Joonghyun Kwak is joining the Mershon Center for International Security Studies as a postdoctoral researcher working with Craig Jenkins on the Survey Data Recycling project. His primary mission is to develop analysis of data quality to assess the added value of international survey harmonization.

There is a wealth of international survey data that is rarely used because of the difficulties of constructing comparable measures over time and space. The Survey Data Recycling project is building a public access online database that harmonizes into comparable measures the major social, demographic and political variables from over 3,500 international surveys covering 24 major survey programs for over 142 countries covering 1966-2016.

A major product will be metadata measuring survey quality and a set of online analytic tools for evaluating, visualizing and managing these data. The project will create a Handbook for Survey Harmonization as well as research articles assessing the value-added from international survey harmonization.

Other principal investigators on the Survey Data Recycling project include:

• J. Craig Jenkins, Academy Professor of Sociology and Senior Research Scientist, Mershon Cernter
• Kazimirez Slomczynski, Academy Professor of Sociology, Ohio State, and Director of Research Team on Comparative Social Inequality, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Irina Tomescu-Dubrow, Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology, Ohio State, and Associate Professor, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Spyros Blanas, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State
• Han-Wei Shen, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

Kwak's research interests are in the areas of globalization, social stratification and inequality, comparative sociology, and quantitative methods. His dissertation examined the effects of the Great Recession on public attitudes toward three dimensions of economic globalization: immigrants, international trade, and foreign capital investment.

He is recently a co-author with Michael Wallace of "The Impact of the Great Recession on Perceived Immigrant Threat: A Cross-National Study of 22 Countries" (Societies, 2018) and "Bad Jobs in a Troubled Economy: The Impact of the Great Recession in America’s Major Metropolitan Areas" (Research in the Sociology of Work, 2017).

Kwak has a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from Sogang University in South Korea and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Connecticut.