NORMS MAKE PREFERENCES SOCIAL

We explore the idea that prosocial behavior in experimental games is driven by social norms imported into the laboratory. Under this view, differences in behavior across subjects is driven by heterogeneity in sensitivity to social norms. We introduce an incentivized method of eliciting individual norm‐sensitivity, and we show how it relates to play in public goods, trust, dictator, and ultimatum games. We show how our observations can be rationalized in a stylized model of norm‐dependent preferences under reasonable assumptions about the nature of social norms. Then we directly elicit norms in these games to test the robustness of our interpretation.     

The attitudes and beliefs of the child protection workforce and why they matter to children who live with violence

In Australia, like other developed countries, there has been an increase in reports to child protection services about children experiencing domestic violence. While there is research on the importance of the skills and knowledge of the child protection workforce for this growing problem, little is available about practitioner attitudes and beliefs. This paper presents findings on research undertaken in New South Wales, which is the most populated state in Australia. The research considered the attitudes and beliefs of the statutory child protection workforce about domestic violence. It relied on a large-scale survey of 1041 child protection practitioners. In order to compare the attitudes and beliefs of child protection workforce with those of the general community, the survey replicated questions from the Australian National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Surveys. Overall, the attitudes and beliefs of the workforce more closely reflected contemporary theory and evidence about domestic violence than those of the community. The research also examined variations in the attitudes and beliefs of the child protection workforce according to practitioner characteristics, finding variations by gender. The implications for the fields of child protection and social work are discussed.     

Leading beyond regulatory approval: Opportunities for statisticians to optimize evidence generation and impact clinical practice

The role and value of statistical contributions in drug development up to the point of health authority approval are well understood. But health authority approval is only a true ‘win’ if the evidence enables access and adoption into clinical practice. In today's complex and evolving healthcare environment, there is additional strategic evidence generation, communication, and decision support that can benefit from statistical contributions. In this article, we describe the history of medical affairs in the context of drug development, the factors driving post-approval evidence generation needs, and the opportunities for statisticians to optimize evidence generation for stakeholders beyond health authorities in order to ensure that new medicines reach appropriate patients.     

Risk heatmaps as visual displays: Opening movie studios after the COVID-19 shutdown

Upon shutting down operations in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie industry assembled teams of experts to help develop guidelines for returning to operation. It resulted in a joint report, The Safe Way Forward, which was created in consultation with union members and provided the basis for negotiations with the studios. A centerpiece of the report was a set of heatmaps displaying SARS-CoV-2 risks for a shoot, as a function of testing rate, community infection prevalence, community transmission rate (R0), and risk measure (either expected number of cases or probability of at least one case). We develop and demonstrate a methodology for evaluating such complex displays, in terms of how well they inform potential users, in this case, workers deciding whether the risks of a shoot are acceptable. We ask whether individuals making hypothetical return-to-work decisions can (a) read display entries, (b) compare display entries, and (c) make inferences based on display entries. Generally speaking, respondents recruited through the Amazon MTurk platform could interpret the display information accurately and make coherent decisions, suggesting that heatmaps can communicate complex risks to lay audiences. Although these heatmaps were created for practical, rather than theoretical, purposes, these results provide partial support for theoretical accounts of visual information processing and identify challenges in applying them to complex settings.