Author Archives: Melanie Arenson

Where Science Meets Policy Part 3: Writing About Your Science for Non-scientific Audiences

Melanie Arenson & Mary Fernandes

It is critical that researchers translate their scientific findings to non-scientist consumers (seriously, we’ve written 2 blog posts about it – find out about engaging with stakeholders here and how to write academic papers for a broader range of stakeholders here). However, many researchers (including us graduate students!) feel uncertain about exactly how or where to write about our science. While graduate students typically get exposure to creating posters, giving talks, and writing scientific articles, very few of us are ever taught how to write for other mediums. Below are a few tips and tricks.

Writing for a non-scientific audience.

  • Adjust your lexicon. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Many of us have been talking about our work in scientific circles for so long that jargon is second-nature for us. Break the habit.  Write about your findings in your typical scientific manner and then go back and ask yourself, “but what does this mean?” — then replace whatever you wrote with that answer. Wherever possible, write in lay terms or connect back to phenomena that people know and understand.
  • Write a story. This sounds abstract, but it is really important. People are good at processing stories — they’re not as good at conceptualizing facts and figures and understanding why they matter. The story will change depending upon the science that you are talking about, but it should flow from beginning to middle to end.
  • Write short. Ideally, people should be able to get the gist your scientific findings and the story you are going to tell them within the first 3 sentences. Get to the point as quickly as possible. For longer pieces (e.g. a blogpost), you can definitely expand, but the first few sentences should be a punch that conveys the big takeaways.
  • Wherever possible, include accessible infographics. What these look like can change from discipline to discipline, but you want the graphic to be accessible, easy to understand without explanation, and to summarize the most important take-home point and/or summarize large amounts of information.

Now, share it!

  • Social Media: If you’ve written something just a few sentences long, tweet it, share it on Facebook, or find a great photograph to represent it on Instagram. Then, interact with anyone who comments on or likes it. Encourage people to share your work, and make sure you’ve provided links back to the original scientific article.
  • Link to longer pieces: If what you’ve written is longer than just a few sentences (e.g. you wrote a blogpost, or have talked about your research in a news article), provide the link to the longer story, but make sure you’ve got a 1-3 sentence summary of your results and why they matter. As a tip, if you’ve followed the tricks listed above, you’ve probably already written those 1-3 sentences.
  • Blog posts: There are a number of science-relevant blogs (in fact, you’re reading one of them!). These blogs can vary from area to area, but they are a fantastic way to disseminate your research.
  • Email and listservs: We know this can feel strange, but you should be sharing your work with your colleagues. This means blasting it out on listservs and sending it to your department. First, people in your field are probably already interested in your work. Second, they also have connections, and may want to forward your work to other people who might also be interested. Whenever possible, include links to both the scientific article and the more accessible format.

Help! The media has asked about my work.
First of all, congratulations! You’ve been contacted by the media, because they want to know more about the really cool science that you are doing.
Many scientists feel nervous about talking to the media. They worry their work will get misrepresented, or feel uncomfortable describing themselves as the expert. Below are a few tricks (some of them may feel familiar).

  • Adjust your lexicon. Before providing information to the news source, do some background research on them to see what their writing style is usually like, and who you think their target audience is. Then, adjust your language accordingly.
  • Tell a story. It’ll be a short story, but it should still be a story. Whenever possible, connect back to why your results matter. Contextualize it within the broader picture.
  • Talk short. Your answers shouldn’t be lengthy. Make sure you already know how you want to talk about your work and what the key takeaways are (think back to those 1-3 sentences you’ve been using for social media and the beginning of blog posts).
  • Plan your responses. Think about what questions you might be asked and plan out how you would respond. Pay special attention to anything you think might be taken out of context; aim not only to be understood, but also to avoid being misunderstood. Be as precise in your language as you can be, without sliding into scientific jargon.
  • Build a relationship. Whenever possible, build rapport with the media author that contacted you. You want to be in a place where you would feel comfortable contacting them if you think they’ve accidentally misrepresented your work.
  • Remember, you are the expert. This one can be really difficult, but you are the expert in your work. Take pride in that, feel confident in that.

Further resources.
Don’t just take our word for it! Tons of people have written about communicating scientific findings to non-scientists. Below are a few of our favorites:

Keep following the series for more ways to translate your science! Up next, we’ll discuss how to write a policy brief.

Graduate Student Researchers Win Big!

The results are in: 15 exceptional graduate student projects have been selected from the pool of highly-competitive applications for the Psychological Science Research Grant (PSRG). This $1,000 grant, sponsored yearly by APAGS, is used to fund innovative research projects in psychological science. All APA graduate student affiliates are eligible, resulting in a diverse pool of applications from schools across the country who are studying a variety of topics in psychology and neuroscience. Given the importance of diversity-focused research, additional funding was specifically reserved for those studies that substantially address issues of diversity as defined by the APA’s 2017 Multicultural Guidelines.

Below is a brief review of the 2018 winners and their projects:

  • Mónica Acevedo-Molina (University of Arizona) will be studying the influence of bilingualism on memory in Hispanic individuals. Mónica aims to understand how bilingualism impacts the specificity of autobiographic memory in Hispanics, as well as the influence of inhibition on that specificity.
  • Brooke Bartlett (University of Houston) will be studying the role of distress tolerance in the relationship between trauma cue reactivity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity. Specifically, Brooke aims to understand whether distress tolerance moderates that relationship, above and beyond the impact of important factors such as the amount of trauma a person has experienced, as well as any other mental health conditions they may be battling.
  • Alexis Blessing (The University of Texas at San Antonio) will be studying ways to reduce the public stigma associated with media depictions of service members and veterans. Specifically, Alexis believes that self-compassion may buffer negative responses to stigmatizing media accounts of violent acts by veterans with PTSD.
  • Brittney Evans (Drexel University) will be studying the feasibility and acceptability of a remote parent coaching intervention for parents of children who are overweight or obese. The goal of this intervention is to increase the use of adaptive parenting techniques and decrease the use of ineffective parenting practices in order to improve child behaviors during mealtimes.
  • Maya Godbole (City University of New York, CUNY) will be studying the effect of sex discrimination policies on women’s expectation of bias and performance in organizations. Specifically, Maya aims to understand whether the inclusion of language that explicitly acknowledges subtle forms of sexism in policy documents influences women’s participation in organizations as well as their performance expectations.
  • Taylor Hendershott (Washington University in St. Louis) will be developing a brief tool for assessing people’s spatial navigation strategy use and ability. This type of task will allow for the targeted assessment of cognitive functions and will be useful for academics and clinicians working to understand and measure the cognitive impairment associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
  • Tiffany Jenzer (University at Buffalo, SUNY) will be studying the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and alcohol use. Specifically, Tiffany aims to understand how the ability to choose between a variety of emotion regulation strategies, as well as the ability to pick a strategy that appropriately fits the situation impact alcohol use.
  • Parisa Kaliush (University of Utah) will be studying the intergenerational effects of mothers with a history of childhood maltreatment. Specifically, Parisa aims to understand whether maternal parasympathetic activity during pregnancy explains the relationship between their history of childhood maltreatment and their newborn’s emotional reactivity and attention.
  • Nathan Kearns (University of North Texas) will be studying the role of traumatic stress and alcohol on driving behaviors. Specifically, Nathan will be investigating both the independent and additive effects of trauma-related stress and acute alcohol intoxication on driving-related risk-taking.
  • Lilian Yanqing Li (University of California, Irvine) will be studying novel strategies for addressing emotion regulation deficits in people with schizophrenia and schizotypy. Lilian aims to understand if third-person self-talk is an effective strategy for regulating negative emotions, without requiring additional cognitive control.
  • Albert Ly (Loma Linda University) will be studying diabetes treatment adherence among a diverse sample of adults. Albert aims to understand the role culture and U.S. generational status play in disease-related distress and treatment adherence.
  • Melissa McWilliams (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will be evaluating the impact of integrated text message coaching as an added supplement to behavioral parent training. In particular, Melissa will be studying whether text message coaching improves parenting practices, as well as parental engagement in and attitude about the parent training curriculum.
  • Tommy Ho-Yee Ng (Temple University) will be studying the nature of reward processing for children of parents with unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. Tommy aims to understand how reward processing may be deficient in these children compared to healthy controls, as well as if children of parents with bipolar disorder can be differentiated from children of parents with unipolar depression based on their reward processing.
  • Fallon Ringer (Florida State University) will be studying the role of suicide-related internet use in suicide risk. Fallon aims to understand if suicide-related internet use is associated with greater suicidal ideation, intent, and prior suicidal behaviors, as well as fearlessness about death.
  • Selime Salim (Miami University) will be studying the relationship between sexual victimization and suicidality among bisexual women. In particular, Selime aims to understand the role stigma, internalized sexism, and social reactions to sexual assault disclosure play in that relationship.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Want your name to be featured next year? Be sure to apply! Applications are due in early December for the 2019 PSRG. Remember: grant writing has many benefits, including being a wonderful way to think critically about your research ideas, have valuable discussions with your mentor(s), and boost your resume. Worried you don’t know how to write a grant? Check out this great post by the Association for Psychological Science with tips and tricks.

The APAGS Science Committee would like to acknowledge and thank the following reviewers for their help and support  in reviewing applications this year: Alyssa DeVito, Rachel Sweenie, Laura Werner, Megan Williams, Amy Wing-Lam Chong, Steven Hobaica, Amanda Sanchez, Kyle Simon, Elyssa Berney, Juan Pantoja-Patino, Taymy Caso, and Elizabeth Louis.

 

Written by:
Melanie Arenson, B.S., Member, APAGS Science Committee
Renee Cloutier, M.S., Chair, APAGS Science Committee

Where Science Meets Policy Part 1: Involving Stakeholders in Every Step of Your Research

Where Science Meets Policy

Part 1: Involving Stakeholders in Every Step of Your Research

Melanie Arenson, Renee Cloutier, Travis Loughran, Mary Fernandes

There is a well-known lack of consistent translation of scientific research into public policy. To address this, the scientific community has instituted a substantial push to involve “stakeholders” in our research, in order to make it more targeted, translatable, and impactful. But what does that mean practically, and how do we do it?

What is a stakeholder?

According to the American Psychological Association, stakeholders include anybody that could be influenced by the research you conduct (e.g., they have a “stake” in it). What does that look like? Well, imagine you’re developing a new intervention for adolescents. Stakeholders for such a project might include the people receiving and providing the treatment (e.g. the adolescent and therapist), as well as the child’s parents, teachers, and peers, the administrators in both the treatment setting and the school, and the policy-makers dictating the allocation of school-based resources. Depending on your area of research, this group of stakeholders may expand to include businesses, insurance companies, curriculum writers, and nonprofits.

Why involve them at all?

Too often in academic settings, we formulate a question, conduct the research in our labs, find exciting results, publish a paper in an academic journal, and then that research gets cited by other academics in other academic journals. The problem with that? The information we’ve discovered doesn’t ever actually leave the world in which it was created.

Stakeholders, if engaged properly, are uniquely positioned in two ways to help change that: (1) their opinions can be sought to ensure that the questions we ask, the research paradigms we create, and the treatments we develop appropriately reflect the real-world applications that interested us in the first place; and (2) they hold connections that can help with dissemination when we find those really cool results. They are mired in the frequently messy reality that we try to emulate in our labs, and understand what is feasible and what isn’t because they live it, day to day, in a way we as researchers rarely do. They also hold connections in the community and have specialized insights into the most appropriate and impactful way to translate our research to the populations that need to hear it the most.

So how do we involve them?

This can depend on your setting, but below are a few options:

1)    Use your existing network. Most likely, you can think of a few stakeholders you already know, whether in a professional or personal context. One of the easiest ways to get stakeholders involved is to ask those people to have coffee with you and chat. If they’re interested in what you’re doing they might be a good person to get involved, but they also can likely suggest people they know that might be able to help.

2)    Focus groups are extremely helpful. They can be used as sources for more permanent stakeholder involvement (e.g. you can recruit stakeholders that will remain involved for the duration of the project), but they also are formalized way to engage stakeholders just as they are.  Recruit as broad of a range of stakeholders as you can, know the questions you want to ask, and be prepared to lightly guide a discussion. Keep in mind that it may be helpful to group participants by stakeholder type, depending on your project and the diversity of stakeholders. If someone seems particularly insightful, motivated, and you think they may be good fit for your research team, talk to them about the possibility of getting more involved (and keep a list of these types of people as possible stakeholders for future projects!).

3)   Use conferences to build connections. When you’re talking to colleagues about your research, don’t forget to talk about recruiting stakeholders (they may know someone that would be a perfect fit!), and attend talks that are related to the research you want to do as they may give you an idea for stakeholders you haven’t thought of. Check the program for any stakeholder-related gatherings, which may include a talk by patients, booths run by educators and/or companies, or division-specific events related to specific providers.

4)   Don’t forget about your professional organizations. Many organizations have committees and departments dedicated to influencing and crafting policy. These sub-organizations can connect you and your academic work to the policy arenas you want to influence. Reach out to committee members and tell them about your research and the implications you think it has. They’ll be perfectly positioned to help you translate your findings to the community stakeholders you want to reach. They also may be able to direct you resources and stakeholders you haven’t thought of.

5)   Finally, use your research. Talk to your participants, their parents, and the community connections you use to recruit your sample, and ask them if they would like a summary of your findings once your research is complete. If you haven’t already built a relationship with them, offering to reach out (and taking the time to do it!) is a great foundation. Similar to focus groups, if you think any of those people would be a good fit for your research, offer the opportunity for them to get involved in future projects.

Breaking the academic loop:

Once you have successfully designed, executed, and analyzed your research project, how do you convey the findings to a broad range of stakeholders? Researchers and policy makers often have different decision-making processes, time-lines, vocabularies, and incentives (Brownson, Royer, Ewing, & McBride, 2006; Grande et al., 2014), which create barriers to effective communication. Overcoming these barriers requires several, multi-level actions, many of which will be addressed in this series. Follow us for our next piece on how to write academic papers for a broad range of stakeholders.

 

References:

Brownson, R. C., Royer, C., Ewing, R., & McBride, T. D. (2006). Researchers and policymakers: travelers in parallel universes. American journal of preventive medicine, 30(2), 164-172.

Grande, D., Gollust, S. E., Pany, M., Seymour, J., Goss, A., Kilaru, A., & Meisel, Z. (2014). Translating research for health policy: researchers’ perceptions and use of social media. Health Affairs, 33(7), 1278-1285.