Pardee RAND Graduate School students participate in many RAND research projects through their On-the-Job Training. These projects provide students with tremendous opportunities to publish their work in RAND reports and peer-reviewed journals. In fact, many of our students develop an impressive publications record during their tenure at Pardee RAND, which enables them to compete successfully for positions at universities and other research institutions.
Below is a list of publications that our students have recently authored or co-authored. The list provides an excellent illustration of the range of publications that our students have had a hand in developing.
This paper examines the value of reinforcement learning models as adaptive, high-performing, and behaviorally-valid models of agent decision-making in Agent-based Models.
To help schools safely return to in-person instruction, this report describes approaches that early adopters of COVID-19 testing in U.S. K–12 schools were using as of December 2020, highlighting key facilitators that made testing feasible, acceptable, and effective. It also provides recommendations to school leaders, district officials, and policymakers on how to support the implementation of COVID-19 testing in schools.
Recent climatic shifts likely will continue to affect water resources management in significant but uncertain ways. This tool provides information about decisionmaking under deep uncertainty methods—specifically, Robust Decision Making—through five case studies. These case studies focus on three river basins, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and Monterrey, Mexico.
Recent polls show that Black Americans are less willing than Americans of other races or ethnicities to be vaccinated for COVID-19. The authors surveyed Black Americans to better understand the drivers of such hesitancy. They identify public health messaging and communication strategies that may be successful in addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and increasing vaccination acceptance in Black communities.
Students with disabilities often face barriers that hinder their capacity to access general education curricula and show their learning. Modifications to curricula and lesson plans can help reduce these barriers. In this Data Note, researchers explore teachers' reports of how much and in what ways they modify their lessons to support students with disabilities.
In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 8 percent of public school teachers left the profession annually. Very high rates of teacher burnout and low levels of morale during the 2020–2021 school year portend elevated teacher attrition by the end of it. The authors of this report show how important stress has been—more so than pay—in public school teachers' reasons for quitting, and that COVID-19 has exacerbated the high levels of stress.
To meet increasing combatant command demands for forces, the United States Marine Corps deploys task-organized provisional units. Their temporary nature and provisional missions are at odds with the way the Marine Corps normally deploys units. A lack of specific policy to validate and manage resources used by these units causes many problems. To mitigate provisional unit equipping challenges, a multipronged approach is the best course of action.
The authors analyze the spending impact of policy options to reduce hospital prices paid by private health plans, with various design choices and effectiveness levels for each approach. They estimate that price regulation could have the largest impact on hospital prices and spending but would likely face political challenges, while improving price transparency and competition could help reduce prices—but to a lesser extent than price regulation.
To advance understanding of primary care clinic productivity, the authors reviewed relevant literature and convened a diverse set of stakeholders to explore definitions of productivity, input, and output in primary care; identify relevant tools; and establish consensus on key aspects of primary care productivity.
To support the use of models and tools for climate adaptation planning efforts, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment (MARISA) program created the Model Inventory and Selection Tool (MIST). MIST is an interactive, searchable database of empirical, statistical, and conceptual models of natural and human-made systems relevant to water- and climate-related planning and decisionmaking in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and beyond.
In spring 2020, as schools began remote learning or closed in response to the pandemic, end-of-year assessment programs ground to a halt. Schools began the 2020–2021 year without assessment data, which usually help with course placement. The authors of this report compare and contrast three strategies that use older test data to estimate missing scores, examining the consistency of these strategies and whether they ensure equity among students.
El presente estudio demuestra la utilidad del enfoque de Toma de Decisiones Robustas para evaluar la vulnerabilidad y las oportunidades de adaptación de la gestión de los recursos hídricos en Mendoza, Argentina.
The U.S. Air Force has determined that its fighter pilots do not currently have sufficient access to training ranges with airspace, threat emitters, targets, and electronic support measures capable of representing advanced potential adversaries. The authors explore squadron restationing and range upgrade options that can maximize access to advanced live training ranges while evaluating cost and risk measures associated with these options.
To track how well different countries and U.S. states are responding to the pandemic—and to make valid cross-country and cross-state comparisons of key outcomes—uniform measures are needed. The authors of this report evaluate the comparability of commonly used COVID-19-related measures and make recommendations for the use and development of measures that would allow for more standardized and valid comparisons.
Understanding the extent to which drug prices are higher in the United States than in other countries is useful when developing and targeting policies to address both growth in drug spending and the financial impact of prescription drugs on consumers. This report provides findings related to international prescription drug price comparisons, noting that 2018 drug prices in the United States were substantially higher than those in other countries.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence sought RAND Corporation assistance in developing a repeatable process to measure the effectiveness of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to evaluate current performance and plan for, influence, and resource future operations. The authors identified measures of effectiveness and of performance to gauge the value and success of ISR support and requirements.
How do salary and benefits for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers in the federal government compare with those for private-sector STEM workers? Using a labor market analytic approach, the authors describe STEM workers in the two sectors, note differences from non-STEM counterparts, compare STEM salary and benefits, and make recommendations to improve data collection and evaluation for STEM hiring and retention.
Findings discuss issues affecting teacher wellbeing during the pandemic, including higher workloads and increased teacher burnout.
In this report, the authors use survey data from a nationally representative sample to examine how middle and high school English language arts and mathematics teachers use and perceive their instructional materials in terms of their engagement, challenge, and usability. In addition, the authors use interview data to understand teachers' perceptions about what makes instructional materials engaging, appropriately challenging, and usable.
Adversaries have developed capabilities that may restrict or deny U.S. forces' access to a given area. Prepositioning select war reserve materiel (WRM) may help mitigate vulnerabilities associated with operating in a contested, degraded, or operationally limited environment. In this report, RAND researchers evaluate management approaches and global prepositioning strategies for WRM postures in such environments.
