14 kinds of research we need for #reducinginequality

I leave a WT Grant Foundation grantees’ meeting on Reducing Inequality with a rough mental list of types of research that we need:

  1. Descriptive research on what is unequal, for whom, where.
  2. Causal research on what promotes inequality or inequality, and on the effects of various kinds of inequality.
  3. Descriptive and interpretive research on the lived experience of the poor or the relatively poor–including research that challenges simple assumptions about deficits and suffering. (E.g., Annette Lareau’s research on ways that working-class kids live better lives than middle-class kids.)
  4. Philosophical or other normative research that asks what should be equal for whom; how equality trades off against liberty, innovation, environmental sustainability, and other goods; and which interventions to enhance equity are ethically permissible–or obligatory–under various circumstances. (Cf. “we are for social justice, but what is it?”)
  5. Conceptual research: how should we define and operationalize such relevant concepts as human capital, political influence, or social capital. (See, e.g., this post on different theories of social capital or this one on defining equity versus equality..)
  6. Intervention research on programs and policies that improve the absolute or relative situation of the disadvantaged.
  7. Research about scaling: when and why do successful programs expand, and when is scaling beneficial? (A program that helps at scale X can be inappropriate or even counterproductive at 10X).
  8. Descriptive and interpretive research on the advantaged. What are their lives like, what deficits as well as advantages do they manifest, and how do they think about and treat the disadvantaged?
  9. Intervention research aimed at the advantaged. What works to change their behaviors to improve equity?
  10. Research on public opinion about inequality. Who thinks what, why, and how does that change?
  11. Research on what changes political decisions relevant to inequality. What are the effects of social movements, leadership, public rhetoric, and organizations?
  12. Research on when and why good research is used for policy or programming.
  13. Research on phenomena that lie between individuals and the whole society, such as networks, communities, movements, and markets. (See against methodological individualism.)
  14. Intellectual work that builds ideologies (in the good sense of that word): broad views that serve as heuristics. Think of the intellectual contributors to New Deal liberalism, Western European social democracy, libertarianism, or feminism.

(Thanks to Hiro Yoshikawa and Prudence Carter for stimulating some of these thoughts, but I’m responsible for omissions and mistakes.)

Join Free Webinar on NY Public Library Community Conversations Program, 12/5

Last year, we announced a two-year partnership with the American Library Association on a new initiative, Libraries Transforming Communities: Models for Change, which sought to train librarians in dialogue and deliberation processes with the goal of turning libraries into spaces of civic engagement and community discussions. We invite you to join a free one hour webinar on December 5th on how the New York Public Library created their Community Conversations series pilot to support the community in addressing important issues. In this webinar, you’ll learn how they developed the 11-month training program for librarians in 16 branches, tailored the conversation series to what the community needed, and implemented the series to deepen the libraries’ role as civic centers. You can read the announcement below and sign up to join the webinar here.


Community Conversations Across Neighborhoods: Dialogue-Driven Programming

Libraries have the potential to inspire local dialogue on timely issues across communities, positioning library staff as trusted facilitators. Join us for this free one-hour webinar to hear how New York Public Library created a conversation series on important issues in the diverse communities they serve.

In February 2017, the New York Public Library (NYPL) launched a Community Conversations pilot with the goal of further establishing branch libraries as key civic convening centers, providing space, information and quality discussion for communities to better understand and problem-solve around local issues.

Aligning with the ALA Public Programs Office’s Libraries Transforming Communities initiative, NYPL’s Adult Programming and Outreach Services (ORS) Office developed an original 11-month training program with staff from 16 branch libraries that resulted in a series of unique, community-led programs.

Program boundaries were kept flexible enough for branch staff to be able to design programs with their own diverse neighborhood communities in mind. Branches experimented with a variety of tactics to ensure community focus, including community issue voting boards, a public planning committee, community-mapping and final program sessions that invited attendees to discuss next steps.

Participants of this session will learn:

  • Best practices and lessons learned from NYPL’s Community Conversations programming
  • How to launch successful location-based Community Conversations initiatives that build partnerships and engage staff in new ways
  • Specific dialogue-driven program models that can be used as templates for programs in libraries across geographic locations

Presenters
Alexandra Kelly Berman is the manager of adult programming and outreach services at the New York Public Library, where she works with library staff across 88 neighborhood branches to introduce programs for local adult communities, including the recent Community Conversations pilot. Alexandra began at NYPL by developing and leading the successful multi-branch Community Oral History Project. Before working at NYPL, she was a facilitator at StoryCorps and received an M.A. from the School of Media Studies at The New School, where she also acted as director of student services + engagement. She has also launched several youth media projects around New York City, including an oral history project in Crown Heights, The Engage Media Lab program at The New School, and a documentary filmmaking project at Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

Andrew Fairweather is a librarian at the New York Public Library’s Seward Park branch in the Lower East Side. He is fervent in his belief that the library can serve as a unique platform for discussion about tricky issues and current events. He enjoys painting and drawing when not occupied with library work. Andrew’s interest in any one subject is incredibly unfaithful — he will read (most) anything as a result.

Nancy Aravecz is a senior adult librarian at the Jefferson Market branch of The New York Public Library. In this role, she focuses on providing top-notch discussion-based programming to the Greenwich Village community, centered around information literacy, technology, current events and classic works of literature. She is a recent graduate of Kent State University’s MLIS program, where she studied digital libraries. She also holds a previous MA degree in English Language and Letters from New York University, where her studies centered around literary theory and criticism, postcolonial studies and the digital humanities.

Related Learning Opportunities:

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Programming Librarian website (part of the American Library Association Public Programs Office) at www.programminglibrarian.org/learn/community-conversations-across-neighborhoods-dialogue-driven-programming.

Participatory Budgeting in North Wales (Your Community, Your Choice)

Problems and Purpose In this case study, the community programme ‘Your Community, Your Choice’ (established in 2013) uses the deliberative method of participatory budgeting (PB) to redistribute monetary funds seized from criminals in the local area. Since the 1980s, participatory budgeting has become an increasingly popular form of democratic innovation,...

ENGAGING IDEAS – 11/30/2018

Democracy

Will the Left Go Too Far? (The Atlantic)
For the third time in a century, leftists are driving the Democratic Party's agenda. Will they succeed in making America more equitable, or overplay their hand? Continue Reading

How local journalism can upend the "fake news" narrative (Salon.com)
A recent survey found that Americans trust local media outlets far more than national ones. Continue Reading

The Democratic Caucus Nominated Its Leadership. Here's What It Means. (New York Times)
For the third time in a century, leftists are driving the Democratic Party's agenda.
Democrats ushered in their leadership on Wednesday for the 116th Congress, including more than 200 returning and incoming members signaling that come January, they want Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to reclaim the speaker's gavel. Here are some of the takeaways from the caucus's votes.
Continue Reading


Opportunity/Inequality

The New Federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Would Remedy Decades of Injustice (The Nation)
America's 2 million domestic workers have minimal protections on the job. The bill announced today would fundamentally change their industry. Continue Reading

NYC's affordable housing agenda isn't doing enough for the city's neediest: report (Curbed New York)
Comptroller Scott Stringer's office says the current plan doesn't address the housing needs hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.
Continue Reading

How technological innovation could amplify income inequality (PBS NewsHour)
Technological advancement often brings the promise of increased efficiency in the workplace. But it also means apprehension about humans potentially being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. In a new series, "The Future of Work," Paul Solman explores the concept of "creative destruction" and how innovation is poised to affect jobs, income inequality, mental health and more.
Continue Reading


Engagement

Are Civics Lessons a Constitutional Right? This Student Is Suing for Them (New York Times)
Many see the lack of civics in schools as a national crisis. A federal lawsuit says it also violates the law. Continue Reading

Newark launches campaign to bolster civic engagement (NJTV Online)
The model has four components: civics in the schools; civics in the universities and online for all residents; associations of interested residents called civic trusts; and an embrace by City Hall of the concept of empowerment.
Continue Reading

What's New in Civic Tech: Ash Carter Calls for Tech to Align with 'Public Purpose' (Government Technology)
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called upon America's innovators and technologists - in both the public and private sectors - to use their work "with a public purpose," in a written piece published by The Atlantic last week.
Continue Reading


K-12

The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected (New York Times)
America's public schools are still promoting devices with screens - even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether. Continue Reading

'If we don't learn from this one, shame on us': Lessons from a Detroit charter school that was set up to fail (Chalkbeat)
A review of hundreds of pages of documents, and interviews with key leaders involved in the school since its creation, show that the forces arrayed against every school in Detroit had pushed Delta Prep's chances of survival to nothing within a year of its opening, if not before. Continue Reading

When doctors say 'Read,' new parents listen (Hechinger Report)
A campaign to get parents talking, reading and singing to their infants and toddlers by sending the message through pediatricians is working, new report shows. Continue Reading


Higher Ed/Workforce

US manufacturing has a huge image problem (Quartz)
The way Americans look at manufacturing might help explain why 2.4 million jobs could go unfilled between this year and 2028. Continue Reading

PA Mention - Google retraining college-educated moms for tech jobs (Education Dive)
Just as MotherCoders participants want to improve their career prospects by re-skilling, so do most prospective college students over the age of 25 when weighing whether to pursue a degree or certificate, according to a May 2018 report from the nonprofit Public Agenda research group. Because they often balance commitments such as families, jobs and expenses in addition to their education, features such as childcare and financial aid programs are draws for them. Continue Reading

New Film 'Unlikely' Shows How Higher Ed Sets Up Low-Income Students for Failure - and How Some Educators Are Helping Them Succeed (The 74)
As an admissions officer at her alma mater, Columbia University, Jaye Fenderson used to spend every day deciding whether high school applicants were likely to be admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, with its 7 percent acceptance rate. More often than not, Fenderson would mark applications with a large "U" - "Unlikely." Continue Reading


Health Care

Rate of children without insurance rises for first time since 2008 (Modern Healthcare)
For the first time since 2008, the number of uninsured children has increased, according to the report issued Tuesday by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families. The number of uninsured children under the age of 19 nationwide increased by an estimated 276,000 to about 3.9 million in 2017. The rate of uninsured children ticked upward from a historic low of 4.7% in 2016 to 5% in 2017.
Continue Reading

People with limited health insurance literacy more likely to avoid care (Healthcare Dive)
A new JAMA Network study found that lower health insurance literacy could be connected to people avoiding healthcare services, including preventive care.
Continue Reading

CVS closes $69B acquisition of Aetna in a 'transformative moment' for the industry (Fierce Healthcare)
The two companies closed the $69 billion deal on Wednesday, finishing off a vertical merger that makes one of the largest healthcare giants even larger.
Continue Reading

how to present mixed-methods research

(Washington, DC) I’m at a W.T. Grant Foundation grantees’ meeting on “reducing inequality” and currently listening to Tim Guetterman (University of Michigan) talking about mixed-methods research. Proponents and advanced practitioners of mixed-methods research form a community that is thinking hard about barriers and solutions to their research approaches. I’ve posted before about this community and its agenda. Meanwhile, I’m involved with colleagues on two fairly elaborate mixed-methods studies of our own: one on the effects of adolescents’ civic engagement on neighborhoods, the other on the role of an arts center in combatting the negative effects of gentrification.

One question is how to present qualitative and quantitative information together in an efficient format (fitting within journals’ word limits). Guetterman showed a nice example from Panda et al. (2015). These authors present findings by theme, with columns for the qualitative summaries and quantitative statistics. A third column could present reflections on divergences and convergences.

Panda, Samiran, et al. “Exploring stigma in low HIV prevalence settings in rural West Bengal, India: Identification of intervention considerations.” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 9.4 (2015): 362-385

NCL Webinar on Public Engagement in Fiscal Matters, 12/19

On Wednesday, December 19th, the National Civic League – an NCDD member and partner, will be offering the free webinar, “Engaging the Public in Fiscal Matters”, as part of their AAC Promising Practices Webinar series. The webinar will feature residents from two All-America Cities who will share how the public contributed to budget decisions in each of their cities. We encourage you to read more about the webinar in the post below and register on NCL’s Eventbrite site here.


AAC Promising Practices Webinar: Engaging the Public in Fiscal Matters

Can the public really help local governments make solid budget decisions? Of course!

Two communities – Hampton, Virginia, and Placentia, California – will share how residents have contributed their views on budget matters. In Hampton, City Manager Mary Bunting will discuss the I-Value effort in Hampton. In Placentia, Rosanna Ramirez, the city’s director of administrative services, will talk about the city’s Citizens Fiscal Sustainability Task Force.

Join the National Civic League for this free webinar on Wednesday, December 19th at 11:30 am PST/12:30 pm MST/1:30 pm CST/2:30 pm EST

To Join by Computer:
Sign on to the National Civic League’s Webex Meeting Room:
https://nationalcivicleague.my.webex.com/meet/ncl 
Access code: 622 739 287

To Join by Phone:
+1-510-338-9438 USA Toll
Access code: 622 739 287

If you missed the November AAC Promising Practices Webinar: Community-Wide Visioning with an Equity Lens – click here to listen to the recording! Learn more about how two All-America Cities underwent a community-wide visioning process with a specific focus on engagement and equity.

2019 All-America City Key Dates:

  • November 14, 2018 – Letter of Intent due for interested communities (LOI not required to apply)
  • March 5, 2019 – Application Due
  • April 2019 – Finalists Announced
  • June 21-23, 2019 – Awards competition and learning event in Denver, Colorado

All-America City Promising Practices Series
National Civic League is hosting a series of “AAC Promising Practices” webinars to share innovative and impactful AAC projects nationwide. This series will also highlight successful projects around the country with speakers from cities implementing creative strategies for civic engagement. By equipping individuals, institutions, and local governmental bodies through this series with ideas, models and insights that can be adopted/adapted to individual communities NCL hopes to accelerate the pace of change in communities across the country.

The All-America City Promising Practices webinars are made possible with support from Southwest Airlines, the official airline of the All-America City Awards.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the National Civic League’s site at www.nationalcivicleague.org/resource-center/promising-practices/.

a discussion of Civic Studies at Tufts

Here is a recent discussion of Civic Studies. The audience was Tufts alumni. The speakers (from left to right) are Tisch College’s Associate Dean Diane Ryan; Prof. Hilary Binda, who runs the Tufts University Prison Initiative at Tisch College; Prof. Alnoor Ebrahim of the Fletcher School and Tisch College, whose next book is  Measuring Social Change: Performance & Accountability in a Complex World; and me. We discuss what “Civic Studies” means at Tufts. Much more is written about it here.

 

Exciting New Book on 30 Years of Participatory Budgeting

For our participatory budgeting enthusiasts out there (and we know there are a lot of you!), NCDD member org – the Participatory Budgeting Project, recently shared the exciting new book, Hope for Democracy: 30 years of participatory budgeting worldwide. The 600-page volume, edited by Nelson Dias, features over 60 authors on their experiences with PB across the world over the last 30 years and offers great insights for how to further grow the PB movement. We are thrilled to note that folks are able to download this book for free! You can read more about it in the post below and find the original announcement on the PBP site here.


Hope for Democracy: A New Book Reflects on 30 Years of Participatory Budgeting

An expansive new volume edited by Nelson Dias features dispatches by more than 60 authors from the frontlines of participatory budgeting’s (PB) growth around the world. This book, Hope for Democracy, could not have come out at a better time for PB supporters in North America. Next year will mark 10 years of PB in the US and new opportunities to take PB to the next level: a big citywide process approved in NYC, hundreds of new school PB processes, and growing political interest in strengthening democracy.

To make the most of these great opportunities to revitalize democracy, we need to first learn from PB’s growth internationally. Dias and his collaborators deliver countless insights in their 600-page panorama. (Download the book for free here.)

We lift up the biggest lessons below…

Why have Hope for Democracy?
Dias begins with an overview of key trends in PB as it spread from Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989 to over 7,000 localities around the world. PB experts Brian Wampler, Stephanie McNulty, and Michael Touchton note how in Brazil during the 1990s, leftist politicians and activists championed PB as a radical project to “broaden the confines of representative democracy, mobilize followers, and achieve greater social justice” (p. 55); over time, it attracted support from a wide range of actors, including international organizations like the World Bank, because of its potential to improve governance and promote civic engagement. Giovanni Allegretti and Kalinca Copello discuss how, as PB spread internationally, new processes often committed fewer funds, whether measured as lower PB spending per person or as a smaller share of PB in the overall budgets (p. 45).

Benjamin Goldfrank and Katherine Landes examine how this trend has played out in the U.S. and Canada. They report that PB has expanded more slowly than other regions in terms of the number of cities implementing it, the amount of participants, and the volume of funds (p. 161). Yet, Goldfrank and Landes demonstrate this is not due to a lack of public interest: “we find that where PB allocates larger pots of money, the rate of participation tends to be higher” (p. 172). In other words, the more dollars that a PB process allocates, the more people care about it. Moreover, two bright spots on the horizon indicate that PB may grow faster in coming years: its mounting presence in schools and its rising appeal among progressive activists and politicians.

In the light of the recent victories in NYC—PB in all public high schools and citywide PB approved into the city charter—this watershed may be closer than the Goldfrank and Landes anticipated. Chapters on Paris, Russia, and Portugal offer additional insights on how to scale up PB in North America.

Paris offers a model of PB going big
Paris currently runs the largest PB process in the world. Similar to NYC’s coming city-wide process, PB in Paris was championed by a progressive mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who successfully campaigned on bringing PB to Paris in her 2014 election. Mayor Hidalgo wasted no time in implementing her plan of dedicating 5% of the city’s capital budget to PB over the first five years (That’s roughly 500 million euros!). Tiago Peixoto and colleagues use the Paris case to study large-scale issues, like whether online voting improves the process or biases it towards more privileged residents. Their research finds that voting patterns between online voters and those who vote in person are remarkably similar.

PB in Russia innovates, expands rapidly
In 2015, Russia experienced a turning point after which the number of PB processes grew surprisingly fast. This occurred when the Ministry of Finance noted the positive outcomes in regional PB processes and created a framework known as Initiative Financing. The next year, 8,732 PB projects were implemented. By 2018, half of all regional governments in the country (the equivalent of U.S. states) decided to set up PB programs.

Why did so many regions begin PB so quickly, when the federal government did not provide financial incentives to do so? Ivan Shulga and Vladimir Vagin emphasize how the central framework and technical assistance provided by the Ministry of Finance and the World Bank made regional implementation much easier. These processes also made use of some innovative institutional designs. In some programs, municipalities, businesses, organizations, and citizens pledged to co-finance projects, increasing their chance of receiving regional funding. Another program used a form of sortition or citizen jury, in which a cohort of volunteer budget delegates was randomly selected, to work with experts to turn project ideas into full-fledged and feasible proposals.

Portugal leads the way with national PB
Portugal was the first country to run nation-wide PB. While the process is not particularly large in terms of public participation or budget, it does provide one model of a large-scale institutional design that bridges disparate regions.

Roberto Falanga outlines how the process collected nearly 1,000 ideas from each part of the country in 50 assemblies and winnowed them down into viable proposals for a vote. The process did not use budget delegates to revise the proposals. While this may streamline the process, it runs the risk of giving experts and officials more power than public participants. However, an effort was made to minimize this danger by requiring detailed reasons for rejecting proposals and re-including ones that could be revised and made feasible. Still, proposals that were backed by informal social networks may have received undue prominence. For example a bullfighting project won funding even though a majority of the Portuguese public believes that the practice should be banned.

Reflecting on what’s been done, ready for more
It’s an exciting moment to get involved with PB. And it’s an important time to reflect on how far different regions have taken PB. While there are currently around 100 active processes in the U.S. and Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean hosts around 2,500 processes and Europe 3,500. We have some catching up to do.

Donate here to help PB grow.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Participatory Budgeting Project’s site at www.participatorybudgeting.org/hope-for-democracy-a-new-book-reflects-on-30-years-of-participatory-budgeting/.

social media and the youth vote

CIRCLE has released a highly substantive analysis of social media and the 2018 youth vote that is worth reading in full.

It probably won’t surprise you that many young adults heard about the election on social media. In fact, it might be worth pausing over the fact that only 47 percent saw something about it on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and/or Twitter. It is possible to go through an election cycle without seeing much about politics on social media if your friend-networks are apolitical. We talk a lot about polarization into left and right, but an equally significant phenomenon is the division between political and apolitical Americans. That was less of a problem when people got their information from sources like broadcast TV and newspapers, which forced everyone to see political headlines.

More than one quarter of young adults heard about the election only on social media, not from traditional outreach by campaigns, candidates, and parties. That probably means that social media is expanding the number of youth who are engaged in the election.

The more you hear about an election, the more likely you are to vote. Compared to young adults who had heard about the election both on social media and from campaigns or candidates, young adults who recalled no outreach were less than half as likely to say (in October) that they were extremely likely to vote.

Some selection is at play here. If you are already a likely voter or part of a community that is seen as active, campaigns are more likely to contact you. If you have friends who vote, you are more likely to see information about the election online, but you might have voted anyway. Maybe you even pick friends who are into politics. Still, evidence from randomized experiments shows that outreach boosts turnout, and at least some of these differences must be attributable to the effects of outreach.

Support NCDD this #GivingTuesday!

Want to join us in supporting a good cause? This #GivingTuesday the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is asking for your support in our mission to bring together and support people, organizations, and resources in ways that expand the power of discussion to benefit society.

NCDD envisions a future in which all people–regardless of income, position, background or education–are able to engage regularly in lively, thoughtful, and challenging discussions about what really matters to them, in ways that have a positive impact on their lives and their world. We envision a society in which systems and structures support and advance inclusive, constructive, dialogue and deliberation.

NCDD is a small outfit, with just four part-time staff, and we rely on the support of our network and friends to help us continue to educate people on dialogue and deliberation, and to build this national coalition. Your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $5 or $500.

For today only, Facebook and PayPal will match a total of $7 million in donations. Starting at 8am Eastern/5am Pacific, donations made through our Facebook page, will be matched – so please give what you can and help NCDD continue to support this network of innovators!  If you don’t use Facebook, you can always make a donation of any amount on our donation page.

Everyone who contributes to NCDD’s Giving Tuesday fundraiser will be thanked on our website and in our November newsletter. Additionally, the first 15 people to donate $50 or more will get a special NCDD notebook as a thank you for your support.

For sixteen years, NCDD has worked hard to gather visionaries and practitioners dedicated to raising the quality of discourse across many key issues and questions. Many of you have been a part of that – and we’re grateful for you!

As you reflect back on your years of association, we’re curious: how much has this network meant to you? Has it made a difference for good in some way? In what ways can we continue to drive NCDD together to support each other doing this work?

Please consider a #GivingTuesday donation to help us continue this work into the new year. More than ever before, we could use the help and support – and would be so grateful for your assistance!

We recognize there are a lot of fantastic organizations out there to donate to on Giving Tuesday, but we hope you consider donating to NCDD, which plays such a critical role in building capacity for improved democracy, conversation, and connection (which, we argue, is actually the most important issue we face right now as a country). It is really tough for organizations like NCDD to fundraise and be sustainable because it is a network of organizations, practitioners, and volunteers. Most of the members understandably have to focus on their own organizations and efforts. But networks like NCDD are critical to build a community of practice and grow the field. 

If you don’t know very much about us, we encourage you to check out some of the great benefits of NCDD and become a member. If you are already connected, please consider donating, even just a little bit, especially since it can be matched this morning.

Thank you for your support this Giving Tuesday!