Search

Over the past 15 years, the suicide rate among members of the U.S. armed forces has doubled, with the greatest increase observed among soldiers in the Army. This increasing rate is paralleled by a smaller increase in the general U.S. population, observed across both genders, in virtually every age group and in nearly every state. An empirical question exists: What is the extent or degree to which the suicide trend in the Army is unique to that service, relative to what is observed in the general U.S. population? The Army has typically attempted to address this question by standardizing the general population to look like the Army on demographic characteristics. However, given the rise in suicide rates over the past decade, the Army wanted to better understand whether standardization based solely on age and gender is enough. Expanding the characteristics on which the general population is standardized to match the Army could be useful to gain a better understanding of the suicide trends in the Army. However, such a change also brings with it some challenges, including the lack of readily available data in the general U.S. population. In addition, even an expanded set of characteristics still results in having a large number of unmeasured factors that cannot be included in this type of analysis. In this study, the authors explore how accounting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, time, marital status, and educational attainment affects suicide rate differences between soldiers and a comparable subset of the general U.S. population.

This tutorial describes how to use a menu-driven Shiny application (app) based on the Toolkit for Weighting and Analysis of Nonequivalent Groups (TWANG) R package. This tutorial provides an introduction about how to use the TWANG Shiny app to estimate propensity score weights and related treatment effects for comparing three or more treatment groups when using observational data.

The RAND Corporation's Gun Policy in America initiative is a unique attempt to systematically and transparently assess available scientific evidence on the real effects of firearm laws and policies. Good gun policies require consideration of many factors, including the law and constitutional rights, the interests of various stakeholder groups, and information about the likely effects of different laws or policies on a range of outcomes. This study seeks to provide the third-objective information about what the scientific literature examining gun policy can tell us about the likely effects of laws. The study synthesizes the available scientific data on the effects of various firearm policies on firearm deaths, violent crime, the gun industry, participation in hunting and sport shooting, and other outcomes. By highlighting where scientific evidence is accumulating, the authors hope to build consensus around a shared set of facts that have been established through a transparent, nonpartisan, and impartial review process. In so doing, they also illuminate areas where more and better information could make important contributions to establishing fair and effective gun policies.

This tutorial describes the use of the TWANG package in R to estimate inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTWs) when one has time varying treatments or sequences of treatments over time.

With their extensive social reach and influence across diverse communities, faith-based organizations have an opportunity to help address HIV worldwide. In a series of studies conducted over eight years with community partners, RAND researchers sought to better understand the capacity of urban congregations for HIV prevention and care, specifically in the areas of stigma reduction and HIV testing. This research brief outlines their findings.

Sleep problems can have consequences for servicemembers' health and for force readiness and resiliency. This first-ever comprehensive review of sleep-related policies and programs led to recommendations for improving sleep across the force.

Sleep problems can have consequences for servicemembers' health and for force readiness and resiliency. Findings from a large-scale survey of servicemembers offer guidance for policies and programs to identify, treat, and prevent sleep problems.

Examines whether the Cognitive Tutor Algebra I (CTAI) algebra curriculum, which includes tutoring software, is effective in improving the math test scores of middle and high school students, relative to traditional algebra instruction.