Sarah Rush and Robert Choate

[00:01] SARAH RUSH: My name is Sarah Rush. I'm 44 years old, and today is May 20, 2020. I'm in the wonderful city of Rochester Hills, Michigan, recording with Robert.

[00:18] ROBERT CHOW: Hello, my name is Robert Chow. I'm also 44 years old, and today is May 20, 2020. I am in the slightly less wonderful city of Ypsilanti Michigan, and I am here with Sarah.

[00:37] SARAH RUSH: So, Robert, do you want to start just by talking about our roles at ICPSR?

[00:43] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. So I am a. I work in the curation department. My title is lead curator. I think because I've been there so long compared to everyone else, and I have always, even though I've been doing this for 13 years, I'm. I still struggle at times trying to say precisely what I do, but really as to receive social science data, make it clean, complete, correct, and safe for use and for secondary use by other researchers. We archive it and we disseminate it. And most of my work over the. During my time here has been with substance abuse and mental health, but that in the last couple of years, due to the reorganization of ICPSR, has broadened into other subjects that ICPSR covers. How about you?

[02:07] SARAH RUSH: So I am a data project manager for one of the projects here at ICPSR, and that project is called the data sharing for demographic research Project, and that is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which falls under the NIH umbrella. And I basically manage all aspects of the project, from website oversight to outreach, trying to let people know what we do and also acquire new data for curation by Roberts Group. And I also do administrative activities like budgeting, manage our access to restricted use data for users, and also provide user support to people who are using the data and need additional assistance. So that pretty much sums up.

[03:07] ROBERT CHOW: Is there maybe a favorite part of your job that you like more than others?

[03:14] SARAH RUSH: It probably depends on the week, which there is a lot of variability from week to week, but I do like the overall keeping track of timelines and making sure work is flowing as it should. I tend to look at what I do as a facilitator of everyone else's work, helping curation by making sure they have what they need in order to get the data out of, and even for user support, facilitating the users work with the data for secondary analysis by answering their questions and getting them everything they need. What about you?

[04:01] ROBERT CHOW: Problem solving, difficult tasks. A lot of the stuff we do day in, day out is kind of the routine, normal job functions, but every so often we get something that's a little more complex, where we get to think, and you got to be creative a little bit. I do relish in the kind of the nitty gritty details of the data and getting things just right. But I really do like thinking through, like, a complex problem of how to maybe merge things together and make things fit in a way that will make it easier for our end users.

[04:54] SARAH RUSH: Nice. What about if we next talk about how we came to ICPSR? Because I think that's where our stories crossed and that'll give a little bit more information on where we came to know each other. So I'll let you go first.

[05:12] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. Okay. So I just celebrated 13 years here, and for several years previous to 2007, I was working out in the field as a field interviewer for another one of the centers here at our larger organization, ISr. And I worked in Arizona, I worked in Colorado. I traveled around the country conducting interviews that were being carried out by the SrC. And I really enjoyed that. But it was just part time work. It was project based, didn't have benefits, but it was a good job to have while I was doing my master's degree or just something on the side. And once I completed my master's degree, I was looking for, obviously, a full time job and something to take that next step in my career. And so I saw a posting for ICPSR and I flew out here, and I had never heard of them before, but it was affiliated with a large organization, so I thought, hey, why not? I think I meet the job requirements. And things moved pretty fast after that initial interview and moved out, moved my family out here from Colorado to Michigan, started life here and been here ever since. How about you?

[07:01] SARAH RUSH: So back in 2004, I left my position as an data analyst for a transplant organ research group in Ann Arbor and stayed at home for what ended up being about four years to have my children and be a full time mom. And in 2008, a former professor from my master's program contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in helping out on a project at ICPSR for one of his former students, who is the director of the project, and looking for somebody to pitch in on a temporary basis to help them build what they called quicktables and also to enhance their online data analysis system. So I told him, no, I'm not ready. I'm not interested in coming back to work yet. And he called me six months later and he said, would you be interested in what we talked about before? And at that point, I was like, yeah, I think I'm ready to go back to work on a part time basis. That's how I came to ICPSR. I joined the substance abuse and mental health data archive, also referred to as SAMDA, which is where I met Robert. And we initially did not share an office together. But as staff changes happened and people started moving around the office, we actually ended up in an office together where one of the things I always remember about working with Robert is that every morning, my routine was to have coffee and eat a banana. And I think these are the two things that Robert despises the most. So I creatively ate my banana, I think, before he got into the office, and I made sure I used, like, a coffee mug with a lid on to make sure he wasn't smelling my coffee every morning. But it ended up being the start of a great relationship with Robert as my coworker and a friend as well. And I'll let Robert maybe take it from here with talking about our first project, I think, that we ever worked on together.

[09:44] ROBERT CHOW: I think we've definitely having kids the same age, it was easy to kind of bond and create a friendship with you, and we've seen each other's kids grow up. And I was just thinking, you know, I posted that picture earlier today of Isaac, and thinking back, you were probably there, weren't you there at the courthouse when he got his adoption finalized?

[10:10] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, it was just coming in because I do remember that being excitement in the office.

[10:18] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah, it was pretty special day, and I was on great as it was just a couple blocks away from the building to, you know, have so many friends and co workers come and support that special day for my family. And, yeah, just over the years, we've seen each other's kids grow up. We. We talked about. Definitely talk about the ups and downs of parenting and, you know, as our oldest out driving and, you know, girls and other activities and just, you know, definitely just have a lot in common. And so that's definitely helped facilitate that friendship. And, yeah, I definitely remember back one of the first things of us doing is those quick tables for the HBSC. Health, behavior, school age children. Most words in there, I'm not. We have so many acronyms here at work that I am not very good at knowing exactly what they stand for. Cause I never use the full word of what something stands for. Yeah, HBSC. It was good because, again, that was something that gave us that opportunity to be creative and expand, provide something a little more useful, and do something above and beyond that normal routine. And so that's always been a. I wish we had more data from that one, but that was always a favorite project back in those days.

[12:17] SARAH RUSH: Do you mind if I pose a question to the two of you? So you both just talked about sort of bonding over parenthood, and then you both mentioned that you've worked with a.

[12:29] ROBERT CHOW: Lot of sets of data that have to do with childhood or child development or health.

[12:36] SARAH RUSH: Can you ask each other for me.

[12:39] ROBERT CHOW: Can you ask each other how that's.

[12:41] SARAH RUSH: Sort of impacted parenting if it has it all for you, if you interact with this data and it sort of has had any effect on that? Okay.

[12:54] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. Well, one of my two big projects that I've worked on monitoring the future, is one where it's students are interviewed across the country, 8th, 10th, 12th grade, mainly upon substance abuse. And just, you know, see, and with my kid being currently having a 10th grader right now, just seeing, you know, what statistics are there for the out in the world, and looking at him and his life and trying to raise him, even him following the rules that we have as a household and beliefs as a family, it's definitely tough raising kids in this world. A little tougher right now during quarantine and just deal with this unique circumstance that never thought would be happening in life.

[14:07] SARAH RUSH: Yeah. Robert, I agree that even though I haven't worked with monitoring the future in quite some time since our SAmdA days, it's definitely a study that I pay close attention to and I think gives greater context to the challenges that our teenagers are facing and all teenagers are facing with their exposure to substances, as well as parents managing and monitoring for those behaviors. And I think it's definitely, you know, when you, you see the reports in which we. We are constantly notified, I guess, of new reports from MTF. Seeing those and having those be something I pay attention to helps me understand not just trends, but, you know, broadly speaking, but most likely what the environment is like in my children's schools at a more personal level.

[15:19] ROBERT CHOW: I remember recently there, in our church magazine, our church youth magazine, it was published each month, there was an article on substance use, and it quoted, or it gave some statistics from monitoring the future. And I was like, I was ready. That is so cool, because it linked, you know, a big part of my family's life, of our faith, with a big part of my job, and something that I had probably worked on. And, you know, being able to show that to my kids, like, hey, the stuff that we're reading, the stuff that I'm teaching you, the stuff is out there. It's real. And these are. These are the issues, these are the impacts, the consequences. And I don't know if that sunk in at all, but I felt that gave a little more weight to you. You know, it's just not me talking to dad, it's have a little bit more.

[16:25] SARAH RUSH: Right.

[16:26] ROBERT CHOW: Influence.

[16:28] SARAH RUSH: Yep, I totally get what you mean. So what do you, what do you think? Like, if you were to describe ICPSR to somebody, how would you describe our community where we worked?

[16:48] ROBERT CHOW: Well, I mean, there's the, there's the research aspect and the data that we put out there, and, you know, I like to, I think we bill ourselves. I've often heard people say, you know, we are the top data archive in the country, if not the world. And, you know, we really pride ourselves on that unofficial ranking and drawn the cloud to being affiliated with U of M. But in terms of an organization, it's also very family friendly. It's one reason why I've been here for 13 years is grass isn't always greener on that other side. And, you know, I've always been given a lot of flexibility with life. I mean, ten years ago, when my wife left and, you know, me being a single dad with two small kids, you know, work was very accommodating. I got to work at home for a little bit. I adjusted my schedule. They, I could come and go a little easier. Now they're very understanding and flexible. Maybe that's because our director at the time was also having. Going through such things, and that's continued today. And so I think that's. And we've continued to grow that through new, so new technology or new platforms that we're using to communicate. Like Slack, which I initially was like, no, I don't want to do that. I got enough going on. I don't need one more thing to try to communicate with or be social with. I have once it said, thou shalt, thou shalt, you shall do this. I have tried to embrace it and been an active member of it and just, it's been important more so during quarantine now as a chance to interact.

[19:18] SARAH RUSH: Yeah.

[19:20] ROBERT CHOW: How's it to you?

[19:21] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, I agree with, we definitely are fortunate to work in a very flexible environment, and that's one of the things that I have always greatly appreciated, having a family and also a really, really long commute that takes me always at least an hour and 15 minutes, but sometimes 2 hours each way, depending on the time I leave. And so I've always been grateful to have flexibility with my work schedule because of that. And just talking about our community in general, we work with a lot of great people. We really do. There's a lot of people with different skill sets, whether they're work related or not, people who showcase their special talents and different ways at work. And I think we've seen even more of that during the quarantine, during, like, the social hours that we've had to connect over Zoom or Google Hangouts. And it's neat to see a more personal side to people that, you know, even though the quarantine has many, many challenges, I think a lot of us have gotten to know each other better just because it's not so easy anymore to separate work and home, because that's where we're working. And, you know, the, the dog barks during a meeting, but now I don't have to be stressed about it so much because a lot of people have dogs barking during meetings.

[21:10] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. When your kids. Well, my kids are little, the littler ones, you know, and they want to be like, oh, what are you doing? I want to be on the computer. I want to see what's going on. And people are, it's no big deal because other kids, you know, other people have kids, and we've always, you know, back in Sam two days, David had kids, John John had kids. And so we could, you know, support one another, we could commiserate with one another, learn from one another while we were parenting. And, yeah, I'm just very appreciative that we are still working during this time and getting full pay because life would be very much, really harder if we weren't doing that until the organization's commitment to making sure that we're still working and having the ability to work at home. I used to, of course, I used to think it would be great if I could work at home more.

[22:19] SARAH RUSH: That's, oh, the grass is not always greener, right? Yeah.

[22:25] ROBERT CHOW: Well, I'd say working. I used to say, yeah, working home is great, but the only reason before I had to work home was because I need had kids at home, so, which is not great. If I didn't have the kids, if they could be in school and I could work at home, then life would be a lot better.

[22:44] SARAH RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. You know, getting back to just like, our community, I also think of ICPSR is just really has an essential presence in the research community for so many researchers who, especially students and, you know, entry level researchers who cannot get funded to collect their own data and really rely on having high quality data from a variety of topic areas to further our knowledge and to conduct their own research to benefit the research community. And like you were saying, Robert, were renowned throughout the world. And one example of that for me was several years ago. I mean, I guess, like around maybe 2010, I had the opportunity to go to Warsaw to speak at a research conference. And a lot of people had told me, before you go, a lot of people are gonna know who you are. And it was so mind blowing, though, to actually be there and have people see ICPSR on my nametag or be talking to somebody and have them completely know ICPSR, even though I was on the other side of the globe. And I think that speaks to the power of what we do and the power of ICPSR's mission. And that's really great to be a part of.

[24:29] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. And they definitely want to have that presence through giving back. I mean, everything we do is giving back to the research community. But the things they do, like the. We just have the undergraduate research writing paper competition. The summer program is going on, and even that is still a priority this summer, despite the limitations of not having people come to Ann Arbor, the student intern program they had a few years back, which I really enjoyed since I was a part of that got to mentor some of those students. And also, you're talking about the quality of the data and having it accessible to users. And that's something I think has always been a challenge. But something we do well is we have data. And really, any of the data, some, it can be basic enough for, I mean, we have high school students who have used our data, who don't have any real knowledge or skills, but it's also. So it's easy enough for them, but it's also complex and in depth enough for the more sophisticated users, whether it's a PhD student doing a dissertation, or even government leaders who are using the information. So it has that broad range of users, and that's a good thing to have, but it's also a challenge to try to make it, to make things accessible and good enough for both of those audiences.

[26:24] SARAH RUSH: I agree, and I think that's part of the reason why I enjoyed working on quicktables so much, because, you know, you and I doing that back work, for example, on the HBSC study, to select variables that were most interesting and, you know, just allow people to be able to quickly pick from drop down menus, but to still get results showing relationships. And, you know, whether that be a high school student who needed to use it for a research paper, or a director of a nonprofit who needed, you know, a quick statistic going into, you know, a proposal or some sort of meeting. I think that was a really powerful thing because not everyone has that skillset to sit down and download data and work with it in a statistical package and do modeling and be able to understand even what they're getting out of it. Whereas the quick tables, because it was so easy to use and also provided a brief explanation of the variables and what people were getting, made it so accessible to anyone.

[27:41] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's something that's gone by the wayside for much of the organization or the interactive maps that we spent time and money on for SAMDA. And not everything's appropriate for each of these unique features, but it's something I wish we could do more of.

[28:03] SARAH RUSH: I totally forgotten about the interactive maps, and I don't know how I could forget about those. Yeah, that was definitely something we put a lot of effort into SAmDA, and I think that possibly we have the potential to do something similar through the data visualization work that we, you know, we've been starting up and trying to encourage. And who knows, it'll be interesting to see what sort of tools like that we can make available for people in the future.

[28:40] ROBERT CHOW: I have high hopes for the data visualization as we've worked, you know, on the committee for the last year or so. And, you know, I have faith that it will happen. You know, it's. That's definitely been a learning process for me, trying to leave the committee. It's been a struggle, but I think that we will get done. It will be something that will bring value to the organization, the users, and also to ourselves as staff, and something to goes back to fueling our need or desire to do a little bit more, be creative, use the skills that we, you know, trained for through going, getting our education. Sometimes I feel like I do not do anything in my job that I learned getting my master's degree.

[29:45] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, I think that's pretty common, though. But, you know, that makes me wonder, what did you envision? I mean, I know what your degree is in, but what did you see yourself doing, like, now, like, as you were growing up?

[30:03] ROBERT CHOW: Well, I was supposed to be, you know, playing for the Denver Broncos.

[30:08] SARAH RUSH: Of course. Of course I forgot about that.

[30:12] ROBERT CHOW: Genetics, you know, taught me on that one. But when I went to imagine myself on the other side of the process, more on the data collection, designing the research, because when I applied for this job, I had also applied for a position on the other side of the building. But ICPSR called first. I took the sure thing and not too many regrets from that.

[30:46] SARAH RUSH: But I can say that when I was an undergraduate student majoring in sociology and minoring in psychology, I wanted to be a sociology professor and I wanted to teach. And then I went into my master's program and started focusing more heavily on the data side of things. And my dream job at the time would be to work in a social policy think tank and actually to be like on the analyst side of things too, which I did do for a small outfit in Ann Arbor before coming to ICPSR. But I guess it's related in some senses.

[31:35] ROBERT CHOW: So is there something, a project or a data studies that have special meaning to you?

[31:43] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, I think at Bridge 2018 to 2019, I was heavily involved in regaining the Los Angeles family and Neighborhood survey, better known as LA fans, that ICPSR had previously archived and lost the data. It was distributed elsewhere for a time, and through hard work by the SDR's director and myself, we were able to get the data redeposited, and that was a major win, as well as knowing how hesitant the pisden of LA fans were to probably have good faith in us because, you know, we, the organization did mess up before and, you know, we had to really prove ourselves. And I think through the director's efforts, my efforts, as well as the collaboration and really good working relationship between myself and the curators at ICPSR who worked, and the data, as well as good communication by them as well as myself, we were able to release a successful product that the PIs are very happy with and I think they continue to be happy with our management of both the public use and the restricted use data. So that will always be something that I remember as a major win for me at ICPSR. So of course, what about you?

[33:33] ROBERT CHOW: Well, I mentioned MTF and that one because, you know, back in my field collection days for ISR, I collected data for MTF. I went to the schools, I administered the surveys to the classes. So having that opportunity to be on both sides of it has been rewarding. And I've just seen it. It is Nada was Sam does now Nadap's largest collection. And I probably worked on every single one. And just seeing it grow from before it was just the public use files, and then those got improved, the process has improved, and now we have the restricted data. And you know, for years and years it was like, hey, we get the restricted data. And I think that goes to, again, showing that other, that side. You know, hey, we can do this, you can trust us, and we can produce a good product, if you will allow us to have that data. Yeah, definitely. Other things like pathways to persistence. That was a study done out of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, where they followed incarcerated kids from. From the Pittsburgh area as well as the Phoenix area. And my first job out of my undergraduate was as a youth correctional officer in Phoenix. And so it was working with these, and it was. The data was during the same period of me working there. Now, I never, as a good researcher, never tried to investigate and say, oh, yeah, I remember that kid try to pinpoint somebody. But it was neat, and that was hard work. I did not have the temperament or the personality to work in the corrections field, but it was interesting work to do to see, you know, tie a previous part of my life to now, or the path program, the population assessment for tobacco health, because that was a. NadAp's going to be my big thing most of their time and resources for the next. When it started, you know, seven years, and I got to help grow that from the ground up into a pretty. I think it's pretty successful.

[36:18] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, I agree. I agree, Robert, I know that you have so many stories. I think you have many more interesting stories than I do. Like unique stories. I'll put it like that. But can you. Can you remind me about a couple of those unique stories? Work stories?

[36:39] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. Well, you know, it's always a rare treat to go to a conference. I do remember you going to Warsaw, like you had mentioned. I had. Seems like most of the time I get to travel to DC. So one night there was a, you know, it was probably about midnight, and I sleep in my room and the fire alarm went off and so we had to go downstairs and they just kept going off. Somebody was setting little fires all over the hotel. And so I spent the night on.

[37:16] SARAH RUSH: The.

[37:18] ROBERT CHOW: Grass of the hotel. Thankfully, I had the four thought to take my phone and money on a coat. And I watched Netflix all night on the lawn of the hotel and walked around DC, and then they still expected us to, like, they opened up the conference at like eight in the morning. Everyone was like zombies. Now that was an interesting one, just because it was all night long. And, you know, who sets arson to hotels for the fun of it? That was weird. But that wasn't just personal one. You know, going back to the adoption of my son, that fee was due, and ICPSR never gives out, like, random mid year bonuses, and a fee of $3,000 was due to the adoption agency, like, in two weeks, and I didn't have it. And out of the blue, the director calls me in and offers gave me this cash bonus for just over $3,000, which was a big answer to prayer.

[38:40] SARAH RUSH: I.

[38:41] ROBERT CHOW: A very big blessing for our family to be able to cover those adoption expenses. How about you?

[38:47] SARAH RUSH: First of all, Robert, I have to say that's my favorite story. Just because that just shows that when something is meant to be, it will happen. And I think it's not one story in particular, but one of the things that I have loved over the years is going to exhibit at conferences and having people on our project. We're a sponsored project, so the data do nothing, have a cost. And having people say free. The data are free. Come on. No, really, tell me what, you know, what's the catch? And it's always just a thrill to say, no, they really are free. And that's just something I've enjoyed over the years. And it's a valuable product for free, too, so. But with that, you know, it's been really great talking to you, Robert. And, you know, we often get so busy with work, I think it's, it's sometimes not as easy to sit down and do this kind of thing. So it's been fun.

[39:53] ROBERT CHOW: Yeah. It's always good to see you. And it's good to think about the past decade or so and what we've gone through, what we've learned, and also to think of where we're going to be going in the future as coworkers, colleagues, as well as friends.

[40:15] SARAH RUSH: Yeah, I agree.