Alternative Text Welcome to my home page! My name is Catherine Chen; I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Communication at Stanford University, advised by Professor Jon Krosnick. I am currently on the academic job market, seeking an assistant professor position set to commence in the fall of 2024.

Broadly, my research interests revolve around understanding the antecedents, structure, and consequences of political attitudes among Americans. Specifically, my work focuses on examining people’s attitudes toward science, climate change, and vaccines. Rather than adopting a strictly methods-based approach, I take a problem-oriented approach to research. My methodological toolkit encompasses a range of techniques, including surveys, lab and field experiments, quasi-experiments, as well as computationally intensive methods like digital trace data analysis and automated text analysis.

Within this framework, I have been pursuing three interconnected research questions.

  • What are the origins, underlying structure, and implications of Americans’ attitudes toward global warming?
  • What are the factors that contribute to the partisan divide in attitudes toward science in the United States, and how to bridge this gap?
  • What are the cultural and political factors that shape public attitudes toward science, climate change, and vaccines across diverse regions and demographic groups?

My research findings have been disseminated through prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as Climate Change and Health Psychology. My research has received support from various institutions, including the Stanford Center for Democracy (SCAD), the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS), and the Rapoport Family Foundation. I have been honored to hold positions such as the Melville J. Jacoby Fellow and the SAP Fellow under the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Currently, I am engaged in my work as a Dissertation Fellow at IRiSS.

Outside academia, I have worked as a journalism intern at the Agence France-Presse (AFP) and a public relations intern at Sina Corps. I was born and raised in Dalian, China and spent some time in both Hong Kong and Australia. I am a cat lover and also find joy in exploring nature!