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1. Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice

   https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20200407  

   Bergman, Peter; Chetty, Raj; DeLuca, Stefanie; Hendren, Nathaniel; Katz, Lawrence F.; Palmer, Christopher (May 2024, American Economic Review)

   Low-income families often live in low-upward-mobility neighborhoods. We study why by using a randomized trial with housing voucher recipients that provided information, financial support, and customized search assistance to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods. The treatment increased the fraction moving to high-upward-mobility areas from 15 to 53 percent. A second trial reveals this treatment effect is driven primarily by customized search assistance. Qualitative interviews show that the intervention relaxed bandwidth constraints and addressed family-specific needs. Our findings imply many low-income families do not have strong preferences to stay in low-opportunity areas and that barriers in housing search significantly increase residential segregation by income. 

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2. Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice

   Bergman, Peter; DeLuca, Stefanie; Hendren, Nathaniel; Katz, Lawrence F; Palmer, Christopher (January 2023, American economic review)

   Low-income families in the United States tend to live in neighborhoods that offer limited opportunities for upward income mobility. One potential explanation for this pattern is that families prefer such neighborhoods for other reasons, such as affordability or proximity to family and jobs. An alternative explanation is that they do not move to high-opportunity areas because of a lack of information or barriers that prevent them from making such moves. We test between these explanations using a twophase randomized controlled trial with housing voucher recipients in Seattle and King County. We first provided a bundle of resources to facilitate moves to high-upward-mobility neighborhoods: information about high-opportunity areas, short-term financial assistance, customized assistance during the housing search process, and connections to landlords. This bundled intervention increased the fraction of families who moved to high-upward-mobility areas from 15% in the control group to 53% in the treatment group. To understand the mechanisms underlying this effect, we ran a second phase with three arms: (1) information about high-opportunity areas and financial assistance only; (2) reduced support services in addition to information and financial assistance; and (3) full support services, as in the original bundled intervention. The full services had five times as large a treatment effect as the information and financial incentives treatment and three times as large an effect as the reduced support intervention, showing that high-intensity, customized support enables moves to opportunity. Interviews with randomly selected families reveal that the program succeeded by relaxing families’ bandwidth constraints and addressing their specific needs, from identifying suitable units to providing emotional support to brokering with landlords. Families induced to move to higher opportunity areas tend to stay in their new neighborhoods in subsequent years and report higher levels of neighborhood satisfaction after moving. Our findings imply that many low-income families do not have a strong preference to stay in low-opportunity areas and that barriers in the housing search process are a central driver of residential segregation by income. 

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3. Accessing the right to vote among system-impacted people

   https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745241230199  

   Sugie, Naomi_F; Sandoval, Juan_R; Kaiser, Daniela_E; Mosca, Delaney; Winnen, Kyle; Zhang, Emily_Rong; Zhang, Iris_H (September 2024, Punishment & Society)

   Recent efforts to dismantle felon disenfranchisement regimes have the potential to substantially expand electoral eligibility among people with criminal records; however, even among those with criminal legal histories who are eligible to vote, voting rates are often extremely low. Analyzing interview, focus group, and text message conversations among a multi-state sample around the November 2022 election, we identify and describe how administrative barriers to voting—including a lack of understanding about the voting process, confusion about legal eligibility, and perceived risks of rearrest of voting while ineligible—pose an access to justice issue among system-impacted people. These barriers are amplified by government mistrust, specifically the perception that barriers are intentionally constructed to suppress voting, and they are potentially mitigated by outreach by community organizations that are viewed as credible. The findings emphasize that legislative reforms repealing disenfranchisement laws must be accompanied by on-the-ground efforts to address administrative burdens to broaden access to the franchise. 

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4. "Aging and Engaging: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online Conversational Skills Coach for Older Adults", Am. J. of Geriatric Psychiatry, 29(8):804-815, Aug 2021.

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2020.11.004  

   Ali, Rafayet; Hoque, Ehsan; Duberstein, Paul; Schubert, Lenhart; Razavi, Seyedeh Zahra; Kane, Benjamin; Silva, Caroline; Daks, Jennifer S.; Huang, Meghan; Van Orden, Kim (August 2021, American journal of geriatric psychiatry)

   null (Ed.)

   Objective: Communication difficulties negatively impact relationship quality and are associated with social isolation and loneliness in later life. There is a need for accessible communication interventions offered outside specialty mental health settings. Design: Pilot randomized controlled trial. Setting: Assessments in the laboratory and intervention completed in-home. Participants: Twenty adults age 60 and older from the community and a geriatric psychiatry clinic. Intervention: A web-based communication coach that provides automated feedback on eye contact, facial expressivity, speaking volume, and negative content (Aging and Engaging Program, AEP), delivered with minimal assistance in the home (eight brief sessions over 4–6 weeks) or control (education and videos on communication). Measurements: System Usability Scale and Social Skills Performance Assessment, an observer-rated assessment of social communication elicited through standardized role-plays. Results" Ninety percent of participants completed all AEP sessions and the System Usability Scale score of 68 was above the cut-off for acceptable usability. Participants randomized to AEP demonstrated statistically and clinically significant improvement in eye contact and facial expressivity. Conclusion: The AEP is acceptable and feasible for older adults with communication difficulties to complete at home and may improve eye contact and facial expressivity, warranting a larger RCT to confirm efficacy and explore potential applications to other populations, including individuals with autism and social anxiety. 

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5. Using worked examples to promote explanations of fractions concepts: A formative pilot study

   https://doi.org/10.1177/09388982241230131  

   Wang, Amber_Y; Schumacher, Robin_F; Dougherty, Barbara_J; Wavell, Samantha; Dimino, Joseph; Gersten, Russell (February 2024, Learning Disabilities Research & Practice)

   This pilot study examined the feasibility of using worked examples as a mechanism to improve verbal explanations of fractions concepts among Grade 5 students with mathematics difficulties in a small-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) before scaling up to a large-scale RCT. Students ( N = 49) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual (BAU) comparison group and to two variants of intervention. One intervention condition received both correct and incorrect worked example solutions, the other received correct solutions only. On a measure of verbal explanations, intervention students significantly outperformed students in BAU. Furthermore, students who received both correct and incorrect solutions significantly outperformed students who received correct solutions only on verbal explanations. On fractions proficiency outcomes, results were not significant between intervention and BAU or between the two intervention groups; however, positive findings demonstrate promise for using worked examples to elicit and develop students’ verbal explanations of fractions concepts. 

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