Chuka Kilimpi: The Family Resource Center at the University of Oklahoma.
This is a collaborative project between the Chickasaw Nation and CASR at the University of Oklahoma. We are using the first year of the project to develop a concept and write a strategic design for a Family Resource Center. The FRC will provide comprehensive and innovative services for the well-being of the citizens of the Chickasaw Nation and provide unique opportunities for collaboration between the Chickasaw Nation and the University of Oklahoma in undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral training and in prevention, treatment and service delivery research.

National Security and Nuclear Politics Project
The national security and nuclear politics project focuses on the evolution of public understanding of international security, nuclear deterrence and US security policies in the post-Cold War era. Employing biennial nationwide surveys conducted from 1993 to the present, changes in perceptions and preferences of security are tracked and analyzed.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Integrity Study
In recent years, a number of well-publicized cases have called attention to misconduct and unethical behavior on the part of scientists, perhaps undermining the integrity of the scientific enterprise. Based on recommendations by the National Research Council, OU’s team of experts, sponsored by the NIH, was assembled to provide insight into the realm of scientific integrity through research and the development of integrity measures.

Air Force Research Laboratory
The broad purpose of the grant, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, is to investigate factors that reduce the loss of trained knowledge and skills while not in use. OU, in this effort, is collaborating with research teams from three partnering universities to identify factors that can be manipulated during the training of a complex computer-based skill, used to enhance individuals’ acquisition, retention, and reacquisition of that skill.

US-Mexico Border Health Initiative
As one of its Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) launched an initiative to advance knowledge and skill in the delivery of health and social services to financially disadvantaged and medically underserved people with HIV. The HRSA funded five demonstration projects in four states along the US-Mexico Border and a Centro de Evaluación or HIV/AIDS Evaluation and Technical Assistance Center, which is located within CASR at the University of Oklahoma.
As part of the SPNS initiative, Centro de Evaluación plays a leading role in exploring culturally relevant, innovative models of HIV/AIDS care for high-risk populations residing along the US-Mexico Border. The primary function of this multi-site center is to provide technical assistance in the areas of program evaluation, data management, analysis and dissemination to five demonstration projects which are located along the 2,000 mile region of the border.

Department of Defense – Polygraph Institute (DOD-PI)
Since 2002, an OU research team has worked in collaboration with the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (DOD-PI). The purpose of this project is to find alternative means of detecting deception and enhance the utility of the polygraph in a personnel selection context. While the polygraph is able to detect deception in individuals beyond chance levels, it has some well-documented problems. This research focuses on Verbal analysis, or the content coding of verbal statements, as an alternative means of detecting deception.

SkillsNET® / Department of Defense
SkillsNET Corporation, a consulting company contracted with the Department of Defense, United States Navy, has requested the scientific expertise of The University of Oklahoma in helping with the US Navy efforts to upgrade and update their personnel management systems. CASR is currently working to support the job analysis efforts of SkillsNET, while also providing advanced research and development of systems based on SkillsNET technology.

National American Indian/Alaskan Native HIV/AIDS Technical Assistance Center
As one of its Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded an initiative to improve the quality of HIV/AIDS interventions in the American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) community. The SPNS initiative provides funding for six HIV/AIDS care demonstration projects across the country, as well as a National American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) HIV/AIDS Technical Assistance (TA) Center, which is based at CASR at the University of Oklahoma. The Center provides technical assistance for community, tribal, and village programs that provide HIV/AIDS social services and primary care, and supports AI/AN development of culturally appropriate solutions to community, tribal, and village issues, encouraging solutions that come from the local level.
The role of the TA Center is to provide technical assistance to the six AI/AN HIV/AIDS grantees for their local evaluation efforts, to assess local evaluation capabilities, and to disseminate the findings of the initiative.

National Science Foundation Integrity Project
The goal of this project is to develop a discipline-specific social practices approach to ethics, where training focuses on the social-cognitive analysis of day-to-day ethical problems encountered in people’s work. This model is being developed and evaluated in the context of a large, multi-disciplinary, multi-university research center which involves hard science specialists, such as electrical engineers, computer scientists, and meteorologists.

A qualitative analysis of the day-to-day work practices broaching ethical considerations among scientists will identify types of issues encountered as well as strategies used to resolve the problems. The collected information will be used in developing psychometric measures and an educational program to provide instructions for resolving issues linked to questionable ethical practices in the context of multidisciplinary efforts. Finally, the developed program will be evaluated using multi-year, multi-site, quasi-experimental design that considers not only knowledge and decision-making, but also broader organizational impacts, such as changes in perceptions of organizational climate.

Community Review of Genetic Research in African American Populations
This is a qualitative, ethnographic project designed to generate a number of empirical examples of community review in action concerning genetic variation in three diverse African American populations in Oklahoma. We assembled an interdisciplinary team to investigate a process of community review in each local community as well as in higher-order, nested communities to identify appropriate social units and networks to engage in discussions about research questions and design as well as human subject issues and protections. The combined ethnographic and genetic study will provide a crucial context for understanding the population-specific implications of research on human genetic variation.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Using Third-Party Data in Pedigree and Subgroup Analysis
The research study, which is sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, is a three year grant which focuses on developing an approach that provides information about the social identities of participants in research studies and patients in clinical settings. Social identities may be useful in conducting research to discover the causes of diseases and as indicators in diagnosing diseases. The study is also being conducted to learn what people think about researchers and health care providers collecting and then using information about the relatives of study participants and patients.

In order to meet the research goals outlined in the research protocol, Project Interviewers have been given access to breast, colorectal, prostate and pediatric cancer patients receiving treatment at The University of Oklahoma’s Health Science Center Campus as well as six Cancer Care Associates Clinics located in the Oklahoma City Metro area.  Participants are being asked to take part in both individual interviews as well as group discussions. Questions focus on diseases/illnesses within the family, birthdates, death dates, residency and occupations. This information is then entered into a pedigree software program (Progeny) for further analysis.

OU’s involvement in this area of research since 2003 demonstrates the ability to not only recognize but to be at the forefront of major trends in the field of health research. In 2004, U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., announced that Thanksgiving Day would officially be designated as the first annual Family History Day. Families were asked to compile their own health histories in order to aid physicians in the early diagnosis and treatment of disease.

OU’s ongoing research in gathering extended pedigrees is important because knowing family health history improves disease prevention. It enables researchers to enhance early detection methods as well as determine overall disease risk within a family.