RAND researchers have pioneered several different methodologies, such as the Delphi method and robust decisionmaking, and continue to apply their methodological expertise in multidisciplinary projects that may require a range of capabilities, including modeling and simulation, survey research, economic or statistical analysis, or planning and forecasting.
Report
This report challenges the assumption that the timing of deployments and their distribution over time are serially independent, arguing that military interventions occur in temporal clusters driven by the number of interventions in the recent past.
Commentary
Under a Social Impact Bond, private investors — rather than the government — provide up-front funding for programs that tackle such challenges as recidivism or homelessness. If these programs succeed, the government pays some of the savings back to the investors.
Research Brief
RAND Europe co-led an evaluation of 16 varied pilot projects initiated by the Department of Health (England) as a means to explore new ways of integrating patient care from different local provider.
Commentary
When planning for the future, we should understand that the capacity to predict the future is rather limited and poor. Rather, an ability to anticipate plausible trends and their potential consequences is more realistic, writes Stijn Hoorens.
Report
Details a prototype computational model that seeks to explain, as a function of contributing factors, the extent of public support for insurgency and its use of terrorism. The model is believed to be reusable and suitable for composition.
Blog
Community-based practitioners can improve their programs using Getting To Outcomes®, a toolkit, training, and onsite-support package which enhances their ability to prevent drug and alcohol use among youth.
Commentary
The progress of science and technology shows that good research does get funded—but it doesn't show that peer review is the best way to select it, writes Steven Wooding.
Commentary
The path to climate change preparedness should start at the intersection of resilience and robustness — that is, building resilient communities with the individuals and organizations within those communities making robust decisions, ones designed to work well over a wide range of ever-changing conditions.
Report
Peer review is considered the gold standard for reviewing research proposals, but it is not always the best method for every research funding process. RAND Europe has updated its folio of cards highlighting a set of established approaches that offer unique alternatives to traditional peer review.
Report
Intratheater airlift delivers critical and time-sensitive supplies to deployed forces, but is it cost effective to use commercial, rather than organic Air Force, aircraft to supply this airlift?
Journal Article
There is little evidence that peer review is the best way to apportion research money — and even less evidence for the alternatives.
Journal Article
Research linking high-quality child care programs and children's cognitive development has contributed to the growing popularity of child care quality benchmarking efforts such as quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS).
Report
The authors identified and characterized population groups that would likely be interested in enrolling in the multistate plans established by the Affordable Care Act and developed a methodology to project participation and estimate premiums.
Report
In the context of the RAND Corporation's mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis, the Year in Review offers an assessment of RAND's achievements in 2012.
Report
This paper describes a new approach and associated search schemes for optimization under uncertainty. Analysts can apply this method to a problem with a significantly larger number of decision variables, uncertain parameters, and uncertain scenarios.
Journal Article
Simulated patient, or so-called mystery-shopper, studies are a controversial, but potentially useful, approach to take when conducting health services research.
Research Brief
Quantitative analysis is often indispensable to sound planning. But with deep uncertainty, predictions can lead decisionmakers astray. Robust Decision Making supports good decisions without predictions by testing plans against many futures.
Report
Energy security strategies are needed because DoD installations rely on the U.S. commercial electricity grid which is vulnerable to disruption from natural hazards and actor-induced outages, such as physical or cyber attacks.
Commentary
Structured observation protocols for assessing how teachers provide lessons to their students offer the opportunity to provide teachers with valuable feedback on how their practices could be improved, writes Terrance Dean Savitsky.
Blog
A new field called implementation science examines how to best support providers in taking up new, research-proven treatments and implementing them well. A RAND study will test how Boys & Girls Clubs carry out a program proven to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, with and without an intervention called Getting To Outcomes®.
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