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In this commentary originally published in Route Fifty, experts from MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science and BIT North America describe how government agencies can use behavioral science to adapt policies, programs, and services during the continuing pandemic crisis.
The Center for Applied Behavioral Science (CABS) combines MDRC’s decades of experience tackling social policy issues with insights from behavioral science. This graphic explains the CABS’s approach to solving problems.
This compendium of written materials comes from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project. The collection illustrates how specific concepts from behavioral science were used in different settings and formats by practitioners and program designers in child care, child support, and work-support programs.
In this commentary from the final report on the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, Marianne Bertrand talks about the potential for a broader behavioral agenda that would include larger contributions from psychology and could transform public policy in ways that might induce long-term changes in behavior.
In this commentary from the final report on the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, Sim B. Sitkin considers looking beyond individual client behavior when designing interventions to target program staff and groups of clients as well as entire organizations.
This commentary focuses on an intervention from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project that aimed to improve child support payment rates in a state-supervised program in Ohio. The author reflects on the availability of the agency’s data, the involvement of staff at all levels, clients’ experiences, and lessons learned.
When Behavioral Interventions Aren’t Enough
Philip Oreopoulos’s commentary from the final report on the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project addresses the limitations of written communication and describes the value of personal interactions for building trusting relationships between service providers and clients, which in turn encourage active program participation.
Dilip Soman looks at the pros and cons of using heuristics in general and the “SIMPLER” framework in particular ― developed specifically by the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project ― to guide practitioners in their efforts to improve human services programs.
Researchers developing behavioral interventions begin by defining a problem, identifying “bottlenecks” that might hamper desired outcomes, and designing and testing possible solutions. In this Expert Commentary from the final report on the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, Crystal Hall suggests three ideas for expanding the use of this process.
Lessons from the BIAS Project
In child support programs, parents must often make complicated decisions with little information in a highly emotional context. The BIAS project, which applied behavioral insights to human services programs, worked with three states to design eight tests focusing on child support order modifications and collection of payments.
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