Introduction: Communicating Research to Policy Makers—Briefing Report Chapters from the Massachusetts Family Impact Seminars on Youth at Risk

Research and policy should go hand-in-hand. With few exceptions, however, the history of research utilization in policy making has been disappointing. Policy makers typically do not have the resources to seek out the growing body of research on the complex issues they face. Instead, they tend to rely on personal impressions or information from special interests that is often fragmented and biased. This practice occurs despite growing evidence that public policy would be more effective if it were based on hard evidence and dispassionate analysis. How can we better connect researchers and policy makers? One proven, cost-effective, and replicable model was recently named a “Bright Idea” by the Harvard Innovations in Government Program—the Family Impact Seminars (FIS). The FIS are a series of presentations, discussion sessions, and briefing reports that provide state policy makers with objective, high-quality research on timely topics. The six articles that follow were all originally published as policy briefs that were part of the third and fourth annual Massachusetts FIS on “Youth at Risk” convened in spring 2012 and 2013 at the Massachusetts State House. Each seminar featured an expert panel speaking and writing about issues that face today’s youth in the Commonwealth. The Massachusetts seminars are part of a national network of twenty-two sites across the country, all university-based, that are building relationships with and communicating research to state policy makers

Parent-Teen Communication About Sexual Topics

Parent-teen communication about sexual topics was examined in 666 mother-teen and 510 father-teen pairs. Parents and their 8th- through 12th-grade children completed parallel surveys that assessed demographic, relationship, and attitudinal variables hypothesized to be linked to sexual communication. Logistic regression analyses were used to determine which variables were linked to teens’ reports of “one good talk” about each of three sexual topics (whether teen sex is okay, the dangers of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and birth control) in the past year. Aside from gender of parents and teens, demographic variables were largely nonsignificant in the final models. Instead, relationship and attitudinal variables were linked to sexual discussions in both mother-teen and father-teen dyads. Discussion focused on implications for program development and directions for future research

Unconscious bias in the suppressive policing of Black and Latino men and boys: neuroscience, Borderlands theory, and the policymaking quest for just policing

his article applies neuroscience and Borderlands theory to reveal how unconscious bias currently stabilizes suppressive policing practices in America despite new efforts at reform. Illustrative cases are offered from Oakland and Santa Barbara, California, with a focus on civil gang injunctions (CGIs) and youth gang suppression. Theoretical analysis of these cases reveals how the unconscious biases of validity illusions and framing effects operate despite the best intentions of law enforcement personnel. Such unconscious or implicit biases create contradictions between the stated beliefs and actions of law enforcement. In turn, these unintended self-contradictions then work to the detriment of Latino and Black boys. The analysis here also extends to how unconscious biases and unintended self-contradictions can influence municipal policymaking in favor of suppressive police tactics such as CGIs, thereby displacing evidence-based policies that are proven to be far more effective. The article concludes with brief discussion of some of the means by which the unconscious biases – effects to which everyone is involuntarily prone – can be disrupted

Bogenschneider, Day, et al. - Policymaker Use of Research - Interview Protocol

This interview protocol was used with policymakers for the purpose of advancing theory, research, and the practice of evidence-based policymaking, in general, and youth and family policy, in particular. Papers from this study identified policymaker perceptions of the contributions that research makes to policymaking, and also how, when, and which policymakers use research evidence. The data was used to refine community dissonance theory that explains why research is underutilized in policymaking; one foundational premise of the theory is that the research community could more effectively engage policymakers and improve research use if they better understood the policy community—its inhabitants, institutions, and culture. Another analysis proposed a framework for whether, when, and how researchers can effectively engage policymakers, which is illustrated with the perspective of legislators. Based on legislators’ reports of the contributions that research evidence makes to policymaking, several items are proposed for expanding the measurement of research utilization to capture how it is employed for instrumental, conceptual, political (tactical), process, and relational purposes. Links for the full articles can be found here: 1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jftr.12310 2) https://content.apa.org/record/2019-23610-001 3) https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/law0000232 4) DOI: 10.1037/amp0000681 5) https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.1230

Parent Influences on Adolescent Peer Orientation and Substance Use: The Interface of Parenting Practices and Values

This study examines how experiences in the family domain may magnify or mitigate experiences in the peer domain, and how processes in both milieus may influence adolescent substance use. The data derived from 666 European American mother-adolescent dyads and 510 European American father-adolescent dyads. Consistent with individuation-connectedness theory, mothers’ responsiveness lessened their adolescents’ orientation to peers, which, in turn, reduced adolescent substance use. This process was moderated by maternal values regarding adolescent alcohol use; that is, the relation of maternal responsiveness to adolescent substance use depended on the extent of maternal approval or disapproval of adolescent alcohol use. Among fathers, closer monitoring was directly associated with less adolescent substance use, with stronger effects among fathers who held more disapproving values regarding adolescent alcohol use. Theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic implications are given

Evidence-based : insights from policy-minded researchers and research-minded policymakers

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“Other Teens Drink, But Not My Kid”: Does Parental Awareness of Adolescent Alcohol Use Protect Adolescents from Risky Consequences?

This study included 199 White mother-adolescent dyads and 144 White father-adolescent dyads. All adolescents reported regular alcohol use, yet less than one third of parents were aware of their adolescents’ drinking. Parental awareness of adolescent alcohol use served to protect adolescents by moderating the relation of parents’ responsiveness to episodes of drinking and driving. Aware parents were more likely than unaware parents to believe their adolescents’ close friends drank alcohol. Aware mothers worried more about their adolescents’ risk behaviors and discussed them more frequently with their adolescents. Aware fathers held values less disapproving of adolescent alcohol use and were less apt to perceive their community as supportive