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Researchers and practitioners in marketing, economics, and public policy often use preference elicitation tasks to forecast real-world behaviors. These tasks typically ask a series of similarly structured questions. The authors posit that every time a respondent answers an additional elicitation question, two things happen: (1) they provide information about some parameter(s) of interest, such as their time preference or the partworth for a product attribute, and (2) the respondent increasingly “adapts” to the task—that is, using task-specific decision processes specialized for this task that may or may not apply to other tasks. Importantly, adaptation comes at the cost of potential mismatch between the task-specific decision process and real-world processes that generate the target behaviors, such that asking more questions can reduce external validity. The authors used mouse and eye tracking to trace decision processes in time preference measurement and conjoint choice tasks. Respondents increasingly relied on task-specific decision processes as more questions were asked, leading to reduced external validity for both related tasks and real-world behaviors. Importantly, the external validity of measured preferences peaked after as few as seven questions in both types of tasks. When measuring preferences, less can be more.

Climate change is a complex phenomenon that the public learns about both abstractly through media and education, and concretely through personal experiences. While public beliefs about global warming may be controversial in some circles, an emerging body of research on the ‘local warming’ effect suggests that people's judgments of climate change or global warming are impacted by recent, local temperatures. A meta-analysis including 31 observations across 82 952 participants derived from 17 papers published since 2006 found a small but significant effect overall: a 1°C increase in temperature increases worry about climate change by 1.2%. Moderation analysis found larger effects for temperatures over longer time frames and smaller effects for behaviors versus beliefs. We also review conceptually related effects due to other extreme weather events, as well as effects on behaviors related to climate change beliefs.

Making good health insurance decisions is important for health outcomes and longevity, but consumers' errors are well documented. The authors examine whether targeted choice architecture interventions can reduce these mistakes. The article examines the interaction of two choice architecture tools on improved consumer insurance decisions in online health care exchanges: (1) ordering the options from best to worst based on a high-quality user model and (2) partitioning the total set of options. Although ordering and partitioning do not always improve choices separately, the authors use one field study and three experiments to identify the conditions that allow the combination to greatly improve health insurance decisions. Findings indicate that when options are ordered such that the best options appear at the beginning of the presented list, partitioning nudges consumers to focus on the best options. However, if the best options are not at the top of the list, partitioning discourages search and can impair consumers' discovery of the best options. Process data show that these effects are achieved by focusing consumers' limited attention on higher-quality options. These results suggest that wise choice architecture interventions need to consider the joint effect of choice architecture tools as well as the quality of the firm's user model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion examines an academic intervention designed to enhance the motivation and classroom engagement of English Language Learners (ELLs) during literacy-based activities. Stemming from a sociocultural perspective of literacy (Au, 1993; Perez, 2004) within a funds of knowledge framework (González, Moll, & Amanti , 2005), our approach emphasizes personalized learning (Redding, 2013) by having the students design, develop, and implement classroom lessons based on their own interests. As part of the process, the participating students made clear connections between home and classroom practices, resulting in higher productivity during literacy and oral activities. By tapping into what we call scholastic funds of knowledge, the students also showed higher levels of meta-cognitive awareness in designing activities for their peers and revealed a broader perspective of what it takes to develop academic lessons. Not only do the results demonstrate an increase in the participants' investment in classroom activities (Norton, 1995), their student-directed lessons had a positive effect on the engagement of other students within the class as well.

This article describes how preservice teachers and Latinx students can collaborate to effect change in the way that K-12 educators support students from traditionally marginalized groups. We build on the concept of funds of knowledge to demonstrate how situating traditionally marginalized students in positions of expertise as funds of knowledge mentors can incite profound dispositional shifts that subvert traditional hierarchies of power within schooling contexts and cultivate professional democracy within the field of education.

How can firms encourage consumers to adopt smartphone apps? The authors show that several inexpensive choice architecture techniques can make users more likely to enable important app features and complete app onboarding. In six preregistered experiments (n = 5,968) and a field experiment (n = 594,997), choice architecture interventions manipulating choice sequence, color, and wording of app adoption decisions dramatically increased app adoption. Across experiments, integrating multiple feature decisions into a single choice increased adoption. This integration effect emerges because it decreases decision noise and reduces the prominence of individual features, consistent with support theory. Changing colors to match habitual patterns commonly found in current digital interfaces appears to increase adoption by accelerating consumers' decisions. Finally, wording options as if enabling the app is the default response (even without changing the actual default) also increases adoption. These "defaultless defaults" may be particularly relevant in heavily regulated consumer domains, such as finance or health care. The effects generalized across different types of apps and were robust across subsamples varying in demographics, attitudes toward the apps, and political affiliation. These results suggest simple tools that marketing managers and app developers can use to increase app adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-related deterioration in cognitive ability may compromise the ability of older adults to make major financial decisions. We explore whether knowledge and expertise accumulated from past decisions can offset cognitive decline to maintain decision quality over the life span. Using a unique dataset that combines measures of cognitive ability (fluid intelligence) and of general and domain-specific knowledge (crystallized intelligence), credit report data, and other measures of decision quality, we show that domain-specific knowledge and expertise provide an alternative route for sound financial decisions. That is, cognitive aging does not spell doom for financial decision-making in domains where the decision maker has developed expertise. These results have important implications for public policy and for the design of effective interventions and decision aids.

This article considers the impact of the "Lau v. Nichols" Supreme Court decision on the education of English learners in Washington State, US In particular, we focus on the most popular educational program in the state, Sheltered English Instruction. We first examine how intertextual links to various policy texts and discourses shape Washington language policy and then look at how educators in four school districts interpret and appropriate this policy. Based on fieldwork in four school districts, we argue that English learners are often submerged in English-only classrooms, in which the curriculum is not fundamentally changed to meet their needs, thus denying them equal educational opportunity according to "Lau v. Nichols."

Policymakers increasingly rely on behavioral science in response to global challenges, such as climate change or global health crises. But applications of behavioral science face an important problem: Interventions often exert substantially different effects across contexts and individuals. We examine this heterogeneity for different paradigms that underlie many behavioral interventions. We study the paradigms in a series of five preregistered studies across one in-person and 10 online panels, with over 11,000 respondents in total. We find substantial heterogeneity across settings and paradigms, apply techniques for modeling the heterogeneity, and introduce a framework that measures typically omitted moderators. The framework's factors (Fluid Intelligence, Attentiveness, Crystallized Intelligence, and Experience) affect the effectiveness of many text-based interventions, producing different observed effect sizes and explaining variations across samples. Moderators are associated with effect sizes through two paths, with the intensity of the manipulation and with the effect of the manipulation directly. Our results motivate observing these moderators and provide a theoretical and empirical framework for understanding and predicting varying effect sizes in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To examine the perceptions among faculty and health professional students regarding mandatory vaccination policies on a health sciences campus. Participants: A total of 296 faculty and 244 students completed surveys during Fall 2015. Methods: The online survey administered to individuals who received the influenza vaccine during the fall 2015 influenza vaccination clinic season included five items evaluating perceptions of employer mandatory vaccination requirements. Results: Chi-square analysis indicated that although faculty and students agree mandatory vaccinations in a health care environment are appropriate, faculty are more likely than students to get vaccinated in the absence of a mandate. Additionally, a small fraction of faculty would consider employment elsewhere when facing this mandate. Conclusions: Overall, faculty and students had favorable perceptions about mandatory influenza vaccine policies. Since students were less likely to be vaccinated in the absence of a mandate, education of students should be improved to support the importance of vaccinations in a health care environment.

Hart and Risley's (1995) concept of a "word gap" (aka "language gap") is widely used to describe inferior cognitive development and lower academic achievement as by-products of the language patterns of families from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. In recent decades, this line of deficit research has proliferated and caused a surge in public exposure in the media and political realms. In this discussion, we employ critical discourse analysis to illuminate intertextual links across three essential domains of "language gap" discourse: (a) academic research literature, (b) public news media, and (c) institutional narratives. The data are analyzed in terms of interdiscursive connections within and between research articles; news and magazine stories; and institutional documents from academic, political, and philanthropic organizations. Here, we demonstrate how discourses that are generated within a socially insulated "language gap" research paradigm propagate a deficit orientation of linguistic minority communities, problematically validate behavior intervention programs among particular socioeconomic groups, and reify linguistic and cultural misperceptions of traditionally marginalized groups.

Fluid intelligence decreases with age, yet evidence about age declines in decision-making quality is mixed: Depending on the study, older adults make worse, equally good, or even better decisions than younger adults. We propose a potential explanation for this puzzle, namely that age differences in decision performance result from the interplay between two sets of cognitive capabilities that impact decision making, one in which older adults fare worse (i.e., fluid intelligence) and one in which they fare better (i.e., crystallized intelligence). Specifically, we hypothesized that older adults' higher levels of crystallized intelligence can provide an alternate pathway to good decisions when the fluid intelligence pathway declines. The performance of older adults relative to younger adults therefore depends on the relative importance of each type of intelligence for the decision at hand. We tested this complementary capabilities hypothesis in a broad sample of younger and older adults, collecting a battery of standard cognitive measures and measures of economically important decision-making "traits"--including temporal discounting, loss aversion, financial literacy, and debt literacy. We found that older participants performed as well as or better than younger participants on these four decision-making measures. Structural equation modeling verified our hypothesis: Older participants' greater crystallized intelligence offset their lower levels of fluid intelligence for temporal discounting, financial literacy, and debt literacy, but not for loss aversion. These results have important implications for public policy and for the design of effective decision environments for older adults.

In this article we proffer a theoretical model for analyzing power in language policy processes and incorporate ethnographic data to illustrate the usefulness of the model. Grounded in an ethnographic project in the US state of Washington, we examine how nominally identical school district-level programs, which are funded under the same state-level language policy, end up being different in practice. While language policy is often portrayed as multiply layered, or taking place across multiple levels of policy activity, we argue that language policy arbiters wield a disproportionate amount of power relative to other individuals in a particular level or layer. Our analysis focuses on how beliefs about language, language education, and educational research impact the decision-making of individuals we identify as language policy arbiters. We argue that the proposed model usefully highlights how language policy arbiters open and close spaces for additive bilingual education.

Purpose: This paper aims to outline the misguided underpinnings of the "word gap" concept promoted by Hart and Risley (1995). This concept posits that a "30 million word gap" between children of poverty and those from affluent households accounts for widespread academic disparities. Based on this premise, there has been a recent surge in educational programs that are based on a deficit view toward the language patterns of families from economically impoverished backgrounds. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is a discussion piece to debunk the "word gap" concept. Findings: Describing the language patterns of families in poverty as inferior is linguistically false and culturally insensitive. The aim of this paper is to explain why this is and suggest alternative approaches for supporting students who live in poverty. Originality/value: This paper is an original look at the so-called "language gap" and suggests strategies for helping students who might otherwise struggle to reach their potential.

In this paper, we compare the bilingual/language education policies of Arizona and Washington to show that state-level language policy plays a critical role in shaping the appropriation of federal language policy [No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Title III] and how different state-level language policies impact the district level of policy appropriation. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of "habitus" and "doxa," we argue that different types of appropriation, in turn, impact how educators and students orient toward bilingualism. Based on ethnographic research in demographically similar school districts in Arizona and Washington, we juxtapose the voices of students and school faculty from both states to demonstrate how language polices are appropriated and instantiated in distinct ways that may not be predictable based on federal language policy.

Choice architecture tools, commonly known as nudges, powerfully impact decisions and can improve welfare. Yet it is unclear who is most impacted by nudges. If nudge effects are moderated by socioeconomic status (SES), these differential effects could increase or decrease disparities across consumers. Using field data and several preregistered studies, the authors demonstrate that consumers with lower SES, domain knowledge, and numerical ability are impacted more by a wide variety of nudges. As a result, "good nudges" designed to increase selection of superior options reduced choice disparities, improving choices more among consumers with lower SES, lower financial literacy, and lower numeracy than among those with higher levels of these variables. Compared with "good nudges," "bad nudges" designed to facilitate selection of inferior options exacerbated choice disparities. These results generalized across real retirement decisions, different nudges, and different decision domains. Across studies, the authors tested different explanations of why SES, domain knowledge, and numeracy moderate nudges. The results suggest that nudges are a useful tool for those who wish to reduce disparities. The research concludes with a discussion of implications for marketing firms and segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]