This weekly recap focuses on COVID-19, how the United States is responding to the coronavirus outbreak, the spread of misinformation during this time, and more.
Jennifer Kavanagh, who wrote the RAND book Truth Decay about the diminishing role that facts play in making important public policy decisions, calls the unfolding situation with the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 a worst-case scenario.
Feature stories spotlight how technology can better serve the world's displaced people, the promise of supportive housing for people with mental illness, and a RAND climate scientist's personal brush with wildfire.
RAND researchers asked people where they get their news, how reliable they think it is, and whether they seek out viewpoints that are different from their own. The results provide some new clues to help diagnose and treat Truth Decay.
We investigate students' implementation of the feedback messages they received in an automated writing evaluation system (eRevise) that aims to improve students' use of text evidence in their writing.
The authors describe an approach to using automated essay-scoring technologies to provide information about students' skills at marshaling text evidence in the upper elementary grades.
This paper presents the design and first classroom evaluation of eRevise, an Automated Writing Evaluation system for improving students' ability to use text evidence - a dimension of writing that is important for college and career readiness.
"Truth Decay" is the diminishing role of facts and analysis in U.S. public life. As part of this phenomenon, Americans are losing faith in once-trusted sources of information, including the news. What could media organizations do to address this?
Truth Decay is the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life. As part of this phenomenon, Americans are losing faith in once-trusted sources of information, including the news. How might media organizations address this?
This report describes a database of online tools that are developed by nonprofit, civil society organizations and are designed to reduce the spread of online disinformation.
As social media has increasingly become the main outlet for people to acquire news and opinion, there are concerns about the effect of algorithm-driven services on the spread of misleading information. But the issue doesn't merely lie with how social platforms use algorithms to deliver content.
RAND Europe found in a UK randomised controlled trial that classes of primary school children randomly allocated to receive a technology-based education intervention using Microsoft's Immersive Reader performed as well as business-as-usual classes.
Humans carry flaws in deciding what is or is not real. The internet and other technologies have made it easier to weaponize and exploit these flaws. And artificial intelligence will likely be used to exploit these weaknesses at an unprecedented scale, speed, and level of effectiveness.
In this report, the authors present results describing early learning outcomes of children from three kindergarten classes who were eligible to participate in The Big Lift, a preschool-third-grade initiative that aims to boost reading proficiency.
One-third of Americans rely on news platforms they acknowledge are less reliable, mainly social media and peers. The other two-thirds of the public consider their primary news sources trustworthy, mainly print news and broadcast television.
Where do Americans get their news? What news sources do they view as reliable? And how are choices about news consumption linked to demographics or political affiliation? Results from a national survey provide insights into these questions and more.
With the rise of the internet and social media, false or intentionally misleading information can spread further and faster than ever before. What tools exist to fight disinformation online?
RAND researchers created a database of web tools that aim to fight the spread of disinformation. These include fact-checking tools, bot detectors, media literacy applications, and more.
The RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) has supplied government and private decisionmakers and the public with the results of objective, empirically based, analytic research. In this era of Truth Decay, the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life, the ICJ's mission and research have never been more important.
