Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Research Out Front: Experts Look Ahead to 2023 and Beyond

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 03:46:02 +0000

Research Out Front: Experts Look Ahead to 2023 and Beyond admin Wed, 02/08/2023 - 22:46

What differentiates how people are able to hold their attention on a task? How do people acquire new skills? These are tough questions that Georgia Tech cognitive scientist Alex Burgoyne is trying to find good answers to.

For decades, schools, companies, and federal agencies have tried to use standardized tests to determine whether someone will be a success before they are hired or assigned. But Burgoyne says there are better ways to figure out if a candidate is likely to be a good fit.

“We’re looking at more fluid abilities like problem-solving, working memory, and how people can control their attention,” explains Alexander Burgoyne, a cognitive scientist in the School of Psychology.

Burgoyne and his fellow researchers are taking a closer look at the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, better known as the ASVAB. With the U.S. Navy, Burgoyne and his colleagues are using modeling to determine if pilots, air traffic controllers, and flight officers are hitting the mark during their training. The ASVAB, which is highly focused on acquired math and verbal skills, may not measure more specific skills necessary for success.

“Air traffic controllers, for example, need to be able to maintain focus for long periods of time. Whether or not they can make change for a $10 bill is less important for their day-to-day jobs,” he says.

Burgoyne says his work also addresses adverse impact in employment and selection practices. Acquired knowledge tests like the ASVAB often have stratified results that make it harder for applicants from minority communities to succeed.

“The military has a duty to improve their selection procedures to reduce inequities, and they can all better predict who will do well in certain types of training,” he says.

Burgoyne is conducting testing with naval trainees at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, but Fortune 500 companies have also been in contact with him about this cognitive ability research.

Because every failed personnel search or newly assigned team member who can’t pass training costs an organization valuable time, money, and resources, says Burgoyne, “Every company that is hiring must worry about whether they have equitable selection measures in place.” He says it’s a systemic issue and currently a hot topic of conversation.

In the next year, Burgoyne and his colleagues in the Attention and Working Memory Lab at Georgia Tech will continue identifying how to measure different levels of memory capacity and mental focus, as a better determinant for successful performance in a variety of settings.

Learn more about Burgoyne and five fellow researchers in the Georgia Tech newsroom.

Summary sentence

As we kick off a new year, hear from six young, pioneering Georgia Tech researchers who are tackling some of the world’s most complicated issues and working on solutions.

Summary

As we kick off a new year, experts at Georgia Tech are working to understand how some of the world's most pressing concerns will play out over the next 12 months. Hear from six young, pioneering Georgia Tech researchers who are tackling some of the world’s most complicated issues and working on solutions — ranging from feeding an ever-growing population to controlling wheelchairs via wireless brain wave patches.

Dateline

Thu, 01/05/2023 - 12:00

jess@cos.gatech.edu

Contact

Steven Norris
Senior Director of Social Media and Media Relations
Georgia Tech

See the full story here.
Writers: Benjamin Hodges and Steven Norris
Layout: Brice Zimmerman and Steven Norris
Design: Mark Ziemer
Editing: Brigitte Espinet

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Atlanta, GA

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cos-community

School of Psychology

Cognition

Research

psychology

skills acquisition

memory

brain science

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Institute and Campus

Research

Biotechnology, Health, Bioengineering, Genetics

Military Technology

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National Security

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Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

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664424

Source updated

Thu, 01/05/2023 - 14:45

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 18:12:32 +0000

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence admin Tue, 02/07/2023 - 13:12

It is well known that predators lurk on the internet seeking to harm others through misinformation, bullying, and hate speech. What is not understood, however, is how online abuse and harassment like this spread via misinformation can lead to real, physical violence in communities.

To understand and counter this phenomenon, faculty with Georgia Tech’s College of Computing is leading a two-year study on the impact of online violence-provoking misinformation and hate speech toward minority populations.

Realizing the implication on public health and safety, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is funding the study through a $678,000 grant. Georgia Tech’s Srijan Kumar is the principal investigator of the CDC grant while Munmun De Choudhury is co-PI.

“The conversations we have and the information we consume on the web really shape our behavior not just online, but in the real-world,” said Kumar, an assistant professor with the School of Computational Science and Engineering. “We need systematic evaluations and an all-hands-on-deck approach to study what sort of societal impact harmful online content has on health, equity, integrity, and safety.”

Inspiration for this study comes from the researchers’ observations of prevalent hate speech and calls for racially motivated violence on the internet and social media. This issue became more prominent during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In their grant proposal, the researchers say more than 11,000 incidents of physical violence and online aggression against Asians were reported during the pandemic. They also state that misinformation about Covid-19 led to destruction of property and over 800 deaths.

To understand the connection between virtual misinformation and physical violence, the study has four stated goals:

Identify health misinformation that promotes community violence
Map and measure prevalence of violence-provoking health misinformation across social media platforms
Establish the causal impact of such misinformation on consumers’ reactions and intention to engage in harm
Design mitigation and intervention strategies to reduce the prevalence of such misinformation

According to the group, social media is often “ground-zero” for health misinformation where it spreads at exceptional speed and scale. That is why the team intends to study hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms Twitter and Reddit.

“The very use of these platforms is impacting us in different ways. Sometimes these impacts are good, sometimes they are bad,” said De Choudhury, an associate professor with the School of Interactive Computing. “As we think about our wellbeing and the role of these online platforms, we cannot ignore the very fact that misinformation on those platforms is affecting our wellbeing in negative ways.”

The group selected Twitter and Reddit specifically due to their prominence in networking and wide range of demographically diverse users, a fact supported by Pew Internet Research statistics.

Diversity of the two social media platforms make them the ideal ecosystem for what the group intends to observe: anti-Asian and Anti-Black violence-provoking misinformation.

Given the correlation of Covid-19 misinformation spread and increase of discrimination and violence toward Asian and Black communities during the pandemic, the researchers believe their findings will make meaningful impact for people affected by this public health issue.

For example, the group points out that misinformation masquerading as medical racism further targeted Black communities. As a result, this both degraded trust in institutions and diminished vaccine efficacy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Purdue University Assistant Professor Laura Schwab-Reese, an expert in community and behavioral health, joins Kumar and De Choudhury the research group. Together, they will collaborate with the non-profit Anti-Defamation League during the study. Backed with CDC funding, the team will develop tools to study and find solutions to violence-provoking health misinformation.

For example, the researchers will start by developing algorithms to detect health misinformation and violence-provoking hate speech targeting minorities. These algorithms will rely on the latest machine learning methodologies and social media data sets.

From there, the group can build an interactive dashboard that maps the spread of violence-provoking misinformation online and offers analytic capabilities on the visualized data for end users. This will provide quantitative insight about the causal relationship between misinformation exposure and violent attitudes toward targeted communities.

Finally, the team will provide an intervention design plan to mitigate the impact of the misinformation. This will include presenting exploratory evaluation of interventions, and even creating new social media-based intervention tools that can interrupt misinformation.

By leveraging computing methods and interdisciplinary collaboration, the group is poised to make online and physical communities safer places for all.

“The reason we are partnering with the Anti-Defamation League and public health researchers is because community engagement is paramount in this work,” De Choudhury said. “One of the unique things about this study is that the computational techniques and interventions we will develop will be informed by the communities who are targeted by these incidents.”

Summary sentence

Srijan Kumar and Munmun De Choudhury receive CDC grant

Dateline

Wed, 10/12/2022 - 12:00

Contact

Bryant Wine, Communications Officer
bryant.wine@cc.gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Computational Science and Engineering

Categories

Institute and Campus

Community

Student and Faculty

Research

Computer Science/Information Technology and Security

Policy, Social Sciences, and Liberal Arts

Core research areas

Cybersecurity

Data Engineering and Science

People and Technology

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

662017

Source updated

Wed, 10/12/2022 - 09:47

Researchers Find Understanding and Embracing Intercultural Tensions and Differences in Teams Increases Information Elaboration and Creativity

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 19:50:18 +0000

Researchers Find Understanding and Embracing Intercultural Tensions and Differences in Teams Increases Information Elaboration and Creativity admin Thu, 02/02/2023 - 14:50

"Teamwork makes the dream work." It's a popular phrase used to describe the merits of working in teams to get things done. When applied successfully, creating and collaborating with coworkers can produce results that surpass a single individual's contribution.

In the past, teams were mostly homogeneous because this was the makeup of most organizations in the U.S. Today, teams are more diverse, and organizations can reap the benefits that individuals with different ethnicities and cultures bring to the table.

But not all teams are more collaborative because of their multicultural makeup. In fact, these differences may produce tensions and an inability to see the other side, creating barriers that would otherwise enable teams to foster creativity and information elaboration - the process of verbally expressing and exchanging information and viewpoints, and elaborating on these ideas. On the other hand, if a team downplays these differences, it could stifle constructive dialogue and creativity.

How does a team of individuals from different backgrounds coalesce by using their differences to their advantage rather than allowing them to inhibit information elaboration and creativity?

That's the question two researchers, Christina Shalley and Pier Vittorio Mannucci, asked in their paper "Embracing multicultural tensions: How team members' multicultural paradox mindsets foster team information elaboration and creativity," published by Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, November 2022.

The Multicultural Paradox Mindset

According to Shalley, Sharon M. and Matthew R. Price Chair, and professor of Organizational Behavior at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, one or more team members need to have a multicultural paradox mindset (MPM) to steer the team to creative success.

The researchers define multicultural paradox mindset (MPM) as "the degree to which one is accepting of and energized by intercultural tensions, both emphasizing cultural differences and finding common ground." Their analysis finds that team members who demonstrate a high MPM can positively accept and embrace these conflicting ideas to influence team behavior.

"A diverse team has the potential to be better at information elaboration, and, thus, creativity, than a non-diverse team. However, this potential needs to be unlocked. The presence of a member with high MPM is one way to achieve this within multicultural teams," Shalley explained.

These individuals, rather than ignoring differences, or as the researchers call it, taking "the cultural-blind approach," embrace differences and encourage other team members to express themselves and their perspectives, bringing more value to the creative process.

Testing Their Theory

To test their theory of the advantages of having an MPM, the researchers chose 217 participants and divided them into 63 diverse teams. Shalley and Mannucci divided the teams into "clusters" rather than geographical locations to ensure the teams met cultural diversity. For example, they placed a person from Spain with a person from China rather than putting a person from Spain and a person from France together.

They provided the teams with a scenario of an employee who was granted the ability to work from home to help an aging relative. This setup only became an issue when other employees wanted the same opportunity.

Each team was tasked with coming up with creative solutions to send to HR based on the available information.

"We found this task to be particularly well-suited for a study focusing on culturally diverse teams because of the deep cross-cultural differences in terms of views on work-life balance and remote work, how to care for family members, valuing the elderly, and overall HR policies and practices," Shalley wrote.

The researchers accounted for several variables, including the way creativity is defined among individuals, gender diversity, and those who had lived abroad, which might have affected their experiences of and tolerance for different cultures.

In addition, the team accounted for team members who came from countries with a "tight" culture. These individuals tend to be warier of different values and perspectives and may not be as comfortable expressing creative ideas. This differed from a secondary group Shalley and her colleague considered who came from a "loose" culture." These individuals tend to assimilate more easily in a group, which may result in more team members possessing a multicultural paradox mindset.

As Shalley put it, "leaders should definitely keep in mind who has a MPM when assembling a multicultural team. Without one (or more) members with a MPM, the risk of not unlocking the creative potential of the multicultural team is very high," Shalley noted.

Summary sentence

Team members who embrace diversity while acknowledging differences are more successful at building teams who display collaboration and information elaboration.

Summary

Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business faculty member Christina Shalley discovers having a team member with a multicultural paradox mindset allows teams to be more creative and productive.

Dateline

Thu, 02/02/2023 - 12:00

Contact

Lorrie Burroughs

Sidebar

Team members who embrace diversity while acknowledging differences are more successful at building teams who display collaboration and information elaboration.

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business

go-researchnews

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Categories

Institute and Campus

Business

Core research areas

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

665412

Source updated

Thu, 02/02/2023 - 12:59

Researchers Find that to Achieve Long-term Sustainability, Urban Systems Must Tackle Social Justice and Equity

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 22:45:37 +0000

Researchers Find that to Achieve Long-term Sustainability, Urban Systems Must Tackle Social Justice and Equity admin Fri, 01/20/2023 - 17:45

Inclusivity and understanding past policies and their effects on underserved and marginalized communities must be part of urban planning, design, and public policy efforts for cities.

An international coalition of researchers — led by Georgia Tech — have determined that advancements and innovations in urban research and design must incorporate serious analysis and collaborations with scientists, public policy experts, local leaders, and citizens. To address environmental issues and infrastructure challenges cities face, the coalition identified three core focus areas with research priorities for long-term urban sustainability and viability. Those focus areas should be components of any urban planning, design, and sustainability initiative.

The researchers found that the core focus areas included social justice and equity, circularity, and a concept called “digital twins.” The team — which consists of 13 co-authors and scholars based in the U.S., Asia, and Europe — also provided guidance and future research directions for how to address these focus areas. They detailed their findings in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, published in January 2023.

“Climate change has certainly increased the amount and intensity of extreme weather events and because of that, it makes our decision making today critical to the manner in which our economy and our day to day lives can operate,” said Joe F. Bozeman III, the lead author and an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is also the director of Tech’s Social Equity & Environmental Engineering Lab and has a courtesy appointment in the School of Public Policy. “Our quality of life can be negatively affected if we don't make good decisions today.”

Three core areas of focus to achieve urban sustainability

The researchers’ first core focus area, justice and equity, addresses innovations and trends that disproportionately benefit middle and high-income communities. Trends like IoT, “smart cities,” and the urban “green movement” are part of a broader push by cities to become more sustainable and resilient. But communities of color and low-income neighborhoods — the same areas often home to environmental contaminations, infrastructure challenges, and other hazards — have often been overlooked.

The researchers’ findings showed a consistent trend with marginalized communities across several countries, including Canada, the Netherlands, India, and South Africa. They call for mandatory equity analyses which incorporate the experiences and perspectives of these marginalized communities, and, more importantly, ensure members of those communities are actively engaged in decision-making processes.

“Planning, professional, and community stakeholders,” the researchers write in the paper, “should recognize that working together gets cities closer to harmonizing the technological and social dimensions of sustainability.”

The second focus area, circularity, addresses resource consumption of staple commodities including food, water, and energy; the waste and emissions they generate; and the opportunities to increase conservation of those resources by boosting efficiencies.

“What we mean by circularity is basic reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling efforts across the entire urban system — which not only includes cities and under resourced areas within those cities — but also rural communities that supply and take resources from those city hubs,” Bozeman said. The idea is aligned with the circular economy concept which addresses the need to move away from the resource-wasteful and unsustainable cycle of taking, making, and throwing away.

Instead, the researchers argue, cities should look for ways to improve efficiency and maximize local resource use. That has potential benefits not only for urban areas, but rural communities, too. One example, Bozeman said, is the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta. It takes old building supplies and sells them locally for reuse.

“By doing that, they’re at the beginning stages of creating an economic system, a regional engine where we share resources between cities and rural areas,” he said. “We can start creating an economic framework, not only where both sides can make money and get what they need, but something that can actually turn into a sustainable economic engine without having to rely on another state or another country's import or export economic pressures.”

To strengthen circularity and make it more robust, the researchers call for more expansive metrics beyond measuring recycling rates and zero waste efforts, to include other parts of the supply chain that may yield new ideas and solutions.

The third focus area, digital twins, addresses the development of automated technologies in smart buildings and infrastructure, such as traffic lights to respond to weather and other environmental factors.

“Let's say there's a heavy rain event and that the rainwater is being stored into retainment,” said Bozeman. “An automated system can open another valve where we can store that water into a secondary support system, so there's less flooding, and that can happen automatically, if we utilize the concept of digital twins.”

Creating a new urban planning model

The research came about as part of the mission of the Sustainable Urban Systems Section of the International Society for Industrial Ecology, which aims to be a conduit for scientists, engineers, policymakers, and others who want to marry environmental concerns and economic activity. Bozeman is a board member of the Sustainable Urban Systems Section.

“In that role, part of we do is set a vision and foundation for how other researchers should operate within the city and urban system space,” he said.

For urban sustainability, engineers and policy makers must come to the table and make collective decisions around social justice and equity, circularity, and the digital twins concepts.

“I think we're at a really critical decision point when it comes to engineers and others being able to do work that is forward looking and human sensitive,” said Bozeman. “Good decision making involves addressing social justice and equity and understanding its root causes, which will enable cities to create solutions that integrate cultural dynamics.”

CITATION: Joe F. Bozeman III, Shauhrat S. Chopra, Philip James, Sajjad Muhammad, Hua Cai, Kangkang Tong, Maya Carrasquillo, Harold Rickenbacker, Destenie Nock, Weslynne Ashton, Oliver Heidrich, Sybil Derrible, Melissa Bilec. “Three research priorities for just and sustainable urban systems: Now is the time to refocus.” (Journal of Industrial Ecology, January 2023)

Summary sentence

Inclusivity and understanding past policies and their effects on underserved and marginalized communities must be part of urban planning, design, and public policy efforts for cities.

Dateline

Fri, 01/20/2023 - 12:00

peralte.paul@comm.gatech.edu

Contact

Péralte C. Paul
peralte.paul@comm.gatech.edu
404.316.1210

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

go-researchnews

Joe Bozeman

justice

Cities

Green Buzz

News room topics

Science and Technology

Society and Culture

Categories

Policy, Social Sciences, and Liberal Arts

Core research areas

People and Technology

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

664936

Source updated

Fri, 01/20/2023 - 15:27

Ecolabels, Innovation, and Green Market Transformation: Learning to LEED

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:45:16 +0000

Ecolabels, Innovation, and Green Market Transformation: Learning to LEED admin Thu, 01/19/2023 - 14:45

Whether they know it or not, most city dwellers have probably been inside a so-called “green” building. Plaques boasting various types of environmental or energy certifications — known as ecolabels — often hang prominently in their lobbies. They’re visible, but how can we know if ecolabels have a real impact or are mostly about showing off?

Daniel Matisoff, professor of public policy at Georgia Tech, illuminates the role and impact of green building ecolabels in his book, Ecolabels, Innovation, and Green Market Transformation: Learning to LEED, which traces the curve of ecolabel adoption in the building market, revealing how ecolabels have transformed the economy and construction industry to achieve green market transformation. Co-authored by Douglas Noonan, professor of public policy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, it is the first book to comprehensively assess the green building movement. The book was published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022.

Green building ecolabels, simply stated, are marks or designations that indicate environmental performance and sustainability certifications. Matisoff and Noonan investigated prominent ecolabels, such as LEED, and examined how they work, exploring the theory and economics behind them. They also studied factors and initiatives that drive the adoption of green building ecolabels, breaking down the green building movement step-by-step.

“A central premise of the book is that early adopters, whether they are creating a demonstration project — such as Georgia Tech’s own Kendeda Building — or adopting an ecolabel early on produce positive information spillovers that help accelerate adoption of green technologies,” Matisoff said.

According to the authors, early adopters do this by moving both supply and demand curves for new energy and environmental technologies. When early adopters employ and experiment with new green building technologies, they help build supply chains, lowering costs for others interested in adopting the technologies. Undertaking green building projects also proves the market performance of new energy and environmental technologies, thereby reducing uncertainty and increasing demand by making them more visible and widely available.

“Early adopters often build pilot and demonstration projects largely for a marketing or reputational benefit, but then that provides positive information spillover to the market,” Matisoff said. “For example, once contractors become familiar with new energy and environmental technologies, they can recommend them to clients for new building projects.”

By looking at data, Matisoff found that there has been a rapid uptake of buildings using the LEED label. But the question that remained was, what does it ultimately accomplish? To answer that question, Matisoff and Noonan looked at several case studies. One such case study is The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, a certified “Living Building,” at Georgia Tech.

The Kendeda Building: Tossing a Pebble in a Pond

The goal of The Kendeda Building was to create a facility that would transform the building and construction industry in the Southeast. Matisoff considered that a testable hypothesis. The Kendeda building inspired Matisoff and his collaborators to dig into 30 years of LEED data to look at the effect of pilot and demonstration projects. They found that if you have a demonstration project in a particular geographic location, it doubles the probability that another green building is going to be built that has similar technologies.

For example, an electrical contracting company working on Kendeda noted that being forced to work with high density poly-ethylene (HDPE) piping — a sustainable alternative to using PVC piping for electrical conduit — led them to realize that HDPE was cheaper and easier to work with, in addition to being a more ecofriendly alternative. The contractor intends to switch to HDPE piping in future projects.

“We at Georgia Tech, by building the Living Building, are providing all this information to the marketplace,” Matisoff said. “And the hope is that other universities or institutions may see this building and say, ‘Hey, we want one of those.’”

Moving Forward

Lessons in Matisoff’s book include how to harness information spillover in addition to more traditional price tools such as subsidies, taxes, and cap-and-trade emissions policies. The authors highlight the importance of leveraging private actors to provide information to the market and suggest that policymakers think carefully about how to incentivize early adopters into the green building market, beyond just prices.

While recent legislation has created a lot of price incentives, subsidies, and tax breaks designed to encourage people to make greener choices, Matisoff’s work emphasizes that, especially at early stages, prices probably aren't enough.

“It's unlikely that there's enough momentum in the policy space to get to where we need to be to address climate change,” Matisoff said. “We hope the book will help us think more carefully about how we leverage information and learning to accelerate the uptake of advanced energy and environmental technologies to facilitate green market transformation.”

Matisoff also hopes the comprehensive study will show the roughly 100,000 certified green building professionals around the world that their efforts have been worth it.

“We wanted to tell a story, especially to green building professionals, about what they’ve accomplished over the past few decades, and the impact their work will have for years to come.”

Summary sentence

Daniel Matisoff's book traces the curve of ecolabel adoption in the building market, revealing how it has transformed the economy and construction industry to achieve green market transformation.

Dateline

Thu, 01/19/2023 - 12:00

catherine.barzler@gatech.edu

Contact

Catherine Barzler, Senior Research Writer and Editor

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Green Buzz

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Earth and Environment

Core research areas

Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure

People and Technology

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

664910

Source updated

Thu, 01/19/2023 - 14:40

Researchers Find Education Intervention Doesn't Live Up to Promise

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 19:13:40 +0000

Researchers Find Education Intervention Doesn't Live Up to Promise admin Mon, 11/07/2022 - 14:13

This story by Mike Scott is shared with the Case Western Reserve University newsroom.

New research suggests the “growth mindset” strategy favored by some educators to improve student performance hasn’t lived up to its promise—resulting in time and effort dedicated to growth mindsets in the classroom without meaningful gains in grades or test scores.

More than 30 years ago, noted psychologist Carol Dweck proposed that students with a growth mindset—those who believe their intelligence can “grow” with effort— focus more on learning, work hard, seek challenges and are resilient to setbacks.

Teaching students to hold a growth mindset, Dweck has said, will lead to greater academic achievement.

But recent research from Brooke Macnamara, of Case Western Reserve University, and Alexander Burgoyne, of the Georgia Institute of Technology examining all relevant studies on the topic, found little to no positive effect of growth mindset interventions on student performance.

Growth Mindset Popularity

Since Dweck’s theory first emerged in the 1980s and especially following her 2006 book, “Mindset: The new psychology of success,” an entire industry of nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies has emerged.

Some of those organizations distribute the interventions to schools, teachers, parents and students, claiming the motivational materials boost academic achievement.

Despite growth mindset’s popularity in schools and other settings, the interventions may be largely ineffective and may even be harmful by pulling resources away from more promising efforts, the researchers said.

“Taken together, the research suggests that time and money might be better spent elsewhere,” said Macnamara, an associate professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve and the study’s lead author. “Those resources could be used to update class materials, develop more promising interventions, or make systemic changes.”

Their findings, based on analyzing previous studies of interventions designed to give students a growth mindset, were published recently in the journal Psychological Bulletin.

The Research

Macnamara and Burgoyne examined every study they could find—more than 60—that compared the academic achievement of students receiving a growth mindset intervention to a control group.

They also evaluated the quality of each intervention study and whether the study authors had potential financial conflicts of interest.

The researchers found that:

Study authors with a financial incentive to report positive effects—such as those employed by a company that sells growth mindset interventions—were more than twice as likely to report positive effects;
Financial incentives also appeared to influence which results were published and which were not. In one study, thousands of students whose academic achievement suggested the growth mindset intervention was ineffective were discarded from the main results pre-publication;
Many growth mindset interventions couldn’t demonstrate they changed students’ beliefs about intelligence—the intervention’s primary aim;
Of the interventions that did change students’ mindsets, there was no observable impact on academic achievement. This suggests that a student’s mindset might not mean much when it comes to performing well in school; and
When low-quality studies were analyzed, such as those where teacher expectations were not controlled and where the researchers had financial incentives to report positive effects, growth mindset interventions appeared to work, but the effect was very small. Achievement was only a fraction higher for students who received an intervention than students in the control groups. By contrast, when only the highest-quality studies were examined, the effect disappeared.

Why might low-quality studies yield more promising results?

“We found that teachers frequently knew which students had been assigned to receive the intervention,” Burgoyne said. “Expectations can influence study outcomes. Teachers may expect students who receive growth mindset training to work harder, which could, in turn, influence how they interact with those students and grade them.”

“Couple that with financial incentives and popular-press hype,” Burgoyne said, “and you have a recipe for the widespread adoption of growth mindset interventions in schools without much solid evidence to back it up.”

“The concept of growth mindset is appealing; it’s a feel-good idea,” Macnamara said. “But the claims of growth mindset interventions do not stand up to rigorous scientific inquiry.”

Citation: Macnamara, B. N., & Burgoyne, A. P. (2022). Do growth mindset interventions impact students’ academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000352

Summary sentence

Analysis of ‘growth mindset’ research suggests little to no positive effect on student performance

Summary

Dateline

Mon, 11/07/2022 - 12:00

Contact

Mike Scott
Media Relations
Case Western Reserve University

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

cos-community

go-researchnews

School of Psychology

growth mindset

learning

Research

News room topics

Society and Culture

Core research areas

People and Technology

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

662931

Source updated

Mon, 11/07/2022 - 14:12

South and West Lead the Nation in Multidimensional Poverty, Georgia Tech Researcher Finds

bwaye3 — Fri, 27 May 2022 13:46:42 +0000

South and West Lead the Nation in Multidimensional Poverty, Georgia Tech Researcher Finds bwaye3 Fri, 05/27/2022 - 09:46

New research from Associate Professor Shatakshee Dhongde in Georgia Tech’s School of Economics finds that people living in California, Texas, and Florida were more likely than other U.S. residents to experience multiple forms of deprivation, such as lack of access to healthcare or affordable housing. These multiple deprivations combined to push many into a state of poverty that has not been picked up in official income-based measures. 

Dhongde's paper, written with co-author Robert Haveman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is her latest in a series of work on the topic and the first to break down multidimensional poverty on a state-by-state level over more than a decade.

"This is important because there was much variation across states in how the Great Recession and the following recovery affected the multidimensional poor," Dhongde said. "Now we can apply those lessons to Covid recovery efforts to help ensure the policies are as effective as possible and reaching the people who need it the most."

Geographic and demographic breakdown

Analyzing data from 2008 to 2019, the researchers found that multidimensional poverty increased across the United States during the Great Recession from 2008 to 2010 and gradually declined through 2019. 

The analysis showed that poverty among adults aged 18 to 65 was most widespread in the South and West. At the peak of the Great Recession in 2010, 20% of adults in Florida — more than two million people, according to census reports — were experiencing at least two measures of deprivation. In Texas, 22% of adults, totaling nearly 3.5 million people, were multidimensionally poor. However, the highest rate of multidimensional poverty was in California, where more than 5.5 million adults — nearly one in every four — were multidimensionally poor in 2010.

In the North, New York stood out as an exception with a high rate of multidimensional poverty. At the same time, states such as Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Vermont had some of the lowest multidimensional poverty rates, at  5% to 6% of the population.

According to the researchers, the high multidimensional poverty rate in California, Texas, and Florida is partially explained by their large Hispanic populations. Hispanics living in the United States are significantly more likely to experience two or more measures of poverty than other demographic groups, Dhongde and Haveman found. On average, they wrote, white people in the United States had the lowest multidimensional poverty rate at 10.4 percent, Black people and Asians had moderate rates at 14.8 and 16.5 percent, respectively, and Hispanics experienced the highest multidimensional poverty rates at 34.7 percent.

Little overlap with income deprivation

Surprisingly, the researchers found that having an income below the poverty line and experiencing multidimensional poverty (living with at least two of the six alternative deprivations) did not significantly overlap. According to the research, 13% of adults were multidimensional poor, and about 12.5% were income poor. However, there was a small overlap between the two groups; only 5.5% were both income poor and multidimensional poor.

Of the six deprivations studied, most multidimensional poor lacked health insurance and a high school education. They also faced a severe housing cost burden. “This underscores our argument that income poverty often fails to capture deprivation in other dimensions affecting the quality of life,” Dhongde and Haveman wrote. 

Less surprisingly, “among individuals who were not income poor, deprivation was highest when individuals had incomes just above the poverty threshold,” the researchers found. They recommend expanding policies to help individuals living just above the poverty line as well as those below it to help reduce multidimensional poverty in the U.S.

Translating these lessons to Covid-19

The researchers also noted that immigrants were four times more likely to be multidimensionally poor than those born in the United States, and that multidimensional poverty rates were highest among children and young adults, single-parent families, and immigrants. Dhongde and Haveman speculate that these population groups are also the most likely to be socially and economically affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In coming years, as the country recovers from the pandemic, it will be even more important to monitor multidimensional poverty in conjunction with income poverty in order to get a better idea of the impact on the quality of life experienced by a country’s population,” they wrote.  

Spatial and Temporal Trends in Multidimensional Poverty in the United States over the Last Decade was published in Social Indicators Research: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-022-02902-z.

The article is the latest in Dhongde's body of literature on the topic, which includes studies on multidimensional poverty during the Covid pandemic, during the Great Recession, among senior citizens, and across racial and ethnic groups. Her work has been featured on NPR, in US News and World Report, Public Health Post, How Stuff Works, and many other outlets.

Summary sentence

Associate Professor Shatakshee Dhongde's paper her latest in a series of work on the topic and the first to break down multidimensional poverty on a state-by-state level over more than a decade.

Dateline

Thu, 05/26/2022 - 12:00

di.minardi@gatech.edu

Contact

Di Minardi

di.minardi@gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

poverty

Research

south

Wage Inequality

housing inequality

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Categories

City Planning, Transportation, and Urban Growth

Policy, Social Sciences, and Liberal Arts

Core research areas

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

658560

Source updated

Thu, 05/26/2022 - 16:20

Borowitz Testifies to Need for Civil-Sector Space Monitoring

bwaye3 — Wed, 25 May 2022 13:49:03 +0000

Borowitz Testifies to Need for Civil-Sector Space Monitoring bwaye3 Wed, 05/25/2022 - 09:49

Mariel Borowitz, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, recently testified before a congressional subcommittee to the benefits of establishing a civil agency to manage how the U.S. tracks objects orbiting Earth.

“It was an honor to have the opportunity to speak to Congress on this issue. Satellites are critical to the economy and security of people all over the world and ensuring that we keep the space environment safe and sustainable is incredibly important,” Borowitz said after the hearing.

Borowitz appeared before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics on May 12 for a hearing on “Space Situational Awareness: Guiding the Transition to a Civil Capability.” In her opening remarks, Borowitz discussed the need for a safe and secure way to conduct Space Situational Awareness, or SSA, to track objects in space, predict their future location, and anticipate potential collisions. The Defense Department oversees SSA and monitors more than 44,000 space objects.

“Right now, the U.S. Department of Defense operates the most advanced SSA system in the world. They collect data from a wide array of sensors and fuse that data to create a catalog of space objects. They also conduct analysis that allows them to predict the future location of these objects and provide advanced warning of potential collisions (referred to as conjunctions). The basic version of the space catalog as well as the conjunction warnings are made available free of charge to all satellite operators around the world,” she said.

As more commercial and non-U.S. entities collect and monitor additional data on space objects, Congress is evaluating the need for a civil agency to oversee these services so the DoD can focus on its primary national security mission. This move would also build better partnerships between the government and private sector satellite owner/operators and streamline the otherwise complex process.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce is under consideration for handling SSA activities, according to a 2018 space policy directive signed by then-President Donald Trump. The office piloted an open architecture data repository in 2021 capable of data sharing among government and commercial space operators and is seeking more money to maintain the program.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Don Beyer, D-Virginia, said the federal government needs to move quickly to develop a framework for who handles space traffic management to further mitigate the creation of orbital debris.

“While the U.S. has led the world in actionable SSA services and information, other nations are quickly getting into the game and developing advanced approaches to SSA and space traffic coordination. We can’t afford to lose our edge,” he said.

Borowitz joined panelists Matthew Hejduk, senior project leader of the Aerospace Corporation; Moriba Jah, associate professor in the Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department at the University of Texas at Austin; Andrew D’Uva, senior policy advisor for the Space Data Association; and Kevin M. O’Connell, founder of Space Economy Rising, LLC.

Borowitz conducts research on international space policy issues and teaches courses on Space Policy and Space Security. Georgia Tech also offers graduate certificate programs on Astrobiology, Space Entrepreneurship, and International Security and Aerospace Systems, as well as a one-year master’s in International Affairs, Science, and Technology.

Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Florida, EE 1971, asked about specific research priorities the federal government should invest in to advance SSA capabilities.

Borowitz said technical research can be done to improve the types of useful data that is collected, as well as examine algorithms to better integrate data to predict collisions.

“There’s also work we can do on the social science side that will be important to look at how we organize this system both within the United States and how we engage in international cooperation in this area. It really is an inherently international issue and it’s something we want to be on the same page with other nations about,” she added.

Borowitz noted that for any civil agency to be successful in these endeavors, it must have a clear definition of its mission and the types of data collecting and monitoring services it offers; it must evaluate the quality of product that it can provide free of charge; it must define how it partners with the international community; and it must work efficiently and effectively in a timely manner with the academic and commercial sector to provide accurate SSA data.

She compared the agency’s responsibilities to how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides weather forecasts and analysis to public and private sectors.

“The United States has a thriving commercial weather sector that’s capable of producing a wide variety of products and services. And yet, the government provides forecasts, severe weather watches and warnings for free. This is because the government has a responsibility to ensure all people have access to this critical safety information. And the same is true for SSA,” Borowitz said.

“Providing these high-quality warnings that help satellite operators avoid collisions and ensure the long-term sustainability of space is really in the U.S. national interest.”

A recording of the hearing and Borowitz’s written testimony can be found on the U.S. House of Representatives website.

Summary sentence

Borowitz recommended the transition of space monitoring from the Defense Department to a civil agency.

Summary

Borowitz recommended the transition of space monitoring from the Defense Department to a civil agency.

Dateline

Thu, 05/19/2022 - 12:00

Contact

Kelly Petty

Communications Officer

kelly.petty@iac.gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

News room topics

Science and Technology

Core research areas

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

658364

Source updated

Mon, 05/23/2022 - 16:32

Georgia Leaders Discuss the Business of Climate Solutions

bwaye3 — Fri, 13 May 2022 17:40:14 +0000

Georgia Leaders Discuss the Business of Climate Solutions bwaye3 Fri, 05/13/2022 - 13:40

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian recently discussed how businesses, both small and large, can make positive changes to address urgent issues such as climate change. The conversation, “The Business of Climate Solutions, Local to Global,” was moderated by SaportaReport editor Maria Saporta and CNN national correspondent Nick Valencia, and hosted at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The event was part of the Atlanta Press Club’s Newsmaker Leadership Series and produced in partnership with the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, an initiative of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business. Read more for highlights from the discussion.

Urgent Action Needed

When Saporta asked Cabrera to rank on a scale of one to 10 the degree of urgency with which climate change needs to be addressed, without missing a beat, he responded, “10.” He referred to the latest “sobering” report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which describes how the perils of climate change are not only in the future but are already here now.

Bastian said, “We can’t walk out of this timeframe without a renewed commitment to replenishing the Earth … and creating an opportunity for all of our children going forward.”

Cabrera, hopeful that humanity can find solutions for this present threat, used the lightning-fast development of the Covid-19 vaccine as an example of what can happen when humanity unites to face a global threat. Solving the climate crisis, he said, will require “the best of our best thinking” from scientists, engineers, policy experts, social scientists, and others in many fields.

Embrace Innovative Solutions

Cabrera additionally shared how Georgia Tech and Delta partnered on a project to remove the wiring from certain aircraft entertainment systems to make them wireless devices. That small change, removing kilograms of material from planes, led to improvement on the fleet’s overall efficiency. Cabrera said, “A lot of innovation is not about, ‘Oh, let’s all stop flying … or stop living.’ No, it’s, ‘How can we be smart about doing this?’” He acknowledged Georgia Tech experts in the room who understand what types of combustion technology can be most efficient, and those who are working on carbon capture. He said that while some may think carbon reduction is anti-business, the truth is quite the opposite. Cabrera said that many innovative solutions will, in fact, create more opportunities for business.

Scaling Up

Developing innovative ideas and technologies isn’t the problem. The question is: How are they to be funded and scaled? Bastian said, “Ninety-eight percent of [Delta’s] footprint is fossil fuel … jet fuel.” The airline industry is classified as “hard-to-decarbonize.” While Delta is working with Georgia Tech and other organizations on how to replace their energy source, there isn’t presently a viable alternative to jet fuel. Bastian said, “At Delta, if we acquired all of the sustainable aviation fuel that exists in production today in the world, it’s enough to fuel our planes for one day.” Even though sustainable aviation fuel can be produced, it’s incredibly expensive, costing anywhere from three to five times a gallon more than jet fuel. “Energy producers aren’t going to invest the tens of billions of dollars required unless they know they’re going to have somebody on their side,” said Bastian.

The speakers expressed hope that our government can intervene the same way it did with electric vehicles (EVs). Incentives and subsidies created the investment for EVs to be produced – and this segment of the auto industry is now seeing a boom.

Preparing Business Leaders

The Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business supports corporate sustainability through education, research, and industry partnerships. It is motivated by the example set by sustainable business visionary and Interface founder Ray C. Anderson (IE 1956, Honorary Ph.D. 2011), who understood the role of business in tackling the big challenges the world is facing.

Cabrera said, “[The center] is aligned with this vision that business ... and business leaders have a key role to play. And it all starts when a business leader says, ‘This is important, and I want to hire someone to lead the effort.’” He also explained that the solutions that are going to be coming forward are not just new technologies but new business models that accompany those technologies.

Climate Solutions Start at Home

Drawdown Georgia is a multi-university research collaboration led by Georgia Tech, with leadership from the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. Its research has resulted in a list of 20 proposed carbon solutions tailored to Georgia to help businesses of all sizes understand the importance of their carbon impact.

Cabrera said, “This is an effort to bring this global problem close to home.”

Drawdown Georgia takes into consideration the state’s unique economy, population mix, and geography. Delta is one of the 28 (and counting) Drawdown Georgia Business Compact members seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and positively impact “beyond carbon” issues of equity, economic development, and public health.

Overall, the discussion underscored the urgent need for businesses, the government, and individuals to take action immediately. Valencia summarized what exactly is at stake. He said, “This is one of the most important discussions of our time. As a father of two small children, I want to make sure that I leave a good world here behind for my kids, and I know that these individuals here are doing their part to make sure that the future generations have a world to live in.”

In addition to the Atlanta Press Club and the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, other sponsors included Delta Air Lines and Southern Company Gas.

Summary sentence

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian discuss how businesses can make positive changes to address urgent issues such as climate change.

Summary

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian discuss how businesses can make positive changes to address urgent issues such as climate change.

Dateline

Tue, 05/03/2022 - 12:00

Contact

Jennifer Lux

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business; sustainability

News room topics

Business and Economic Development

Categories

Institute and Campus

Alumni

Economic Development and Policy

Business

City Planning, Transportation, and Urban Growth

Energy

Environment

Core research areas

Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

657917

Source updated

Fri, 05/13/2022 - 10:10

New Study Shows Hybrid Learning Led to Significant Reduction in Covid-19 Spread

bwaye3 — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 13:36:44 +0000

New Study Shows Hybrid Learning Led to Significant Reduction in Covid-19 Spread bwaye3 Fri, 04/29/2022 - 09:36

As communities continue a shift toward normalcy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering have helped quantify the effectiveness of one of the most commonly-debated mitigation measures taken across the country.

A new study published in BMC Public Health shows that hybrid learning utilizing alternating school days for children offers a significant reduction in community disease spread. Total closure in favor of remote learning, however, offers little additional advantage over that hybrid option.

This research will help decision-makers in the event of another Covid-19 outbreak or one from a similar infectious disease.

“Early in the pandemic when school closures were becoming the norm, many debated the pros and cons of this measure,” said Pinar Keskinocak, the William W. George Chair and Professor in ISyE and the principal investigator on the study. “Do we get enough benefit to offset the social costs and impacts on education? This research shows that there is a benefit in infection reduction, especially in the absence of effective pharmaceutical interventions, and most of the benefits can be attained with a hybrid approach.”

This study is particularly relevant for the early days of an infectious disease outbreak when policymakers face the difficult decision of enacting school closures in their respective districts. Using an agent-based simulation model of Covid-19 spread, researchers projected the impact of various school reopening strategies: complete closure, alternating school days where one cohort attended in person twice a week and another cohort on the opposite days, younger children only, and regular (i.e. all students return to in-person learning).

Results showed that compared to schools reopening with regular attendance, the percentage of the population infected reduced by 13, 11, 9, and 6 percent with each respective strategy. The conclusions were that some level of closure – younger children only, alternating days, and completely remote – offers significant reduction in community-wide infections. The benefit of complete closure over a hybrid approach, however, was minimal.

The assumption in all cases was that individuals who contracted the virus would remain at home.

“The additional benefit of complete school closure compared to hybrid was relatively small,” Keskinocak said. “The implementation of an alternating day model can be challenging but could have public health benefits early in the pandemic or during a new wave, providing social and learning benefits as well.”

Other challenges remain that were not investigated in this particular research – costs on families in the event of school closures, learning tradeoffs, properly equipping students for virtual learning, and others. This is just one element of many for policymakers to consider, Keskinocak said.

CITATION: Arden Baxter, Buse Eylul Oruc, John Asplund, Pinar Keskinocak, Nicoleta Serban. Evaluating Scenarios for School Reopening under Covid-19. BMC Public Health. March 14, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12910-w

Subtitle

Complete school closure, however, offered only minimal additional spread reduction

Summary sentence

As communities continue a shift toward normalcy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Georgia Tech researchers have helped quantify the effectiveness of school closures on community spread reduction.

Summary

Dateline

Wed, 04/27/2022 - 12:00

Contact

David Mitchell

Communications Manager

david.mitchell@isye.gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

covid-19; isye; college of engineering; school closures; hybrid learning

go-researchnews

News room topics

Science and Technology

Core research areas

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Systems

Mercury ID

657685

Source updated

Thu, 04/28/2022 - 16:30