Calendar

Dr. Karen Bogenschneider
UW-Madison

Required Readings

"Engaging Policymakers: Best Practices From Those Who Study It and Do It"

KarenBogenschneider is a Rothermel-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison. Since its inception in 1992 through 2016, Dr. Bogenschneiderserved as director of the Wisconsin Family Impact Seminars–a series ofpresentations, briefing reports, and discussion sessions that communicatehigh-quality, nonpartisan research to state policymakers. From 1999-2014,she served as Executive Director of the Family Impact Institute that providedtraining and technical assistance to about two dozen states that conducted over225 Family Impact Seminars. The second edition was just released of Prof.Bogenschneider’s and Tom Corbett’s book, Evidence-BasedPolicymaking: Envisioning a New Era of Theory, Research, and Practice, andher book, Family Policy Matters is inits third edition. She hasconducted five national trainings for researchers interested in working withpolicymakers and 16 trainings for faculty directors of the Family ImpactSeminars. She has received a number of awards for her research and outreach,including being honoredby the Wisconsin State Legislature for her service to the state. She recently servedon a National Academy of Science round table on the communication and applicationof social and behavioral science research.

Carl Frederick (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction)
Annalee Good (Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
Beth Vaade (Madison Metropolitan School District)

"Partnerships in Times of Transition: Challenges and Opportunities"

Dr. Joseph Cimpian
New York University Steinhardt

"Mitigating the effects of invalid survey responses in estimating LGBQ-heterosexual youth risk disparities"

Survey respondents don’t always take surveys as seriously as researchers would like. Sometimes, they provide intentionally untrue, extreme responses. Other times, they skip items or fill in random patterns. We might be tempted to think this just introduces some random error into the estimates, but these responses can have undue effects on estimates of the wellbeing and risk of minoritized populations, such as racially and sexually minoritized youth.Over the past decade, and with a focus on youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ), a variety of data-validity screening techniques have been employed in attempts to scrub datasets of “mischievous responders,” youths who systematically provide extreme and untrue responses to outcome items and who tend to falsely report being LGBQ. In this talk, I discuss how mischievous responders—and invalid responses, more generally—can perpetuate narratives of heightened risk, rather than those of greater resilience in the face of obstacles, for LGBQ youth. The talk will review several recent and ongoing studies using pre-registration and replication to test how invalid data affect LGBQ-heterosexual disparities on a wide range of outcomes. Key findings include: (1) potentially invalid responders inflate some(but not all) LGBQ–heterosexual disparities; (2) this is true more among boys than girls; (3) low-incidence outcomes (e.g., heroin use) are particularly susceptible to bias; and (4) the method for detection and mitigation affects the estimates. Yet, these methods do not solve all data validity concerns, and their limitations are discussed. While the empirical focus of this talk is onLGBQ youth, the issues and methods discussed are relevant to research on other minoritized groups and youth generally, and speak to survey development, methodology, and the robustness and transparency of research.