Roberta Spalter-Roth

Roberta Spalter-Roth

Roberta Spalter-Roth

Senior Research Fellow

Dr. Spalter-Roth is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Social Science Research and an affiliate faculty member in the GMU Sociology Department.  She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the American Sociological Association (ASA), where she was director of the Department of Research on the Discipline and the Profession for 17 years.  Her particular areas of interest have included structure and process in higher education, work/family issues in higher education, cross-race networks, and the science and technology workforce.  Dr. Spalter-Roth is currently working on a number of new National Science Foundation-funded projects: a research workshop titled “A Relational Model for Understanding the Use of Research in the Policy Process;” a survey research project, “Social Capital, Organizational Context, and the Job Market;” and a combination quantitative and qualitative study, “Mentoring, Networks and Underrepresented Minorities in the Science Pipeline.”

As Director of the ASA Research Program she was the Principal Investigator of a series of longitudinal surveys including work/family issues in higher education, women faculties’ career trajectories, the production and diffusion of a new cyber-infrastructure through networks, a comparative study of cross-race mentoring in higher education, and the longitudinal survey of the recruitment, retention, satisfaction and early career activities of sociology undergraduate majors.  Dr. Spalter-Roth’s work at ASA led to dozens of downloadable research briefs on the ASA website.  She has published in peer reviewed journals including Teaching Sociology; The American Sociologist; Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Education; Research in Social Problems and Public Policy; and Sociological Spectrum. 

Prior to her employment at ASA she was Research Directorat the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, where she focused on parental leave, employment among low-wage women workers, part-time and non-standard work arrangements, and the phenomenon of work/welfare cycling.  Also she has been a faculty member in the Women’s Studies Program at the George Washington University, where she developed the women in public policy program and the American University, where she developed a social policy graduate program.  Dr. Spalter-Roth completed her bachelor’s degree at Indiana University and her Ph.D. at the American University.