Erin E. Ruelis associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. She received her PhD in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003. In 2003, Erin took a postdoctoral position at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. While there, she continued to hone her survey research skills on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Soon after arriving in Atlanta to take an assistant professor position at Georgia State University (GSU) in 2005, she began the Urban Health Initiative, a longitudinal survey study of public housing residents facing involuntary relocation with GSU colleagues. Erin was principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health study on the health outcomes of relocated public housing residents and co-investigator on two National Science Foundation grants, examining social disorganization and social support for public housing residents. She employs quantitative and mixed methods to examine health disparities and the health consequences of racial residential segregation, neighborhood disadvantage, housing, and socioeconomic status.
Ruel has published in numerous journals, including Demography, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Health and Place, Journal of Housing Studies, Cities, Sociology Compass, Journal of Adolescent Health, and Journal of Urban Health. William E. Wagner, III, MA, MPH, PhD, is professor of sociology at California State University, Channel Islands. Prior to CSU Channel Islands, he served as a member of the faculty and director of the Institute for Social and Community Research at California State University, Bakersfield. He completed his PhD in sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago; during that time he held positions at both the University of Illinois Survey Research Laboratory as well as at SPSS, Inc. (now IBM SPSS). Dr. Wagner also holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from St.
Mary's College of Maryland, as well as an MPH degree (Master of Public Health) from California State University, Northridge. He has published in national and regional scholarly journals on topics such as urban sociology, homophobia, academic status, sports, and public health. Dr. Wagner is coauthor of two other SAGE titles, including Adventures in Social Research, Eighth Edition (Earl Babbie et al., 2012) and Using IBM® SPSS® Statistics for Research Methods and Social Science Statistics, Fifth Edition. Brian Joseph Gillespie, PhD, is assistant professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. He received his PhD at University of California, Irvine in 2012. His primary research interests are in demography, family, migration, and the life course.
He is trained in quantitative and qualitative research methods and has published research in these areas using sophisticated statistical modeling, ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, and narrative analysis. Dr. Gillespie's research has been supported by the American Sociological Association Section on Methodology, National Science Foundation, University of California Regents, and the Center of Expertise on Migration and Health.