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How Can Scholars Help to Embed Institutions of Public-Sector Change?

April 18th, 2024 | 2:00 PM Eastern
In this installment of our Research to Solve Problems lecture series, Donald Moynihan (Georgetown University) will discuss how social and behavioral scientists interested in the applied study of public services can think about ways for their research to have an impact. Professor Moynihan will draw from his experience studying government processes to discuss the purposeful framing of public problems, and how researchers can design solutions of interest to policymakers.

Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science – March 2024

Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science features new research in the flagship journals of the Social Science Research Council’s founding disciplinary associations. Every month we publish a new selection of articles from the most recent issues of these journals, marking the rapid advance of the frontiers of social and behavioral science.

New University Advisory Board Joins Industries of Ideas Project

The Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS), and the Ohio Education Research Center (OERC) are pleased to welcome a new University Advisory Board to the Industries of Ideas project. Representatives from 35 universities nationwide have joined our National Science Foundation-supported collaboration to map the economic impacts of federal investments in university-based research in emerging technologies. The advisory board will provide critical input into a prototype data infrastructure linking person-level university grant data with state workforce data for the fields of AI and electric vehicle research. The board’s input will help ensure that the prototype is responsive to the needs of universities and can be scaled to other states, universities, and research areas.

Political Science as Problem Solving

March 14th, 2024 | 2:00 PM EDT
In this installment of our Research to Solve Problems lecture series, Cyrus Samii (New York University) will discuss how political science researchers can take a problem-solving approach to orienting their work toward social issues. Drawing on a recent book chapter, he’ll describe how empirical political scientists can look for and define problems, and a step-by-step process to help researchers pick the right methodological tools to go from descriptive to causal analysis and intervention testing to solutions.

Supporting the Call for Philanthropy at Scale

Mercury Project directors Heather Lanthon and Rebecca Gluskin respond to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter laying out the foundation’s investment agenda. For successful programs to translate into meaningful change, philanthropies have to also invest in the social and behavioral science needed to scale those programs.

Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science – February 2024

Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science features new research in the flagship journals of the Social Science Research Council’s founding disciplinary associations. Every month we publish a new selection of articles from the most recent issues of these journals, marking the rapid advance of the frontiers of social and behavioral science.

Bottlenecks for Evidence Adoption

February 29th, 2024 | 3:00 PM EST
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) have become an increasingly used tool for governments to evaluate whether a particular program or improvement to a program could work. But once a government has that evidence, what determines if they will use it? In this installment of our Research to Solve Problems lecture series, Stefano DellaVigna (UC Berkeley) will discuss ways researchers might address bottlenecks to evidence adoption in their research design.

2024 College and University Fund Lecture Series: Research to Solve Problems

For over 100 years, the Council has mobilized policy-relevant social and behavioral science aimed at finding actionable solutions to pressing societal challenges. But public policy is not always supported by rigorous research evidence, and professional training in the social and behavioral sciences does not generally prioritize the innovation, evaluation, and (importantly) implementation of scalable policy solutions. In this virtual lecture series, faculty from College and University Fund member institutions share their work to understand how to pursue research that solves problems.

Research to Solve Problems

The 2023 SSRC Centennial Lectures showcased a shared focus on not only describing problems, but also finding solutions to those problems. SSRC President Anna Harvey reflects on what it means to pursue research designed to solve problems, and how the SSRC can most effectively support problem-solving research.

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