M. Hernandez and John Robert Warren. “The Effects of Macro- And Individual-Level Socioeconomic Status on Child Mortality in Brazil, 1970 to 2000.”

John Robert Warren and James Raymo. “The Impact of Work and Family Roles on Life Outcomes in Late Adulthood.”

John Robert Warren, Peter Wruck, and Caren Arbeit. “The Blurry Line Between Secondary and Post-Secondary Schooling in the United States: Contours and Consequences.”

John Robert Warren and Andrew Halpern-Manners. “Panel Conditioning Effects in Longitudinal Social Science Surveys.”

Peter Wruck and John Robert Warren. “Do School Funding Referenda Matter for Academic Achievement?”

Courses

RESEARCH METHODS (Sociology 3801, Undergraduate Level)  (Fall 2006 Syllabus)                       

STATISTICS (Sociology 3811, Undergraduate Level) (Spring 2006 Syllabus)    

STATISTICS (Sociology 5811, Graduate Level) (Fall 2006 Syllabus)                       

STATISTICS (~Sociology 8811, Graduate Level)  (Spring 2001 Syllabus)                       

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION (~Sociology 3201, Undergraduate Level)  (Summer 2001 Syllabus) 

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION (Sociology 8201, Graduate Level) (Spring 2004 Syllabus)                  

SOCIOLOGY AS A PROFESSION (Sociology 8001, Graduate Level) (Fall 2006 Syllabus)            

Service

1.      I am the deputy editor of Sociology of Education.  Click here to go to the journal web site.         

2.      I organize the Department of Sociology’s weekly workshop series.  Click here to go to the workshop schedule.

3.      I am the Department of Sociology’s Director of Undergraduate Studies.  Click here for information about the department’s undergraduate program.

Personal Stuff

  1. I have a lovely wife and two awesome sons.  Click here for a picture.
  2. I play for Nemesis in the Adult (ice) Hockey Association.  Click here to follow our progress.
  3. The Chicago Cubs will win the 2009 World Series.  Click here to follow their progress.  AC0063100  EAMUS CATULI
  4. The St. Paul Saints will win the 2009 American Association championship.  Click here to follow their progress.