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Methodology

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.

Journal Article

Forecasts and Decisions: A Commentary on Lustick and Tetlock 2021

This article is a commentary on a paper by Lustick and Tetlock (2021), on forecasting, decisionmaking, and the intelligence community.

Apr 2, 2021
Journal Article

Bereaved Family More Likely to Report "Too Little" Care Than "Too Much" Care at the End of Life

Interviews with family members about their loved one's end-of-life care found that a majority thought he or she received the right amount of care. One in six said their family member received too little care.

Mar 31, 2021
Journal Article

Gender Differences in Patient Experience Across Medicare Advantage Plans

We measured gender differences for six patient experience measures and how gender gaps differ across Medicare plans.

Mar 31, 2021
Journal Article

Online Modified-Delphi: A Potential Method for Continuous Patient Engagement Across Stages of Clinical Practice Guideline Development

In this Perspective, we make the case for, and provide an approach to, using online Delphi approaches--particularly the online modified-Delphi--for engaging a panel of patients continuously throughout all stages of CPG development.

Mar 31, 2021
Report

Developing Metrics and Scoring Procedures to Support Mitigation Grant Program Decisionmaking

To develop metrics that can inform decisionmaking for awarding predisaster mitigation grants, the authors established three lines of effort (LoEs) for analysis. Each LoE produced a metric or framework that could support grant decisionmaking.

Mar 31, 2021
Report

PSAs Might Prevent Foreign Disinformation from Taking Hold

Tests with focus groups suggest that Americans are vulnerable to Russian-made memes. The participants responded positively to a public service announcement about foreign election interference, especially after they learned that they had just viewed content from Russia designed to breed dissension.

Mar 29, 2021
Report

Pro-Ukraine Activists on Twitter Can Help Counter Russian Influence

Many pro-Ukraine activists surveyed on Twitter support the United States and the European Union and oppose Russia and its influence on Ukraine. They have used Twitter—and other social media and offline channels—to help counter Russian influence. Half said they would be open to receiving social media training.

Mar 24, 2021
Journal Article

Who Is (and Isn't) Receiving Telemedicine Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has affected telehealth utilization disproportionately. The increase in telemedicine use was greatest among patients in counties with low poverty levels, among patients in metropolitan areas, and among adults compared with children.

Mar 18, 2021
Journal Article

Rapid Prioritisation of Topics for Rapid Evaluation: The Case of Innovations in Adult Social Care and Social Work

This paper aims to describe and discuss a process of rapidly identifying and prioritising a shortlist of innovations for rapid evaluation applied in the field of adult social care and social work.

Mar 18, 2021
Journal Article

Food Insecurity Is Associated with Objectively Measured Sleep Problems

Food Insecurity (FI) can be a profound source of stress, which may increase the risk for sleep disturbance. This is the first study to examine the association between FI and objectively and subjectively measured sleep.

Mar 16, 2021
Journal Article

An Audit Tool for Longitudinal Assessment of the Health-Related Characteristics of Urban Neighborhoods: Implementation Methods and Reliability Results

To identify neighborhood features that are predictors of health, objective assessments of the environment are used. In this paper, we have described implementation methods, reliability results and lessons learned to inform future studies of change.

Mar 16, 2021
Journal Article

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status, Sleep Duration, and Napping in Middle-To-Old Aged US Men and Women

In over 300,000 middle-to-old aged Americans, we examined neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and change in neighborhood SES in relation to nocturnal sleep duration and napping.

Mar 15, 2021
Journal Article

Effective Game-Based Training for Police Officer Decision-Making: Linking Missions, Skills, and Virtual Content

This paper reports the result of a two-year pilot study that developed a framework for implementing low-cost, game-based, virtual reality technology for training police officers to improve their decision-making under stress.

Mar 12, 2021
Journal Article

School Food and Beverage Availability and Children's Diet, Purchasing, and Obesity: Evidence From a Natural Experiment

We examined whether the number of competitive food and beverage items available for purchase in school, overall and by type (unhealthy, healthy, neutral), was associated with in-school food purchases, dietary behaviors, and body mass index outcomes.

Mar 11, 2021
Journal Article

Brief Tutorial for twangContinuous

This document provides a brief tutorial on using the twangContinous package to estimate causal effects for continuous exposure variables using generalized propensity scores estimated via generalized boosted models.

Mar 10, 2021
Journal Article

Steps Towards Value-Aligned Systems

This paper argues for a more structured systems-level approach for assessing value-alignment in sociotechnical systems. We highlight how adopting a system perspective improves our ability to explain and address misbehaving algorithms better.

Mar 10, 2021
Journal Article

Modeling Agent Behaviors for Policy Analysis Via Reinforcement Learning

This paper examines the value of reinforcement learning models as adaptive, high-performing, and behaviorally-valid models of agent decision-making in Agent-based Models.

Mar 9, 2021
Tool

Water Planning for the Uncertain Future

Recent climatic shifts likely will continue to affect water resources management in significant but uncertain ways. This tool provides information about decisionmaking under deep uncertainty methods—specifically, Robust Decision Making—through five case studies.

Mar 8, 2021
Report

The Army's Local Economic Effects: 2nd Edition

This report updates a previous report with findings on the economic activity supported by national-level Army spending in each of the 435 congressional districts for fiscal years 2014 through 2017.

Mar 8, 2021
Journal Article

Heroin Use Cannot Be Measured Adequately with a General Population Survey

Here we explore the important case of using General Population Surveys to estimate frequent heroin use.

Mar 5, 2021

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