Because Social and Behavioral Research Improves Health and Quality of Life

September 26, 2017 by Wendy Naus

Medical research empowers the development of new interventions to prevent, diagnose and treat—even cure—disease, but it is not the only scientific discipline crucial to advancing health. By fostering a better understanding of human behavior, preferences, and motivations, social and behavioral research reveals new strategies for achieving optimal health outcomes. Social and behavioral research provides the real-world context needed to ensure the products of medical research—prescription drugs, medical devices, surgical procedures, and more—benefit patients efficiently and effectively. And social and behavioral research is nothing less than crucial to achieving more progress in prevention. Underinvesting in this research squanders countless opportunities to improve the health of our nation.

Social and behavioral research, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and other federal agencies, as well as various foundations, enables us to understand patterns among groups and individuals to help address a wide range of medical and public health threats including seemingly intractable challenges such as injury and violence. For example, NIH and CDC have funded researchers at the University of Chicago to study the root causes of violent crime in Chicago, reviewing medical-examiner records of city homicides and finding that many violent confrontations begin over something minor, such as an insult. This information led them to explore interventions that could help people avoid costly decision-making mistakes in situations they commonly face. A cognitive behavioral program in Chicago helped teenage boys think before they act, dramatically reducing arrest rates among teens. Research like this is broadly supported by a majority of Americans (60%) who say there is value in better understanding and preventing injury and violence caused by preventable accidents, deliberate acts or neglect, according to a national public opinion survey commissioned by Research!America.

Because It Makes Computing Work for People

September 12, 2017 by Wendy Naus

Two years ago, the leadership of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee looked to our organization, the Computing Research Association, to endorse an approach to reauthorize funding at a number of key Federal science agencies. The proposed legislation would provide increases for computing research funding at the National Science Foundation while keeping the overall agency budget essentially flat by bolstering computing — along with mathematics, physics, biology, and engineering — at the expense of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences (and the geosciences). The committee Chair hoped that CRA, which represents nearly 200 academic computing departments and industrial research labs — including computing research labs at IBM, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft — would support the approach, given the direct and indirect benefits increased investment in computing research at NSF would have to our member institutions.

The science advocacy community in Washington, DC, is comprised of many organizations like CRA, each representing some typically discipline-specific slice of the academic and research community, but bound by the shared goal of ensuring that policymakers understand the importance of the Federal investment in research and the value of peer and merit review in setting priorities. As such, we are typically averse to efforts that pit the disciplines against each other, like the one proposed. But that wasn’t the only important reason for us to oppose the proposal. What primarily motivated our opposition was our strong belief that cutting social, behavioral, and economic science investments would also do great damage to computing research.

Because Nearly Every Challenge We Face Requires Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Human Behavior

July 05, 2017 by Wendy Naus

This week, we’re highlighting the recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Value of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences to National Priorities. Produced at the request of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the report assesses the contributions of the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences to issues of national importance. Passages from the section “Why Support Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences?” are excerpted below. We encourage you to read the report in its entirety, which is available for free on the National Academies website.

Every month the Gallup Poll asks a representative sample of Americans “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” The main problems identified include jobs, unemployment, the economy, health care, and race relations. Issues such as these have clear social, behavioral, and economic aspects that need to be better understood, and SBE research can contribute to understanding and addressing them. Moreover, many other problems that at first glance appear to be issues only of medicine or engineering or computer science have social and behavioral components, such as patients’ understanding of medical information and community responses to proposed highway development…

Consider, for example, the challenge of immunizing the population against infectious diseases, such as measles and influenza. Medical science has developed many effective vaccines, and when they are administered to the appropriate numbers of people they control the spread of the disease. Recent outbreaks of measles, such as those in California and Minneapolis, occurred because not enough parents had their children vaccinated for measles because they did not believe or did not accept the value of vaccination. These outbreaks show that individual beliefs and social influences can disrupt vaccination programs and place communities at risk. They also demonstrate that there is a role for SBE science in helping to understand the social and behavioral dynamics of vaccination decisions and using that understanding to develop more effective public health and public information strategies. That is, in addition to the biology of a disease, vaccination efforts require dealing with individuals’ and groups’ beliefs and decisions about vaccination.

Podcasts Highlight the Impact of Congressional Wastebooks on Researchers

June 30, 2017 by Wendy Naus

A recent episode of the new PRI podcast Undiscovered (from the team behind Science Friday) focuses on how the publication of Congressional “wastebooks” affects the researchers whose grants are ridiculed. The episode, entitled “The Wastebook,” features the 2016 event, “Wasteful” Research? Looking Beyond the Abstract, during which researchers whose grants were singled out by wastebooks had the opportunity to more fully explain their researcher to Members of Congress and their staff. The event was hosted by the Coalition to Promote Research (which COSSA co-leads) and the Coalition for National Science Funding (more information is available here). The podcast episode highlights Duke University biologist Sheila Patek, whose National Science Foundation grant was featured in a 2015 wastebook published by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). During the “’Wasteful’ Research” event, Patek had the opportunity to explain the value of her research to Sen. Flake himself, and the podcast describes how that meeting went. The episode was also adapted into an episode of the NPR podcast Planet Money.

This article was originally published in the June 27, 2017 issue of the COSSA Washington Update. Click here to subscribe and receive this newsletter every two weeks.

Because Social Science Drives Smart Investments in Public Safety

June 20, 2017 by Wendy Naus

When I make a new acquaintance and am asked the inevitable question, “What do you do for a living?,” I’m often tempted to fib and reply that I’m a middle school teacher, a real estate agent, or an accountant – professions that most every member of the public knows and understands with little need for additional explanation. Not so when I answer honestly that I’m a criminologist. That response is often met with, “Oh, so you’re a lawyer?” or “You mean like on CSI?” My reply depends on how much time I have – usually not nearly enough!

The short answer is that criminologists are social scientists. The actors on CSI who collect crime scene evidence are playing the role of criminalists, also known as forensic scientists. They answer questions like, “What evidence exists about who was at the crime scene and what transpired there?” Criminologists answer questions like, “How does the collection of DNA at property crime scenes support investigations and case clearance rates?” (The answer might interest you: DNA evidence collection doubles the rate of suspect identification compared to traditional methods.)

Criminology is a social science offshoot of sociology, but it draws its ranks from a diverse array of social science disciplines, from demography to psychology and geography. Yes, there are a few lawyers in our ranks, but while traditional lawyers answer questions like, “What are the elements of the criminal code, and how are they applied at sentencing?” Criminologists answer questions like, “What types of community supervision are effective alternatives to incarceration, and for whom?”

Because Information Without Meaning Lacks Purpose

June 06, 2017 by Wendy Naus

At the March for Science in Washington, DC, where I participated on behalf of the National Communication Association, I held a sign that said, “Care about people? Care about Social Science!” As fellow marchers spotted me from a distance, they would weave through the crowds, maneuvering around lab coats, signs with chemical and mathematical formulas, and flyers describing climate change. When they drew near, their faces would break into smiles and they would proclaim, “I’m a social scientist, too! Can I take a picture with you and post it?” In that moment, they found meaning for participating in the March of Science; it gave them purpose.

Each day we search for purpose as we create and consume symbols, messages, and meanings through our conversations with friends, families, and coworkers, and through information disseminated by retailers, healthcare providers, government agencies, and the media. In the past, we searched for information; today, we navigate a deluge of communications as we seek support to care for an aging parent, make choices about our own healthcare, weigh public policy, contribute to the organizations for which we work, and value the diversity of the people around us. Over the course of our lives, we develop scripts for how to communicate and schemes for predicting the likely outcomes. Yet, we often walk away from a conversation, email, meeting, election, scientific report, or newscast asking ourselves, “What does this mean?”

Because Multilingualism Is an Asset and a Goal Worth Pursuing

May 24, 2017 by Wendy Naus

In late 2014, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences received two letters from Congress, one from a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and one from a bipartisan group of Representatives, requesting a new study of the state of language learning in America. The letters framed the request as a follow-up to the work of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, which published its influential Heart of the Matter report in 2013. The Heart of the Matter also responded to a request from a bipartisan group, but its charge was broader than the one included in the new letters, which asked the Academy to respond to the following two questions:

How does language learning influence economic growth, cultural diplomacy, the productivity of future generations, and the fulfillment of all Americans?
What actions should the nation take to ensure excellence in all languages as well as international education and research, including how we may more effectively use current resources to advance language attainment?

This second question charged us with an astoundingly lofty goal. Excellence in all languages?!?! Yet it also led us into territory familiar to a 237-year-old learned society and independent policy research center. In short, it asked us to initiate a study. It also helped us identify the ultimate goal of our final report, to teach more languages to more people, and set the agenda for the next 18 months of work, as we gathered scholarship and formulated concrete recommendations to address our nation’s relatively low capacity in international languages.

That first question, on the other hand, was trouble from the start.

Because It Is in the National Interest, Both in Interdisciplinary Work and on Its Own

March 28, 2017 by Wendy Naus

As a scientist, it is easy to become absorbed in the field or even subfield you are studying and simply focus on the value of your own research within that area of study. Looking back at my time as a political scientist, I understand how easy it is to have that narrow focus and not look at the broader impacts. But today, as the value of federal funding for scientific research is being challenged in Congress, scientists can no longer afford to do this. This is especially true for social scientists.

I serve on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and for more than eight years I have been Chairman or Ranking Member of the Research and Technology Subcommittee which has oversight over the National Science Foundation (NSF). I authored the last long-term reauthorization of the NSF and continually fight for increased funding for this top-notch agency, which is emulated around the globe and has helped the U.S. lead the world in scientific research. While NSF funding for all sciences has slowed greatly since 2011, social science research has been specifically targeted for cuts. In the House, we have seen attempts to defund social sciences by eliminating funding for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate at the NSF. All of my colleagues on the Science Committee can attest to the fact that I have consistently and passionately made the case for the value of social science research by laying out numerous examples of how it has benefitted our nation.

COSSA Releases State Funding Fact Sheets for 2017

January 10, 2017 by Wendy Naus

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has released the 2017 edition of its state funding fact sheets with a new look. These one-pagers showcase the amount of federal social science research funding that goes to each state, and includes information on the leading recipient institutions and sources of funding. The fact sheets are helpful for articulating to policy makers the local economic impact of social science research funding. The fact sheets are available on the COSSA website at http://www.cossa.org/resources/state-fact-sheets.

This article was originally published in the January 10, 2017 issue of the COSSA Washington Update. Click here to subscribe and receive this newsletter every two weeks.

Why Social Science Is Marching for Science