Bio for Mark M. Gray

I began work at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) as a Research Associate and as a Research Assistant Professor at Georgetown University in October 2002. I am now a Research Associate Professor (since July 2008). My work is a combination of client commissioned projects and my own academic research.

My recent academic publications and research have focused on voter turnout, the expansion of electoral opportunities in OECD countries, the effects of globalization, levels of national corruption, the comparative status and well-being of women, life and social justice attitudes among Catholic voters, and Catholic church attendance. My current research projects as well as a complete list of my publications are listed and linked here. My primary fields of research are:

American Politics and Government
Elections and Political Behavior (with emphasis on voter turnout and electoral systems)
Political Parties
Religion and Politics (with emphasis on Catholicism and the Catholic Church)
International Political Economy (with emphasis on Globalization, Trade, and Democratization)
Research Design and Methods (with emphasis on survey research, cross-sectional time-series analyses, and multi-level modeling)

The client-commissioned projects I am involved with almost always use some form of survey research (telephone, mail, or Internet) or trend analysis (time-series and/or cross-sectional time-series). Much of the survey research work I do involves a series of national polls CARA conducts of the Catholic population called the CARA Catholic Poll (CCP). For some of my analysis of these data visit my blog Nineteen Sixty-four. I also do pre-election forecasts for the Catholic presidential vote (2004 and 2008). I was given the title of Director of CARA Catholic Polls (CCP) in 2007. Here are two recent examples of some of complete reports including my work: Marriage in the Catholic Church and Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among US. Catholics.

In 2009, Melissa Cidade and I were awarded a grant by the UCLA Spirituality in Higher Education Project to study the impact of Catholic college enrollment on the religion and spirituality of students enrolled there. Some of my other recent projects have included: a national study on Catholic school choice, a segmentation study of U.S. Catholics regarding attitudes about social justice, a project estimating the size and demography of the undocumented non-citizen population in Catholic dioceses using the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), a survey-based evaluation of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's ministry as Archbishop of Los Angeles, and a multi-stage study of Catholic parishes without resident priest pastors.

More information about the history of CARA can be found in the following Review of Religious Research article from 1967 by Francis X. Gannon entitled, "Bridging the Research Gap: CARA, Response to Vatican II." CARA played an important role in establishing the World Values Survey in the Americas.

I also teach an undergraduate course entitled, "Introduction to the Social Sciences" at Georgetown University. Some of the recent work of students in this class can be found in the New Social Science Review (Volumes: 1, 2, 3).

Before coming to CARA, I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California Irvine in March 2003 and also have an M.A. in Social Science from UCI (March 1999). My dissertation, "In the Midst of Fellows: The Social Context of the American Turnout Decision" analyzed household models of political participation using voter history data and a telephone poll in Southern California for the 2000 General Election. The chair of my dissertation committee was Martin P. Wattenberg.

As a graduate student at UCI I taught a large course entitled "Computer Based Research in the Social Sciences." The class involved weekly lectures, labs, and Web interfacing to teach social science computing to approximately 300 undergraduates each quarter. I have also taught small seminars as an adjunct for: Introduction to Political Science, Societal Issues, Critical Thinking, History of Civilization, and Latino/a Culture in the United States.

For more than three years during graduate school I worked as a community news reporter for The Orange County Register. I worked on a lot of general news areas including some data driven stories such as an analysis of Census data as well as a some local government and elections coverage. While there I was part of a three-person reporting team that won a Best Community News Writing Award in 2001 (with Erik Skindrud and Lyn Montagna). Before working for the Register I was an intern editor for a publication entitled ABILITY Magazine, a national publication for people with disabilities.

I received my B.A. in Political Science in 1993 (magna cum laude) from the University of California Los Angeles with a triple emphasis in American Politics, Comparative Politics, and International Relations. The focus of much of my course work was related to political behavior, American government, labor movements, and Cold War international relations.