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News President's Desk

Master Protocols: A Tool for Increasing the Reliability of Behavioral Evidence

Social Science Research Council President Anna Harvey shares a recent submission to an RFI from the NIH’s Common Fund, detailing how the NIH could improve the reliability of evidence in behavioral research by borrowing the idea of master protocols from the field of oncology. Master protocols are coordinated multisite trials, followed by meta-analysis, to assess both the internal and external validity of interventions across populations. NIH support for master protocols to evaluate the impacts of behavioral interventions on outcomes like vaccination uptake could significantly advance the policy relevance of evidence in behavioral health research.

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Announcing the CSWEP-SSRC Women in Economics and Mathematics Research Consortium Grantees

The Social Science Research Council, in partnership with the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economic Profession (CSWEP), and with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan and Henry Luce Foundations, created the CSWEP-SSRC Women in Economics and Mathematics Research Consortium to expand the set of scalable interventions that increase the numbers and success of women in economics and mathematics. We are pleased to announce our grantees.

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Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science – August 2023

At the 100th anniversary of the Council’s founding, we are proud to honor its founders and to celebrate the achievements of policy-relevant and solutions-oriented social and behavioral science. Every month Frontiers features an article from the most recent issue of each founding association’s flagship journal. Across disciplines, the frontiers of social and behavioral science are rapidly advancing, and with them, our collective capacity to support global well-being. Explore the seven articles featured in the August research roundup here.

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Introducing the African Peacebuilding Network’s and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa’s 2023 Fellows

Each year, the African Peacebuilding Network (APN)–Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (Next Gen) program selects a new cohort of fellows for its highly competitive fellowships. This year, the APN awarded 17 Individual Research Fellowships (IRF), while Next Gen awarded 38 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships and 6 Post-Doctoral Writing Fellowships. Among the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships, 8 are Dissertation Proposal fellows, 14 are Dissertation Research fellows, and 16 are Dissertation Completion fellows.

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Announcing the 2023 cohort of Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellows

The Social Science Research Council is thrilled to announce the awardees of the Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellowship. Congratulations to Amanda Boston, J.V. Decemvirale, Claudia Sofía Garriga-López, siri gurudev hernández, kt shorb, Silvia Rodriguez Vegam, and Jaleesa Renee Wells!  This diverse cohort of researchers will conduct 12-month qualitative-ethnographic studies in collaboration with select organizations participating in The Wallace Foundation’s arts initiative. We look forward to your insights from these novel and exciting partnerships.

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Announcing the 2023 Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellows

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is pleased to announce the selection of the 2023 Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellows. These twelve researchers will each receive between $8,000 and $18,000 in grants to research intersections of religious movements and contemporary questions of democracy and democratic action.

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The Mercury Project welcomes new teams

The Mercury Project is pleased to add two new research teams to the consortium of researchers evaluating cost-effective, scalable interventions to boost demand for vaccines and science-based health decision-making. In Senegal, researchers will evaluate offering Senegalese mothers Covid vaccinations during well-child visits. And in rural Sierra Leone, a research team will evaluate the cost-effectiveness of mobile vaccine delivery teams. More about all of the research projects is available here.

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Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science – July 2023

At the 100th anniversary of the Council’s founding, we are proud to honor its founders and to celebrate the achievements of policy-relevant and solutions-oriented social and behavioral science. Every month Frontiers features an article from the most recent issue of each founding association’s flagship journal. Across disciplines, the frontiers of social and behavioral science are rapidly advancing, and with them, our collective capacity to support global well-being. Explore the seven articles featured in the July research roundup here.

Event News

Improving Global Education: Evidence, Cost-Effectiveness, and Political Economy

Solutions to many of today’s key development challenges hinge not on creating new technologies and solutions, but in understanding why the poor do not adopt seemingly beneficial technologies that already exist. Throughout the developing world, there are countless examples of technologies that appear to be welfare enhancing but are adopted by the poor at very low rates. Examples span health, finance, and agriculture sectors, and include cleaner cook-stoves, anti-malarial bednets, toilets, fertilizer, weather insurance, and improved seed varieties. To make progress on these problems, we need to understand the sources of behavioral or structural barriers to new technology adoption, in order to devise policies and marketing strategies to address those barriers. This talk will highlight economic analysis and randomized-controlled-trial based field experimental methods applied in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to make progress on these questions.

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