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Robert Apel

@bobapel.bsky.social
1K followers 2.7K following 47 posts

Social scientist at Rutgers with expertise in criminology and social policy

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Reposted by Robert Apel
Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 23/04/2026
Data Science Team Training: Building data science capacity in the public health workforce. I'm writing a (free) e-book for public health practitioners upskilling in data science, as part of my work with the CSTE's DSTT program. blog.stephenturner.us/p/data-scien...
blog.stephenturner.us
Data Science Team Training
Building data science capacity in the public health workforce: A free e-book for public health practitioners upskilling in data science.
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Frank Edwards @frankalready.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
foster care has been on the decline nationally over the past ten years. that's a good thing! but there's a group that routinely argue that this is putting kids in danger. @kelleyfong.bsky.social; @bobapel.bsky.social and I checked the evidence (it's null 1/n) jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
jamanetwork.com
Foster Care and Child Maltreatment Mortality Rates in the US
This cross-sectional study of children in state-supervised foster care assesses deaths due to child maltreatment and whether these fatalities are associated with foster care entry rates.
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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
News coverage of the Trump administration's proposed "compact" with universities has been, so far, shockingly bad. I hate to pick on NPR reporter Elissa Nadworny, who's usually a solid reporter, but almost every important thing I heard her say this morning about the proposed "compact" was false.
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
1/ Do body-worn cameras (BWCs) improve public attitudes toward the police? Or is how officers treat people what really matters? My new Justice Quarterly article with Mustafa Demir from John Jay tackles these questions with a vignette experiment. 🧵
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
I’ve watched with interest as the number of ASC divisions has grown over the course of my career, from 4 to 21. I’m now tempted to start a petition to create an all-new division: Division of Criminology. Curious if there would be any takers.
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
1/ Can a Google search hurt your chances of getting a job more than a background check? A new study with Sarah Lageson on criminal records, race, and willingness to hire has surprising answers. 🧵
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 23/05/2025
The political theory behind IRA was roughly as follows: We have lost control of the information landscape and can no longer win rhetorical or purely political battles; however, if we make substantive policy progress that directly touches voters' lives, they will notice and reward us.
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
The menswear guy: social theorist. Some interesting history and sociological insight here.
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Enjoyable for those interested in history of urban issues. With some justified finger-wagging at Jane Jacobs for hypocrisy: “It was the kind of thing that Jacobs praised, but when she buys the building, she gut renovates it. She tears out the storefront. She turns it into a single-family home.”
theatlantic.com
Americans Are Stuck. Who’s to Blame?
Yoni Appelbaum on his new book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Ok sociology, what do you think are genuine breakthroughs that our field has made. Contributions that might convince skeptical but sympathetic *academics* (not the public) of the value of our field? I'll brainstorm some of mine in the thread - I treat sociology very broadly
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Rourke O’Brien @rourkeobrien.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
"Fiscal Centralization and Inequality in Children's Economic Mobility" New research with @schechtlm.bsky.social @zparolin.bsky.social just out in ASR doi.org/10.1177/0003... #sociology #demography #econsky
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Sociological Science @sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
NEW: René D. Flores, Edward Telles, Ilana M. Ventura, "New OMB’s Race and Ethnicity Standards Will Affect How Americans Self-Identify"
sociologicalscience.com
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Heather Urry @heatherurry.io · 29/09/2024
Here's a fun way to encourage students to always look at their data. A few years ago, I wrote a script that converts a black and white png to data and plots it.
Plotted version of png converted to data with regression fit line. It appears there's a positive association between steps and sleep. But the simulated data points spell out "OH NO!"Png showing "OH NO!" in black letters on white background
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David McKenzie @dmckenzie.bsky.social · 29/08/2024
I've just finished the annual update of our curated links on the Development Impact blog, which sort key posts from the last 13 years. First up, technical topics and methods: how to do RCTs, power calcs, DiD, IV, RDD, PAPs, publication, analysis issues, and more: blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
blogs.worldbank.org
A Curated List of Our Postings on Technical Topics – Your One-Stop Shop for Methodology
This is a curated list of our technical postings, to serve as a one-stop shop for your technical reading. I’ve focused here on our posts on methodological issues in impact evaluation – we also have a ...
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StataTex Blog @statatexblog.com · 23/08/2024
From Jonathan Roth on X: I have created a #DiD Resources page on my website. It has links to all of my DiD teaching slides, coding exercises, and packages I've created. All this info was technically already online, but hopefully this makes it easier to find it! www.jonathandroth.com/did-resources/
jonathandroth.com
DiD Resources
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Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 29/05/2024
I wrote a small r-script to download the SEER county-level population age/race data (single age year and grouped years), break the string apart, and create a full dataset. Is that something people want? I can post it on GitHub.
seer.cancer.gov
U.S. Population Data - SEER Population Data
Download county population estimates used in SEER*Stat to calculate cancer incidence and mortality rates. The estimates are a modification of the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program, in ...
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Leo Ahrens @leoahrens.bsky.social · 13/12/2023
I’m releasing ISOCODES, a new Stata package to generate standardized country code variables.   Feed in a string variable identifying countries and isocodes outputs numeric/2-3 letter codes (ISO3166) or full country names.   I’ll give you a short motivation and rundown below.
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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 23/01/2024
Social scientists need to write papers but we generally aren't taught how to actually do that. Here is how I get papers out the door, in 10 straightforward steps. 1/N #econsky #socsky #scisky
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 13/01/2024
In today's print edition: www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
OPINION
Campus culture wars are a teachable moment in how freedom of speech and academic freedom differ
JACOB T. LEVY
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
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Matt Blackwell @mattblackwell.bsky.social · 04/01/2024
Last Fall I completed another iteration of Gov 50 (Data Science for the Social Sciences), and I've been really happy with the course. We doubled in size to 250 students and got great reviews from students. What's worked for us? gov50-f23.github.io
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Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 30/12/2023
💡Glad to see this paper with Beyers Louw finally published: "On the Nuisance of Control Variables in Causal Regression Analysis" (preprint available on arXiv). doi.org/10.1177/1094...
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Clément de Chaisemartin @cdechaisemartin.bsky.social · 14/12/2023
So excited to announce that our textbook with Xavier, "Difference-in-Differences for Simple and Complex Natural Experiments", is now under contract with Princeton University Press. Check out the "working textbook" version here! Comments welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 12/12/2023
Alarming just how readily pharmacies can give away private information without as much as a warrant
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 30/11/2023
Well I guess when you put it that way…
rollingstone.com
Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies
Henry Kissinger has died at age 100, his consulting firm said in a statement on Wednesday.
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Reposted by Robert Apel
Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 16/11/2023
Empiricism xkcd.com/2855
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Ilya Kashnitsky @ikashnitsky.phd · 02/11/2023
#30DayMapChallenge #2 lines I revisit one of the coolest small improvement one can do to their maps – create borders explicitly as lines and not as polygon outlines💡 #rstats #rspatial #dataviz Blog post: ikashnitsky.phd/2023/map-bor...
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 30/10/2023
This is a lot of fun for anyone who is interested in the dynamics of neighborhood and place, as well as anyone who has lived in New York City.
nytimes.com
An Extremely Detailed Guide to an Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods
A visual guide to the past, present and future of more than 350 New York neighborhoods, as told by more than 37,000 comments from New Yorkers.
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 26/10/2023
This is absolutely terrific, and highly recommended for an intro class or any class that concerns data and measurement. It’s just 30 minutes long.
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Vitor Possebom @vitorpossebom.bsky.social · 24/10/2023
Econometric Thread (#EconSky): Today, I will briefly discuss a few recent papers expanding the synthetic control method (SCM). I will talk about three WPss: Abadie + L'Hour (2019), Grossi, Lattarulo, Mariani, Mattei + Oner (2020); Cao + Dowd (2019) and Cattaneo, Feng, Palomba +Titiunik (2023).
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Vitor Possebom @vitorpossebom.bsky.social · 10/10/2023
Econometrics Thread: Marginal Treatment Effects (MTE) Today, I will explain the basics of MTE and will mention the papers that I believe to be important. As my wife says, I like to preach and spread the Gospel of MTE. (PS: I'm moving some of my Twitter threads to here.)
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Lenore Palladino @lenorepalladino.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
a database of datasets ⬇️ been working for awhile on pulling together economic datasets for econ & policy students b/c there is *so* much publicly available data sharing it for anyone who finds it useful pls suggest additions; work in progress lenorepalladino.notion.site/Economic-and...
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Elaine Hill 📈📉 @elainelhill.bsky.social · 17/10/2023
📈📉 #econsky I'm teaching causal inference and want to give students an example of data+code using the new DiD TWFE estimators. (My examples use proprietary data or do not rely on TWFE.) Thanks team!
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 17/10/2023
Always happy to help 😘 here is the canonical paper on posttreatment bias, highly recommended: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
How Conditioning on Posttreatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about It
In principle, experiments offer a straightforward method for social scientists to accurately estimate causal effects. However, scholars often unwittingly distort treatment effect estimates by conditi....
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 11/10/2023
A welcome installment in the search for the One True Cup of Tea along with the One True Biscuit. Science never sleeps—due, in part, to its being over-caffeinated.
bmj.com
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 04/10/2023
“Recall that the original Luddite movement coincided with the revolutionary fervor that was sweeping Europe in the early 1800s. Decel movements may simply be a way of crying ‘Stop the bus, we want to get off!’.”
noahpinion.blog
Don't be a decel
Technological progress must be harnessed, not fought
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Reposted by Robert Apel
Prison Policy Initiative @prisonpolicy.org · 27/09/2023
NEW: U.S. states lock up Black people at 6x the rate of white people, on average. We just published updated 50-state data on incarceration rates by race, as part of our mission to make important data about the criminal legal system accessible to everyone: www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/09...
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Jen Gaudette @jengaudette.bsky.social · 26/09/2023
Guess I should post something here, so I’m linking my job market paper! I examine the effects of ideological polarization on local politics through the lens of police union endorsements. tinyurl.com/2s7kdpem
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Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · 26/09/2023
Running shorts need a different phone pocket in the liner. If I’m sweaty or it’s raining, the mesh goes to work swiping. I’d like to apologize to my brother, friend, colleague, and research assistant for the calls. And to the Uber driver for the canceled trip that cost me $5.
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