policy

Professor Dan Lichter: Census drives evidence-based decisions

March 14, 2011 By sh648 1 Comment

As the U.S. Census bureau continues to release data on state demographics, researchers, public officials and program managers across the country are digging into the new information to make decisions about everything from construction projects to quality-of-life issues and emergency services.

EBL sat down this week with Professor Daniel Lichter, an expert in population studies and public policy at the College of Human Ecology, to talk about the 2010 census and its implications for using data to drive real-life decisions.

Lichter called the decennial census “the most important statistical gathering exercise in the entire United States.” Here are some of this other thoughts about the event.

EBL: Can you describe the historical significance of the census?

Lichter: We’ve had census every year since 1790. It’s required by U.S. Constitution. It is conducted to insure the one person, one vote idea – to determine the number of seats each state would receive in the U.S. House of Representatives and to realignvoting districts in each state every ten years.

EBL: How has our use of the information changed over the years?

Lichter: The census is also vital for program planning and public policy. It’s always been used in some sense for those sorts of things, but it’s used now more than ever before. How do we know where to build new highways or schools or whether we need a new waste water treatment plant?

“Today, increasingly, we use census data for identifying particular populations and areas with specific needs so we can more effectively target resources to those areas. The census is vital for earmarking public funds. It also has a huge constituency in the private sector in terms of marketing. It helps companies decide, for example, where to build new stores.

EBL: How did the 2010 census pan out?

Lichter: It’s probably the most successful census ever in terms of coverage. The census bureau has become very good at identifying hard-to-reach populations and reaching out them.

People should always fill out their census schedules when they get them because it reflects whether they’re accurately represented in Congress and whether they receive their fair share of revenues. By law, these data are strictly confidential to insure completeness and accuracy.

(The U.S. Census Director recently spoke at Cornell about how his organization was able to collect accurate information. You can read about his talk by clicking here.)

EBL: How do you use census data in your research?

Lichter: I’m very much interested in the changing racial and demographic composition of the U.S. population. We are almost to the point now where half of the births in the United States are to populations other than non-Hispanic whites. We are rapidly moving toward a majority-minority society.

I’m interested in what that means, not only in terms of educating children now, but what it means for the labor force 20 years out. What we do or don’t do for minority populations today is going to have a major effect on our country 20 years from now.

I’m also interested in racial segregation, and to what extent racial and ethnic groups live near each other. Our population is becoming more diverse, but many communities and neighborhoods are also becoming more segregated. Some of my work tries to understand how race relations are reflected in the geographic distribution of people.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: Community, policy, social trends

New federal diet guidelines follow the evidence

February 17, 2011 By sh648 2 Comments

Here at EBL, we’ve discussed how difficult it is to figure out what nutrition advice to follow, especially when there’s so much health and nutrition advice in the media that refers to anecdotes and simplistic inferences from single studies.

For those looking for real evidence about what to eat, there’s some good news. The federal government has issued new dietary guidelines based on an extensive evidence-based review.

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services appointed 13 nationally-recognized experts in nutrition and health to review the scientific literature on how nutrition impacts health and disease prevention.

The experts worked with a new resource – USDA’s Nutrition Evidence Library, a clearinghouse of systematic reviews designed to inform federal nutrition policy. (You can read more about the process the panel used to create the new nutrition guidelines by clicking here.) The library employs post-graduate level researchers with experience in nutrition or public health to build its content. The researchers analyze peer-reviewed articles to build bodies of evidence, develop conclusion statements and describe research recommendations. It’s an EBL dream!

So what do the new guidelines recommend?

The entire report from the committee of experts is more than 400 pages long, with specific advice on everything from energy balances to food safety. Government officials distilled this report into 112 pages of dietary guidelines, and 23 recommendations for the general population. Among them are:

Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages.
Reduce daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (about 1 teaspoon).
Limit the consumption of foods that contain refined grains, especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars and sodium.
Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green and red and orange vegetables, and beans and peas.
Consume at least half of all grains as whole grains. Increase whole-grain intake by replacing refined grains with whole grains.
Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry.

As you can imagine, the EBL team is thrilled that the government is using systematic reviews to make national diet recommendations. They’re worth reading to see if you can improve your own diet. Even small changes can make a big difference when you consider the evidence.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: agriculture, behavior change, evaluation, evidence-based practice, Health and Wellness, nutrition, policy, research translation, science in the media

Do gun control laws prevent violence?

January 31, 2011 By sh648 10 Comments

Gun control laws are in the media spotlight once again in the wake of the Arizona shooting that killed six people and injured 13 including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Already, the Arizona Legislature has introduced two new bills that would loosen gun controls on college campuses. But what do we really know about gun control laws? Is there evidence that they reduce violence?

As unsatisfying as it sounds, the answer is that we just don’t know. One of the only systematic reviews available on this topic was published by the Community Guide, a resource at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for evidence-based recommendations on improving public health. It reviewed more than 40 studies on gun control laws ranging from bans to restrictions to waiting periods. (You can read a summary of the report here.)

The conclusion: “The evidence available from identified studies was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed singly or in combination.”

Essentially, the review concludes that there is a lack of high-quality studies that evaluate specific gun control laws. One challenge is that information about guns and who owns them is limited to protect the privacy of firearms owners.

So what do we know about firearms in the U.S.?

We know that firearms are present in about one-third of U.S. households, and that there are handguns in about half of those homes.

We also have a National Violent Death Reporting System, which collects information from death certificates, medical examiner reports and police reports in 19 states. According to the reporting system, 66 percent of all murders and 51 percent of suicides are committed with guns. But that doesn’t tell us much – like whether the murders and suicides would occur by other means or, given stricter gun control laws, whether the perpetrators would find a way to obtain guns illegally.

The bottom line is that researchers and government officials need to step up to conduct more research and find a proven way to prevent gun violence from taking the lives of innocent citizens.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy Tagged With: evaluation, evidence-based practice, policy, science and public opinion, science in the media, social trends

Video feature: Psyche 101 with Professor Stephen Ceci

January 26, 2011 By sh648 Leave a Comment

To follow-up our post on Professor Stephen Ceci’s work on child testimony, we thought it would be useful to share a recent lecture Ceci gave to a Psychology 101 class at Cornell.

In the lecture, he discusses five factors that can damage or change a child memory:

Suggestive questioning.
Giving false expectations or stereotypes.
Confirmatory bias, or tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions.
Visually-guided imagery.
High levels of stress

“How can children come to believe something that’s wrong?” Ceci asked.

“When young children, ages 3 and 4, are questioned by neutral interviewers, they do very well. They recall events with 90 percent accuracy,” he explains. “However, when children are repeatedly interviewed over the course of weeks and months with misleading suggestions which sometimes occurs in forensic cases many come to remember the false events as true and provide detailed and coherent narratives about these false events. So compelling did the children’s narratives appear that we suspected that some of the children had come to truly believe they had experienced the fictitious events. Neither parents nor researchers were able to convince 27 percent of the children that the events never happened.”

You can view the entire lecture by clicking here.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: children and youth, evidence-based practice, policy, research translation

Video Feature: How the physical environment affects children

January 12, 2011 By sh648 Leave a Comment

Here at Evidence-Based Living, we’ve written before about the research of Gary Evans, a Cornell professor in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis who has spent much of his career researching how the physical environment impacts child well-being – especially for children in poverty.

Evans, an environmental psychologist, has completed a large body of research that examines the relationship of crowding, noise, housing and neighborhood quality on the lives of children. His research reveals that these factors can have a lot of impact on a child’s academic achievement, as well as cognitive and social development.

Last year, Human Ecology undergraduate student Kyler Wilkins earned a first place finish in the College of Human Ecology’s 2010 Elsie Van Buren Rice Awards public speaking competition for his presentation of Evans research entitled “The Hard Knock Life: The Environment of Poverty and Children’s Development.” In it, Wilkins describes how Evans research is being used by policy-makers to improve children’s access to healthy foods in schools and conduct cognitive interventions in to improve the memories of children in poverty. You can see it here:

To learn more about Evans’s work, you can also view a one-hour lecture he delivered to extension professionals by clicking here.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: behavior change, children and youth, evidence-based practice, Health and Wellness, policy, research translation

Science in the courtroom: A Cornell professor uncovers the facts behind child testimony

December 2, 2010 By sh648 1 Comment

I received a postcard in the mail last week notifying me I was called for jury duty. The prospect seemed an inconvenience. (Where would I find care for my two-year-old son while serving?). But it was also exciting!

I’ve always been interested in the law, and the idea of serving on a jury conjured up a feeling of civic responsibility that felt good. It was a job I wanted to take seriously, and I immediately began wondering if there was any research I should consider before embarking on this important task.

Unfortunately, there were no trials in my town this week, so I didn’t even have to report to the court. But the notice did bring to mind the work of Cornell Professor Stephen Ceci, an expert in developmental psychology who has conducted ground-breaking research on the testimony of children.

Ceci’s work bridges the gap between research and real-life in a very tangible way: findings from his studies have influenced the way thousands of law enforcement officers, social workers, lawyers, and judges deal with the testimony of children. This is research that makes a tangible difference in the lives of people who often find themselves in difficult situations.

(An interesting side note: Ceci refuses to be an expert witness for either prosecutors or defenders – a decision that has lent him credibility among judges throughout North America, who often cite his work in their decisions.)

A main topic of Ceci’s work is how children respond when they are questions about sexual abuse. The conventional wisdom says that children delay reporting abuse for years and will initially deny any abuse occurred when asked directly. But after repeated questioning, they gradually begin to tell little bits and pieces about how they were abused. Next, they recant altogether. Only later, when they are in what is perceived to be a psychologically safe situation, do they give a full and elaborate disclosure.

In analyses of dozens of published studies, Ceci and his colleagues separated out the methodologically-sound studies on children’s disclosure from poorly conducted ones. They found in high-quality studies, children did report abuse in full detail when explicitly asked. They also found that when a child is questioned repeatedly, he is likely to relent and say what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear to get out of an uncomfortable situation.

“It’s important for judges to know what science shows, because this set of invalid beliefs animates the whole investigatory process,” Ceci explained. “It motivates investigators and interviewers to pursue reluctant children, who may be reluctant because nothing actually happened.”

In the case U.S. v. Desmond Rouse, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (the court directly beneath the U.S. Supreme Court) established new law on vetting child testimony based almost exclusively on the work of Ceci and his colleagues.

For anyone who works with children involved in the court system, Ceci’s work provides a whole new way to think about their testimony.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: children and youth, evaluation, evidence-based practice, policy, science and public opinion

Mothers in poverty need help with depression

September 7, 2010 By sh648 Leave a Comment

New research from the Urban Institute finds that more than half of mothers in poverty show symptoms of depression, posing a serious risk to their children’s well-being and development.

The study is the first took look at depression among mothers in poverty across the nation and also assess parenting approaches for infants living in poverty whose mothers are depressed. The research was based on data from a federal education survey of 14,000 children born in 2001. It was funded by The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Among the surprising results are:

Eleven percent of infants living in poverty have a mother suffering from severe depression.
Compared with non-depressed mothers, severely depressed mothers are more likely to struggle with domestic violence and substance abuse.
Infants of depressed mothers are breastfed for shorter periods of time than those with mothers who are not depressed.
Even though depression is treatable, many severely depressed mothers do not receive care.

The evidence suggests that depression interferes with mothers’ parenting abilities.

“A mom who is too sad to get up in the morning won’t be able to take care of all of her child’s practical needs,’’ researcher Olivia Golden, who coauthored the paper, told the Washington Post. “If she is not able to take joy in her child, talk baby talk, play with the child — those are features of parenting that brain development research has told us contribute to babies’ and toddlers’ successful development.’’

But many of these mothers are already connected with programs that could provide help with depression or referrals for mental health services. Ninety-six percent of severely depressed mothers live with some who qualifies for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Seventy percent participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps. And 90 percent of infants receive Medicaid benefits, giving their mothers’ access to health care providers.

Now researchers need to find an evidence-based approach to reaching these mothers and providing them with mental health services.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, In The Media, Youth Development Tagged With: children and youth, Health and Wellness, policy, social trends

Texting while driving: Clearly dangerous

August 10, 2010 By sh648 3 Comments

Multitasking has become a way of life in this digital age, where most people can access their e-mail, their calendars and make phone calls from a mobile device they keep in their pockets or purse. While communication-on-the-go certainly can make us more efficient, it can have dire consequences as well.

Some 200,000 car accidents each year are caused by texting while driving, according to a report from the National Safety Council, a nonprofit group recognized by congressional charter as a leader on safety.

The scientific literature backs up the report. A 2009 study of long-haul truckers by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found drivers were more than 23 times more likely to experience a safety-critical event when texting. The study also found that drivers typically take their eyes off the road for an average of four out of six seconds when texting, during which time he travels the distance of a football field without their eyes on the road.

Another study by psychologists and the University of Utah found that texting while driving is riskier than talking on a cell phone or with another passenger. In the study, people texting in a driving simulator had more crashes, responded more slowly to brake lights on cars in front of them, and showed more impairment in forward and lateral control than did drivers who talked on a cell phone or drove without texting.

The Utah study found that drivers who talked on the phone attempted to divide their attention between the conversation and driving, adjusting the priority of each activity based on what was happening on the road. But texting required drivers to switch their attention from one task to the other, causing a substantial reduction in reaction times compared to those talking on the phone.

State governments are responding to the evidence. Text messaging is banned for all drivers in 30 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, novice drivers are banned from texting in 8 states. And President Barack Obama issued a texting-ban while driving for on all federal employees while using a government vehicle or government-issued cell phone.

The take home message: Save your text for non-driving times.

– Sheri Hall

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, In The Media, policy Tagged With: behavior change, children and youth, evidence-based practice, policy, science and public opinion, social trends

ASU President urges universities to take action

July 22, 2010 By sh648 Leave a Comment

Nearly all major research universities have systems in place to translate and communicate their findings into information that can benefit society. But are U.S. universities doing enough to address the problems of contemporary life?

According to Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, the answer is no.

Crow is on a mission to transform Arizona State University into the model for what he calls “a New American University” – an institution organized to pursue research that benefits the public good. And he is urging other universities to follow suit.

Crow believes major research institutions should take responsibility for “the economic, social, and cultural vitality and health and well-being of the community” and encourage collaboration across disciplines and with other academic institutions.

He argues that a scientific focus on narrower and more fundamental secrets of nature has impaired researchers’ ability to “think at scale and across time.”

For Crow, this means restructuring universities so they’re more capable of responding to modern challenges. At Arizona State, he has created more than a dozen new transdiscipliniary schools, including the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Sustainability and the School of Life Sciences. The idea is to bring together scientists from a wide range of disciplines, engineers, policymakers and industry leaders to develop solutions to pressing real-world problems.

At the same time, ASU has eliminated traditional departments including biology, sociology, anthropology and geology.

They’re drastic measures, for certain. But changes the Crow insists are necessary if universities are going to do their part in solving major world problems, such as climate change. Intrigued? You can read Crow’s thoughts about reorganizing academic institutions to solve improve our world’s sustainability in the June/July 2010 issue of Bioscience. And let us know your thoughts by commenting on this post!

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy Tagged With: environment, evidence-based practice, policy, research translation, social trends

Research re-imagined at USDA: New “Roadmap” published

May 12, 2010 By sh648 Leave a Comment

The venerable U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has pioneered agricultural research for more than a century (see related post). Over the past several years, the USDA has been reshaping its research priorities and funding programs, in part through the creation of the new National Institute of Food and Agriculture. NIFA has the mission to “advance knowledge for agriculture, the environment, human health and well-being” through funding research, education, and extension projects.

USDA has just published a “Roadmap for USDA Science,” that is worthwhile reading. It calls for new approaches to foster robust food, agricultural, and natural resource science.

The report begins in an interesting way. It asks us to:

Imagine a world in which…

…Radically improved children’s diets and nutrition slash long-term health care costs in the United States;

…Farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners are recognized as significant contributors to large and sustainable reductions in global greenhouse gases;

…Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have easy, affordable access to new seeds and animal breeds so well adapted to local conditions and so resilient to changing conditions that they feed five times as many people domestically and eliminate persistent hunger;

…Trends in availability of high-quality water and new options for watershed management outpace increasing demand for water even as climate change alters the geography of water resources; and

…Technologically advanced production, processing, and foodborne pathogen detection methods make food product recalls nonexistent.

Farfetched, ask the authors of the Roadmap? Not at all, according to them — They believe that these goals are achievable through the kind of science the USDA will now promote.

Among other things, the Roadmap calls for a focus on a limted number of “outcome-driven priorities,” cooperation with other agencies and institutions, concentration on both fundamental science and extension, and a “rejuvenation” of the USDA competitive grant system.

All in all, a very interesting read.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, policy Tagged With: agriculture, Cooperative Extension programs, policy, research methods

Building extension’s public value: We can be more convincing

April 22, 2010 By sh648 3 Comments

Those of us who work in the Cooperative Extension system tend to love it. Over the past weeks, I’ve been involved in an interview project with older people who have been involved in extension most of their lives, either as volunteers or as paid employees. Their devotion to extension’s mission shines through every interview. From the inside, the value of what we do seems self-evident.

Then we come up against the harsh reality: Extension is heavily dependent on public funding. Many other constituencies, and in particular elected officials and the general public, need to see the value of what we do. How can we convince those who hold the purse-strings that the work of extension has public value, worth spending government funds on?

I recently came across the work of Laura Kalambokidis, a faculty member in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. One of the pleasures of writing a blog is that you start reading other people’s, and Laura’s brings a fascinating perspective to extension.

In an article in the Journal of Extension, Laura raises the issue of identifying the public value of extension. She lays out the problem facing us succinctly:

The current economic climate has placed significant pressure on the budgets of state and county governments. In turn, those governments have compelled state Cooperative Extension Services to defend their continued receipt of state and county funding. Even when policymakers are persuaded of the efficacy of an Extension program, they have questioned whether the program should be supported with scarce public dollars rather than through user charges.

To address this issue, Laura translates economic theory and research from public sector economics to practical issues of extension. What policymakers need to be convinced of is that extension work has public value – that is, why should the public pay for our services rather than being purchased on the private market? The challenge is to show that extension activities are a public good, one that benefits society as a whole (in addition to benefitting specific program participants). In her words: “Extension staff must also be able to explain why citizens and policymakers who are not direct program participants should value the program.”

In the extension programs I’ve created, I confess that I haven’t done this. When I justify my programs, I point to the good outcomes and satisfaction for program participants. But I don’t really look at the public good – how they have benefits for the larger community, beyond my participants. For example, I’ve created extension programs to train nursing home staff. But someone could ask: “That’s well and good, but why shouldn’t those programs be paid for by nursing homes as a private good? What’s the public value for what you do?”

Laura’s work suggests that the most effective case can be made for public value when there is market failure – we provide something that isn’t effectively offered privately – and when there are issues of fairness and justice not addressed by private markets. Her article gives a detailed process for identifying public value.

To give one example, extension folks typically believe that they address market failure by providing information. But Laura suggests we consider this carefully, asking questions like:

Is there a demonstrable information gap?
Can you show that other entities are providing wrong or incomplete information to consumers?
Does your information direct consumers (and producers) toward activities that have external benefits?
Are you providing information to a population that does not have access to private information sources?

Laura has developed a workshop program where she helps extension associations determine public value of their programs and how to present them as such. More information is available on her web site, which includes a blog.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, policy Tagged With: Cooperative Extension programs, economics, evaluation, policy

New federal diet guidelines follow the evidence

Video feature: Psyche 101 with Professor Stephen Ceci

Video Feature: How the physical environment affects children

Science in the courtroom: A Cornell professor uncovers the facts behind child testimony

Research re-imagined at USDA: New “Roadmap” published

Building extension’s public value: We can be more convincing

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