Social Issues from The Brookings Institute
The Social Issues area conducts in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level. Topics include children and families, crime and criminal justice, environment, poverty, race, gender, immigration, income inequality and social mobility.
How to Talk to Funders about ROI
This Partnerships for Strategic Impact document breaks down how to talk to funders about ROI in two ways: 1) Understanding what data can and cannot tell you, and 2) Making data-informed, value-driven funding decisions.
Workforce Development from The Brookings Institute
The Workforce Development area conducts in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.
Housing Partnership Network Policy Team
The Policy team of the Housing Partnership Network (HPN) works with Congress and federal agencies to improve the effectiveness of housing and community development programs and ultimately the outcomes for our communities. HPN works across the spectrum of affordable housing needs from preventing homelessness to producing rental housing and providing for homeownership opportunities. They respond to community needs in urban, suburban and rural areas, as well as being committed to creating thriving neighborhoods and working for racial justice.
The Generalizability Puzzle
The Stanford Social Innovation Review's Generalizability Puzzle is a paper that recognizes that any practical policy question must be broken into parts. Some parts of the problem will be answered with local institutional knowledge and descriptive data, and some will be answered with evidence from impact evaluations in other contexts. The generalizability framework set out in this paper provides a practical approach for combining evidence of different kinds to assess whether a given policy will likely work in a new context. If researchers and policy makers continue to view results of impact evaluations as a black box and fail to focus on mechanisms, the movement toward evidence-based policy making will fall far short of its potential for improving people’s lives.