scholarly journals Mask-Wearing Increased After a Government Recommendation: A Natural Experiment in the U.S. During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Goldberg ◽  
Abel Gustafson ◽  
Edward W. Maibach ◽  
Matthew T. Ballew ◽  
Parrish Bergquist ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Protocol for the Implementation Mechanisms of Stepping Up (I.M. Stepping Up) Study, a Longitudinal Natural Experiment Examining Implementation Mechanisms to Improve Mental Health and Substance Use Services for Justice-involved Individuals in 950 Stepping Up and Comparison Counties Across the U.S.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer E. Johnson ◽  
Jill Viglione ◽  
Niloofar Ramezani ◽  
Alison Cuellar ◽  
Maji Hailemariam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Behavioral Health ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Implementation Outcomes ◽  
Matched Comparison ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Background. The criminal justice system is the largest provider of mental health services in the U.S. Many jurisdictions are interested in reducing the use of the justice system for mental health problems. The national Stepping Up Initiative works with counties to reduce the number of individuals with mental illness in jails and to improve access to mental health services in the community. The Implementation Mechanisms of Stepping Up (I.M. Stepping Up) Study leverages a large natural experiment created by comparing Stepping Up counties to matched comparison counties over time to examine implementation mechanisms and outcomes. Methods. The study will survey 475 Stepping Up counties and 475 matched comparison counties at three waves: baseline, 18 months, and 36 months. Surveys will be sent to up to four respondents per county including administrators of jail, probation, community mental health services, and community substance use treatment services (3,800 total respondents). Implementation target mechanisms include: (1) use of and capacity for performance monitoring; (2) use and functioning of interagency teams; (3) common goals and mission across agencies; and (4) system integration (i.e., building an integrated system of care rather than adding one program or training). We will examine whether Stepping Up counties show a faster rate of improvement in hypothesized target mechanisms between Wave 1 and subsequent assessments (i.e., Waves 2 and 3) than do comparison counties (primary). We will also examine whether Stepping Up counties show a faster increases in implementation outcomes (number of justice-involved clients receiving behavioral health services, number of behavioral health evidence-based practices and policies [EBPPs] available to justice-involved individuals, and resources for behavioral health EBPP for justice-involved individuals). We will evaluate whether engagement of hypothesized mechanisms explains differences in implementation outcomes. Finally, we will characterize implementation processes and critical incidents using survey responses and qualitative interviews. Discussion. There are few rigorous, prospective studies examining implementation mechanisms and their relationship with behavioral health implementation outcomes in justice and associated community behavioral health settings. There is also limited understanding of implementation mechanisms that occur across systems with multiple goals. This study will elucidate target mechanisms in multi-goal, multi-agency systems.

scholarly journals Apportionment Cycles as Natural Experiments

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Elis ◽  
Neil Malhotra ◽  
Marc Meredith
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Distributional Effects ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The U.S

Although there are compelling theoretical reasons to believe that unequal political representation in a legislature leads to an unequal distribution of funds, testing such theories empirically is challenging because it is difficult to separate the effects of representation from the effects of either population levels or changes. We leverage the natural experiment generated by infrequent and discrete census apportionment cycles to estimate the distributional effects of malapportionment in the U.S. House of Representatives. We find that changes in representation cause changes in the distribution of federal outlays to the states. Our method is exportable to any democratic system in which reapportionments are regular, infrequent, and nonstrategic.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Telehealth Impact Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Campion ◽  
Stephen Ommen ◽  
Helayne Sweet ◽  
Nilay Shah ◽  
Barbra Rabson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Quality Care ◽  
Private Insurance ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Patient Survey ◽  
Impact Study ◽  
Provide Quality Care ◽  
Provider Survey ◽  
The U.S

Importance:  This three-part study characterizes the widespread implementation of telehealth during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving us insight into the role of telehealth as we enter a stage of “new normal” healthcare delivery in the U.S. Objective: The COVID-19 Telehealth Impact Study was designed to describe the natural experiment of telehealth adoption during the pandemic.  Using a large claims data stream and surveys of providers and patients, we studied telehealth in all 50 states to inform healthcare leaders.  Design, Setting, Participants: In March 2020, the MITRE Corporation and Mayo Clinic founded the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition (C19HCC), to respond to the pandemic. We report trends using a dataset of over 2 billion healthcare claims covering over 50% of private insurance activity in the U.S. (January 2019-December 2020), along with key elements from our provider survey (July-August 2020) and patient survey (November 2020 - February 2021). Main Outcomes and Measures: There was rapid and widespread adoption of telehealth in Spring 2020 with over 12 million telehealth claims in April 2020, accounting for 49.4% of total health care claims. Providers and patients expressed high levels of satisfaction with telehealth. 75% of providers indicated that telehealth enabled them to provide quality care.  84% of patients agreed that quality of their telehealth visit was good. Results: Peak levels of telehealth use varied widely among states ranging from 74.9% in Massachusetts to 25.4% in Mississippi.  Every clinical discipline saw a steep rise with the largest claims volume in behavioral health. Provision of care by out-of-state provider was common at 6.5% (October-December 2020). Providers reported multiple modalities of telehealth care delivery.  74% of patients indicated they will use telehealth services in the future. Conclusions and Relevance: Innovation shown by providers and patients during this period of rapid telehealth expansion constitutes a great natural experiment in care delivery with evidence supporting widespread clinical adoption and satisfaction on the part of both patients and clinicians. The authors encourage continued broad access to telehealth over the next 12 months to allow telehealth best practices to emerge, creating a more effective and resilient system of care delivery.

Introduction

The Forum ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron E. Shafer ◽  
Raymond J. La Raja
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
New Work ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Election Result ◽  
Developed Nations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

With a new administration in office and running the machinery of government, The Forum authors appear to have returned to some enduring concerns from the election and the transition. Michael Crespin, Charles Finocchiaro, and Emily Wanless return to the issue of earmarks and attack the conventional wisdom about them. Byron Shafer and Amber Wichowsky bring back the argument about the democratic values attaching to caucuses versus primaries and apply a unique ‚natural experiment‘ to them. Brian Arbour asks what really would have happened had the Democratic nominating contest been run under the actual Republican rules and comes to some provocative conclusions. Alan Siaroff tackles the same issue in a different way and locates the impact of Democratic rules in some surprising places. Travis Ridout asks what recent nominating campaigns have shown us about an emerging conventional wisdom on old versus new means of campaigning and finds that the old retain a strong sticking power. Nicholas Seabrook goes looking for the geographical story of the election result, most especially for the impact of geographic clusters within it. And Harold Wilensky looks at American healthcare in comparative perspective, asking what it would take to make the U.S. converge with other developed nations. Lastly, Benjamin Bishin addresses new work from Sunshine Hillygus and Mark Shields on ‚wedge issues‘, and asks where such concerns may be going.

Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: Evidence from OpenStreetMap

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhishek Nagaraj
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Baseline Knowledge ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

The wild success of a few online communities (such as Wikipedia) has obscured the fact that most attempts at forming such communities fail. This study evaluates information seeding, an early-stage intervention to bootstrap online communities that enables contributors to build on externally sourced information rather than have them start from scratch. I analyze the effects of information seeding on follow-on contributions using data on more than 350 million contributions made by more than 577,000 contributors to OpenStreetMap, a crowd-sourced map-making community seeded with data from the U.S. Census. I estimate the effect of seeding using a natural experiment in which an oversight caused about 60% of U.S. counties to be seeded with a complete census map, while the rest were seeded with less complete versions. Although access to basic knowledge generally encourages downstream knowledge production, I find that a higher level of information seeding significantly lowered follow-on contributions and contributor activity on OpenStreetMap, and was associated with lower levels of long-term quality. However, seeding did benefit densely populated urban areas and did not discourage more committed users. To explain these patterns, I argue that information seeding can crowd out contributors’ ability to develop ownership over baseline knowledge and thereby disincentivize follow-on contributions. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

scholarly journals Do American Voters Really Not Punish Overt Undemocratic Behavior at the Polls? Natural Experimental Evidence from the 2021 Insurrection of the U.S. Capitol

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam van Noort
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Random Digit Dialing ◽  
Random Digit ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The U.S

Existing research suggests that too few American voters hold politicians electorally accountable for overt undemocratic behavior to reasonably deter democratic backsliding. Evidence for this proposition comes primarily from hypothetical survey experiments with relatively modest treatments. I test this hypothesis using a natural experiment with a powerful real-world treatment: Donald Trump's incitement of the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The insurrection was unexpected to the general public, did not coincide with other events that could plausibly affect public opinion, and occurred while Gallup was conducting a nationally representative survey using random digit dialing. Comparing Republican Party support among respondents that were interviewed just before, and just after, the insurrection occurred suggests that the insurrection caused a 10.8% decline in support for the Republican Party. Voters predominantly moved to the Democratic Party, rather than Independent. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggests that this electoral penalty is sufficient to decide presidential elections.

scholarly journals Children's Gender and Parents' Color Preferences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip N. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Color Preferences ◽  
Child Socialization ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The U.S

Gender differences in color preferences have been found in adults and children, but they remain unexplained. This study asks whether the gendered social environment in adulthood affects parents’ color preferences. The analysis used the gender of children to represent one aspect of the gendered social environment. Because having male versus female children in the U.S. is generally randomly distributed, it provides something of a natural experiment, offering evidence about the social construction of gender in adulthood. The participants were 749 adults with children who responded to an online survey invitation, asking “What’s your favorite color?” Men were more likely to prefer blue, while women were more likely to prefer red, purple, and pink, consistent with long-standing U.S. patterns. The effect of having only sons was to widen the existing gender differences between men and women, increasing the odds that men prefer blue while reducing the odds that women do; and a marginally significant effect showed women having higher odds of preferring pink when they have sons only. The results suggest that, in addition to any genetic, biological or child-socialization effects shaping adults’ tendency to segregate their color preferences by gender, the gender context of adulthood matters as well.

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