In a March 2025 global ranking of research productivity of political scientists, University of Washington professor Christopher Adolph was ranked first globally for recent impact. Adolph is a professor of political science, adjunct professor of statistics, and associate director and core faculty in the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences.
The ranking, published by PS: Political Science and Politics, also ranked Adolph third globally for overall impact and fifth globally for recent citations, based on data from more than 115,000 articles and 12,000 books from 5,568 faculty members and 178 departments across the globe.
Adolph’s high ranking is largely due to his recent research on COVID-19 policies. From the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March 2020 through the summer of 2021, Adolph led a UW research team that provided detailed data on state policies around COVID, especially social distancing and mask mandates. That data proved critically useful for scientists, mass media, political leaders, and even large business interests.
When mandates on distancing and masks ended, the research shifted to analysis. Joining forces with a large group of contributors at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the team looked at social, racial, or economic factors that affected the spread and mortality of COVID, and the impact of mandates. They also explored the role of politics in the consequences of the pandemic for health, economics, and education. Adolph and his collaborators found social distancing mandates and mask mandates lowered infection rates, and also showed that states run by Republican governments were slower to adopt (and quicker to ease) social distancing measures in the months before vaccines became available.
