Investment in People and Ideas - Featured Research
Capabilities-Based Planning for Energy Security at Department of Defense Installations — 2013
Department of Defense (DoD) installations rely on the commercial electricity grid for 99 percent of their electricity needs, but the U.S. electricity grid is vulnerable to disruption from natural hazards and actor-induced outages, such as physical or cyber attacks. Using portfolio analysis methods for assessing capability options, this paper presents a framework to evaluate choices among energy security strategies for DoD installations.
How Can Economic and Political Ties Between U.S. and Mexico be Strengthened? (Spanish translation) — 2013
This study identifies areas that are negatively affecting U.S.-Mexico relations and suggests that the two countries might take a binational approach to improving their long-term partnership.
Exploring the Association Between Military Base Neighborhood Characteristics and Soldiers' and Airmen's Outcomes — 2013
This report explores the applicability of neighborhood theory and social indicators research to understanding the quality of life in and around military bases. It also highlights gaps in neighborhood study methodology that need to be addressed in future research. Finally, it outlines how a more in-depth neighborhood analysis of military installations could be conducted.
How Can Economic and Political Ties Between the United States and Mexico Be Strengthened? — 2012
This study identifies areas that are negatively affecting U.S.-Mexico relations and suggests that the two countries might take a binational approach to improving their long-term partnership.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Foster Efficient and Accountable Providers — 2012
Providers can dramatically improve American health care by focusing on "value" instead of "volume," eliminating wasteful and inappropriate care, applying the best available evidence to their practices, and enhancing patient safety.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Engage and Empower Consumers — 2012
Cost-sharing leads consumers to reduce both highly beneficial and less beneficial care, so they must be empowered with useful information to make informed decisions. Public cost and quality reports must be accurate, accessible, and understandable.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Promote Population Health — 2012
Reversing the rising tide of obesity and further reducing rates of tobacco use could produce substantial long-term dividends in terms of lives saved and disabling illnesses prevented. Communities, employers, and parents all have important roles.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Facilitate High-Value Innovation — 2012
Health information technology has not achieved its full potential, but its benefits should grow over time. Because health care is largely regulated at the state level, the states can play a valuable role as "laboratories" for innovative policies.
Flattening the Trajectory of Health Care Spending: Insights from RAND Health Research — 2012
RAND Health research supports four strategies to restrain health care spending growth and maintain quality: foster efficient and accountable providers, engage and empower consumers, promote population health, and facilitate high-value innovation.
Can Social Media Help Analyze Public Opinion? A Case Study of Iranian Public Opinion After the 2009 Election — 2012
Describes a methodology for analyzing public opinion and mood in closed societies, focusing on a case study that analyzed Iranian public opinion and mood as expressed over Twitter in the nine months following Iran's 2009 presidential election.
The Value and Limitations of Minimalist Stabilization Efforts — 2012
Assesses the utility and limitations of "minimalist stabilization" — small-scale interventions designed to stabilize a partner government engaged in violent conflict — and proposes policy recommendations to improve the outcomes of such operations.
Tests and the Teacher: What Student Achievement Tests Do — and Don't — Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness — 2012
This fact sheet examines what students' scores on achievement tests do and don't reveal about how well teachers are meeting expectations.
Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers' Impact on Student Achievement — 2012
This fact sheet examines teachers' impact on students and how effective teachers can be identified.
Student Growth Percentiles 101: Using Relative Ranks in Student Test Scores to Help Measure Teaching Effectiveness — 2012
This fact sheet describes student growth percentiles and their limitations in measuring teaching effectiveness.
Value-Added Modeling 101: Using Student Test Scores to Help Measure Teaching Effectiveness — 2012
This fact sheet describes value-added modeling and its limitations in measuring teaching effectiveness.
Multiple Choices: Options for Measuring Teaching Effectiveness — 2012
This fact sheet describes common methods of measuring teaching effectiveness.
The Uses and Limits of Small-Scale Military Interventions — 2012
The authors assess the utility and limitations of "minimalist stabilization" — small-scale interventions designed to stabilize a partner government engaged in violent conflict — and propose policy recommendations concerning when minimalist stabilization missions may be appropriate and the strategies most likely to make such interventions successful, as well as the implications for U.S. Army force structure debates and partnership strategies.
Aviation Security: After Four Decades, It's Time for a Fundamental Review — 2012
While security budgets shrink, passenger loads grow, and hostility towards security procedures increases, terrorist groups such as al Qaeda remain obsessed with attacking airplanes. In the face of these challenges and real, innovative threats, the author proposes a mechanism for conducting an independent re-examination of the strategy behind current aviation security policies and procedures — before disaster strikes.
Efficient Aviation Security: Strengthening the Analytic Foundation for Making Air Transportation Security Decisions — 2012
Making aviation security more cost-effective is hampered by considerable uncertainty about the terrorist threat, security system performance, and the costs of security measures. This volume focuses on exploring ways to inform decisionmaking despite such uncertainties, providing a set of analyses that help fill some of the current gaps in the assessment of the costs, benefits, and efficiency of aviation security measures and strategies.
Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World (Arabic translation) — 2012
Daunting challenges lie ahead for countries undergoing political transitions in the Arab world. Researchers identify the challenges these countries face and suggest policy approaches that may help foster enduring democracies.
Military Intelligence Fusion for Complex Operations: A New Paradigm — 2012
Analyzing complex counterinsurgency environments as systems through simplified approaches that incorporate color-coding and enforce a strict division of analytic specialties can lead analysts to make unhelpful and logically unsound assumptions about human identity. This paper proposes a paradigm shift in how intelligence is combined for counterinsurgency analysis and how these analyses can provide a more complete picture of such operations.
Democratization in the Arab World: Prospects and Lessons from Around the Globe — 2012
Daunting challenges lie ahead for Arab countries where revolutions have upended longstanding authoritarian regimes. This monograph aims to help policymakers understand the challenges ahead, form well-founded expectations, shape diplomatic approaches, and take practical steps to foster positive change.
Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World — 2012
Daunting challenges lie ahead for countries undergoing political transitions in the Arab world. Researchers identify the challenges these countries face and suggest policy approaches that may help foster enduring democracies.
Medicines as a Service: A New Commercial Model for Big Pharma in the Postblockbuster World — 2012
The pharmaceutical industry can reconfigure its considerable resources to develop innovative and meaningful business models that are based on services that improve access and adherence to prescription drugs for common chronic conditions. Such innovation beyond drug development is consistent with the core capabilities of large pharmaceutical companies and has the potential to achieve profit levels similar to those of its traditional models.
Measuring Health System Progress in Reducing Mortality from Noncommunicable Diseases — 2012
Noncommunicable diseases now account for the lion's share of global morbidity and mortality. In response, the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched several global initiatives aimed at risk reduction. As a first step toward a toolkit that would build on the WHO indicators and targets, this occasional paper outlines a roadmap toward a comprehensive system for national and regional decisionmakers to track progress toward those goals.
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