Murray Center Receives Large MacArthur Grant

The Murray Research Center, a Radcliffe thinktank for research on women that was created by outgoing President Matina S. Horner, has received a $731,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to bolster its programs.

The grant, which will be distributed over a period of three years, will also be used to fund and educate researchers who study at the center.

The MacArthur grant is the largest one received by the Murray Research Center, said Colby. The center recently received a $3.2 million gift from an anonymous donor which was the largest sum it has ever received.

Focusing on studies of human development over the course of individuals' life spans, the Murray Research Center produces research oriented toward women's concerns, according to the Murray Center director Anne Colby.

Longitudinal studies--research in which subjects are followed throughout their development--comprise a large part of the Murray Center's archives, and are a major reason for the MacArthur grant, said MacArthur spokesperson Ted Hearne.

"Longitudinal studies allows researchers to look at the relationships between early life experiences and later outcomes," Colby said.

Because of the large scale of these lifetime studies, they can be extremely expensive, said Colby. "[The grant] will allow us to develop further the archive of videotape data," she said.

As an example of one workshop funded by the grant, Colby said that professors from other colleges will come to Radcliffe and teach methods for re-analyzing longitudinal data.

"It's unusual for a data archive to emphasize longitudinal studies to the extent that the Murray Center does," she said.

While most existing data archives of this type provide computer tapes of previously coded data, Colby said the Murray archives store the original records of research as "transcripts of interviews, responses to psychological tests and observations in the form of videotapes."

The MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private funders of mental health research, according to Hearne. Although he was unable to comment on why Radcliffe College in particular was chosen for the grant, Hearne cited the foundation's general interest in longitudinal studies.