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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

A headshot of Alicia Modestino.

Researcher Spotlight: Alicia Sasser Modestino on boosting youth employment through trust and partnership

In this Evidence Champion series, J-PAL North America is recognizing individuals in our network who have made extraordinary contributions to the field of evidence-based policymaking. This year's researcher recipient is Alicia Sasser Modestino, Executive Director of the Community to Community Impact...
A headshot of AJ Gutierrez against a brick wall.

Partner Spotlight: How AJ Gutierrez is increasing educational equity through collaboration and evaluation

By
In this Evidence Champion series, J-PAL North America is recognizing individuals in our network who have made extraordinary contributions to the field of evidence-based policymaking. This year’s partner recipient is AJ Gutierrez, Co-Founder and Chief of Policy and Public Affairs at Saga Education.
A grey van driving on a paved street in front of a white industrial building.

Ideas to Implementation: Developing a Theory of Change to evaluate mobile medications for opioid use disorders in Pierce County, Washington

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Pierce County Human Services (PCHS) discusses the evaluation considerations for its mobile medication for opioid use disorder (mobile MOUD) program.
A woman at a table filling out paperwork.

Nurturing the null: Approaching research design with all possibilities in mind

In this blog post, Manasi Deshpande and Rebecca Dizon-Ross shared how they designed a multi-step evaluation to determine if their null findings were due to a failure of their research design or a flaw in their Theory of Change.
An engineer inspecting HVAC on a roof.

Generating evidence to advance state and local decarbonization efforts in the United States

Peter Christensen, Scientific Advisor of the J-PAL North America Environment, Energy, and Climate Change (EECC) sector, discusses the importance of rigorously evaluating decarbonization programming now, outlines the project’s work to build and execute a coordinated research agenda, and invites...
A child and parent sitting opposite a man talking.

Nurturing the null: Leveraging unexpected null results to improve case management for housing services

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Kimberly Dodds, homeless prevention program manager in King County, Washington, discusses her experience discovering that their program had null results and how they were used to improve the Youth Family Homelessness Prevention Initiative.
A Camden Coalition health practitioner leaving a house. Three individuals are standing around the house.

Nurturing the null: Navigating Evaluation Challenges in Community-Based Care Management

By
  • Aaron Truchil
  • Dawn Wiest
  • Kathleen Noonan
In this piece, originally published in American Society on Aging’s Generations, Aaron Truchil, Dawn Wiest, and Kathleen Noonan of the Camden Coalition discuss their experience finding and learning from null results.
Five headshots of the blog authors. Top row starting from the left: Damon Jones, Laura Feeney, Matt Notowidigdo. Bottom row starting from the left: Shanyce Campbell, Sule Alan.

Exploring the role of positionality in economics research

J-PAL North America convened a small group of researchers to ask how we might consider positionality within a quantitative research setting.