CRI: Center for Research on Children: Conducting, Synthesizing, and Disseminating Development Science to Benefit Children, Science and Society

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Every day we hear media reports of far-reaching decisions affecting children's lives--made by legislators, politicians, school boards, government agencies, judges, and others--ostensibly based on sound research. But basic scientists often cringe when they learn of the misunderstanding and misapplication of the research that allegedly informs these decisions. There exists in our society a schism between the scientists who conduct sound empirical research and the decision-makers who translate it into practice. The goal of CIRC is to improve the quality of the conduct and dissemination of child-related research. We aim to place rigorous, scientifically defensible research findings into the hands of society's decision-makers to better inform their thinking about complex issues and the decisions they make. Research conducted through the institute will also inform basic science in the core disciplines. CIRC will achieve these goals by commissioning and servicing national teams of outstanding developmental scientists to study policy-relevant questions and create a consensus report for broad dissemination. Questions will be selected on the basis of their potential to contribute core knowledge to basic science. The planned dissemination process is designed to inform policy-makers and also to impact the lives of the next generation of scholars now in high school, college, and graduate school. CIRC will foster the integration of research, undergraduate education, graduate and postdoctoral training, and public dissemination of rigorous child-related scholarship with the potential to benefit children, science, and society. CIRC's research will tap the developmental sciences (including developmental psychology, economics, medicine, neuroscience, and life-course sociology). CIRC's goals will be accomplished through the interaction of seven components designed to (a) contribute to basic scientific knowledge, (b) inform policy and the media, and (c) integrate these first two goals with undergraduate education of underserved populations and graduate/postgraduate training of the next generation of scholars. CIRC will enable multidisciplinary teams to undertake studies pertaining to children in any substantive area of developmental science (e.g., social, cognitive, biological). CIRC's seven components are: 1) A mechanism to commission high quality, developmental science studies on questions of relevance to children; 2) The assembling of an Advisory Board of eminent scholars from developmental psychology, neuroscience, economics, medicine, policy, and sociology, who will guide the selection of research topics to be commissioned and the nomination of scholars to conduct the research. The Advisory Board will also mentor postdocs and grad students, advise teams of visiting scholars on substantive issues, participate in miniconferences, and help spread the word about CIRC's existence and aims; 3) Graduate and postdoctoral training experiences to provide the next generation of scholars with unique training in conducting rigorous developmental research that benefits children; 4) A postsecondary training initiative to insert into current curricula the results of commissioned studies, targeting colleges and universities with substantial Latino and African American enrolments and low-SES community colleges serving students of all races; 5) Formal print dissemination (the publication of a monograph series translating promising developmental research into policy proposals, the preparation of press releases, etc.); 6) Formal non-print dissemination (the organization of miniconferences, a public web site, and press conferences); and 7) Coordination with existing Cornell centers and institutes to leverage resources of this proposal.