The Podcast @ DC

For long-time residents of Washington, DC’s Shaw/U Street, the neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where the city’s most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers’ market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. American University Associate Professor, Derek Hyra discusses his new book - Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City - an in-depth ethnography of this gilded ghetto.

How does pro- and anti-social behavior spread among individuals and groups? What is the role of social coherence among peers in affecting it? Is the combination of punishment and norms always helpful in improving compliance and what are the potential downsides? Dr. Dimant and Director Yokum discuss these questions.

About our guest:

Eugen Dimant is a postdoctoral researcher in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program and the Behavioral Ethics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an external fellow of the Centre for Decision Research & Experimental Economics (CeDEx) at the University of Nottingham. Prior to this, Eugen was a Lab Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics (under Lawrence Lessig), as well as a visiting researcher at George Mason University's, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science(Invitation: Dan Houser) and the Center and Laboratory for Behavioral Operations and Economics (LBOE) at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking developed a strategy for increasing the availability and use of data in order to build evidence about government programs, while protecting privacy and confidentiality. During the course of the bipartisan Commission’s work, members studied how data, research, and evaluation are currently used to build evidence, and how to strengthen the Federal government’s evidence-building capacity. Commissioners applied a diverse range of professional and research expertise to specifically consider strategies for enhancing and better integrating existing data infrastructure in the U.S. to support policy research and evaluation, and opportunities to improve practices for monitoring and assessing outcomes of government programs. This discussion will highlight the findings and final recommendations the Commission presented to the President and the Congress in September 2017.

Nick Hart is the director of BPC’s Evidence-Based Policymaking Initiative. Prior to joining BPC, he worked in the federal government for nearly a decade, most recently as the policy and research director for the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. In that capacity, he oversaw the commission’s policy and research support team and led the drafting process for “The Promise of Evidence-Based Policymaking,” the commission’s final report and recommendations presented to the Congress and the president in September 2017. Hart has worked on a wide range of issues including social security, disability, anti-poverty, environmental, energy, economic development, and criminal justice policies. He worked at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a senior analyst and special assistant, where he contributed to writing executive branch budget proposals and encouraged increased capacity for evidence-based practices across government. He also served as OMB’s representative on the White House steering committee for President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force. Hart has spoken widely about the history of evidence building efforts in the United States, and the need for organizational capacity to generate and use evidence to inform policymaking. He is an expert in evaluation, statistical, and evidence-based policy. He is currently the president of Washington Evaluators, a DC-based professional organization for program evaluators. He also serves on the Board of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society and on the American Evaluation Association’s Evaluation Policy Task Force.

Hart earned a doctorate from The George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, specializing in program evaluation. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Science and Master of Public Affairs degree from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Truman State University.

The Lunch @ DC hosts leaders in their field to foster thinking and discussion with D.C. government leaders and the community on a wide range of topics related to evidence and experimentation in government. It’s a time to listen, discuss, and socialize!

In the past few years a new way of changing people's behavior has been discovered: Helping them to revise the stories they tell about themselves and their social environment. Dr. Wilson describes this "story-editing" technique and give several examples of how it has been used to address a variety of personal and societal problems, such as improving educational outcomes, reducing child abuse, lowering the rate of teenage pregnancies, improving inter-group relations, and increasing environmentally-friendly behaviors.

Timothy D. Wilson is Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has published over 100 articles in scholarly journals and edited books, primarily on the topics of self-knowledge, unconscious processing, and the applications of social psychology to addressing social problems. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Wilson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2002 Wilson published Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Harvard University Press). The New York Times Magazine listed the book as containing one of the best 100 ideas of 2002. In 2011 he published, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change (Little, Brown). The author Malcolm Gladwell said, “There are few academics who write with as much grace and wisdom as Timothy Wilson. I thought his last book Strangers to Ourselves was a masterpiece. Redirect is more than its equal."

Elementary school students in the U.S. spend less than 25 percent of their waking hours in school over the course of a year. Coupled with the large influence of outside-of-school factors in shaping children's educational trajectories, researchers and policymakers alike are exploring and testing innovative interventions that leverage time, settings, and connections beyond the traditional school day to improve educational outcomes.

Dr. Gibbs and The Lab's Sam Quinney discuss findings from the latest research on engaging and informing parents, extending the school day, and coordinating across different social-service systems, and discuss new ideas on the forefront of expanding our education policy tools with a particular focus on early childhood.

About our guest:

Chloe Gibbs is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities and the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Professor Gibbs is interested in measuring the effects, both intended and unintended, of policies and programs targeted at disadvantaged children and families. Her recent research includes analyzing the impact of full-day kindergarten participation on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, exploring the “fade out” of early childhood intervention effects, and investigating the intergenerational transmission of Head Start effects. Her research has been cited by Education Week, TIME, The Washington Post, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, and her work is currently supported by funding from the National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

Despite our intentions, why do we so often fail to act in our own best interest? Why do we promise to skip the chocolate cake, only to find ourselves drooling our way into temptation when the dessert tray rolls around? Why do we overvalue things that we’ve worked to put together? What are the forces that influence our behavior? Director Yokum and our guest, Dan Ariely, discuss some of the challenges and underlying benefits of irrationalities in our day-to-day life.

About our guest:

Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, is dedicated to answering these questions and others in order to help people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, and Payoff. In 2013 Bloomberg recognized Dan as one of Top 50 Most Influential thinkers. He also has a bi-weekly advice column in the Wall Street Journal called “Ask Ariely.” Dan can be found at www.danariely.com.

About our guest:

Donald P. Green is J. W. Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Professor Green is the author of four books and more than one hundred scholarly articles spanning a wide array of topics: voting behavior, partisanship, campaign finance, hate crime, and research methods. Much of his current work uses field experimentation to study the ways in which political campaigns mobilize and persuade voters. With Alan Gerber, he conducted the first large-scale randomized field experiment on the effects of voter mobilization tactics on voter turnout and the development of long-term voting habits. With Alan Gerber, he co-authored a textbook on this research method titled Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation (W.W. Norton, 2012). Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia University, Professor Green taught at Yale University (1989-2011), where he was A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science and served five terms as Director of Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and has received numerous awards, among them the Heinz I. Eulau Award for best article published in the American Political Science Review. He co-founded the Experimental Research section of the American Political Science Association and served as its first president.

Crime and violence have enormous social costs. These costs are disproportionately borne by economically disadvantaged groups. Finding promising ways to reduce crime at reasonable cost is therefore an important policy goal. While great progress has been made over the past several decades in medicine and public health to find ways to reduce the incidence of most leading causes of death, the nation's homicide rate is about the same as it was in 1950. Dr. Guryan and Director Yokum discuss some strategies that show promising results include programs based on cognitive behavioral therapy that help youths to stop and think for a moment before acting.

About our guest:

Economist Jonathan Guryan is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also serves as a co-director of the Urban Education Lab, an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics, and a research consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. His research has received support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, W. T. Grant Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and Institute for Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. In 2009, he received the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Before joining Northwestern, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

How do we encourage state and local governments and partners to develop and use a portfolio of evidence? What might that portfolio contain? What are recurring challenges and potential remedies to address the challenges. Dr. Newcomer will address these questions and discuss the current environment for evidence-informed-government.

Kathryn Newcomer is the Director of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University where she teaches graduate level courses on public and nonprofit program evaluation, and research design. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and currently serves on the Comptroller General’s Educators’ Advisory Panel. She served as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) (2012-2015), and began service as AEA president on January 1, 2017. She routinely conducts research and training for federal and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations on performance measurement and program evaluation, and has designed and conducted evaluations for many U.S. federal agencies and dozens of nonprofit organizations.

Dr. Newcomer has published five books, including The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation (4th edition 2015) and Transformational Leadership: Leading Change in Public and Nonprofit Agencies (June 2008), and edited a volume of New Directions for Public Program Evaluation, Using Performance Measurement to Improve Public and Nonprofit Programs (1997). She has also published over 60 articles in journals including the Public Administration Review and the American Journal of Evaluation. She served as President of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) for 2006-2007. She has received two Fulbright awards, one for Taiwan (1993) and one for Egypt (2001-04). She has lectured on performance measurement and program evaluation in Ukraine, China, Australia, Brazil, Italy, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Costa Rica, Egypt, Taiwan, Colombia, Honduras, Canada, Nicaragua, and the UK.

The Lunch @ DC hosts leaders in their field to foster thinking and discussion with D.C. government leaders and the community on a wide range of topics related to evidence and experimentation in government. It’s a time to listen, discuss, and socialize!

Each year over 1400 women experiencing homelessness and hardship in DC will use the housing and support programs of N Street Village. Lab Director, David Yokum, and N Street Village Executive Director, Schroeder Stribling, address the measurement of N Street Village's service delivery impact and the definition of success, the particular role of health and mental health issues, and the operation of vital public-private partnerships.

About our guest:

Ms. Schroeder Stribling has been at N Street Village since 2003. She initially came as the Director of Programs, after which she became the Deputy Executive Director and the Executive Director in 2010. In 2006, Schroeder was first appointed to the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH). She presently serves as the Chair of the Board of the Center for Nonprofit Advancement, and is on the Boards of the National Capital Breast Care Center and MedArt Center for Integrative Medicine at GW. Schroeder received a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Wellesley College, a Masters in Social Work from Smith School for Social Work, and a certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University.