Mercury Project codirector Heather Lanthorn introduces the project’s newly updated Research Framework, a public good that supports researchers, funders, and policymakers by mapping intervention designs designed to increase vaccination demand and science-based decision-making along with policy-relevant outcomes of interest. The 18 teams in the Mercury Project Research Consortium—working in 18 countries around the world—use the framework in their projects.| Items
The Social Science Research Council recently submitted a response to an RFI from the National Institutes of Health’s Common Fund, detailing how the NIH could improve the reliability of evidence in behavioral research by borrowing the idea of master protocols from the field of oncology. Master protocols are coordinated multisite trials followed by meta-analysis designed to assess both the internal and the external validity of interventions across populations. Here, we share a related submiss...| Items
Social Science Research Council President Anna Harvey shares a recent submission to an RFI from the NIH’s Common Fund, detailing how the NIH could improve the reliability of evidence in behavioral research by borrowing the idea of master protocols from the field of oncology. Master protocols are coordinated multisite trials, followed by meta-analysis, to assess both the internal and external validity of interventions across populations. NIH support for master protocols to evaluate the impac...| Items
In this essay, the authors reflect on their experiences researching the impacts of port expansion in the Indian Ocean on mangroves and the communities surrounding them with the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic.| Items
In her essay, Karla Mundim examines Indigenous protest movements in Ecuador, focusing on the protests against construction on the Piatua River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mundim argues that, despite the enshrining of the prior consultation of Indigenous communities and the "rights of nature" in the country's constitution, Indigenous communities continue to protests and make themselves visible to the state to safeguard their democratic rights.| Items
Here, Tássia Rabelo de Pinho examines how violence against women in politics manifest in Brazil to the detriment of advancing women's engagement in politics at the national and local levels.| Items
Despite the creation of ethnic congressional district meant to increase minority representation, participation in Colombia’s Afro-descendant district has been historically low. Here, Cristina Echeverri-Pineda and Mateo Villamizar-Chaparro examine why Afro-Colombian participation in this district has stagnated and what it could mean for democracy in Colombia.| Items
Researcher Neil Lewis Jr. discusses how the SSRC’s Mercury Project's teams approach to research can improve the evidence generation process.| Items
In their research, Anjuli Fahlberg, Cristiane Martins, Joiceane Lopes, Ana Cláudia Araújo, Lidiane Santos, Sophia Costa, and Guilherme Baratho examine how democracy is being recreated in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, particularly Cidade de Deus, where Covid-19 was first recorded. Drawing on their research on the pandemic’s impact on local residents vis-à-vis emergent forms of autonomous governance and how these are shaped by gender and racial dynamics, they argue that civic associations’...| Items
Following the weakening of the Voting Rights Act in the United States, many Republican-controlled states enacted restrictive voting ID laws aimed at limiting franchise access to communities of color. In their research, Hajar Yazdiha and Blanca Ramirez examine how immigrant-serving organizations in five Southern states recalibrated their resources to help immigrants vote. Focusing on Alabama, they investigate five shifts these immigrant-serving organizations have made to address the impact of ...| Items
Essays from hundreds of leading scholars and researchers on urgent questions and historic events, featuring insights from SSRC programs and across the social sciences.| SSRC Items
Did masks prevent the spread of influenza during the 1918 epidemic? One physician in Muncie, Indiana, declared emphatically: “Masks are useless,” because “influenza germs can penetrate any cloth masks without...| Items