Graduate: Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Family.

Dr. Beutel’s research falls into three areas: the influence of social location (e.g., gender and race) on the values, attitudes, expectations, and perceptions of adolescents and young adults; the relationship between beliefs or orientations and behaviors commonly initiated during adolescence and young adulthood; and gender and experiences in education. She has carried out her research using data from the United States, South Africa, and Nepal. Dr. Beutel’s research has been published in such journals as American Sociological Review, Sociology of Education, Social Science Research, and The Sociological Quarterly. 

Dr. Beutel has been involved in a major data collection effort, the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS). CAPS contains data on the schooling, work, and family formation behaviors of approximately 4,800 young people in metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa. The study is being conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Cape Town and several U.S. universities. Four waves of data were collected between 2002 and 2006. Virtually no other large-scale longitudinal study of young people has been conducted in South Africa, making this an important, ground-breaking dataset. Dr. Beutel has worked on CAPS since 2002 and has assisted with survey design and data quality aspects of the project. She has published several papers that use data from CAPS.