Crafting Relevant Research: Informative and Translational Statistics for Public Policy

Oregon Convention Center 

Room: CC-251 

Translating statistics into a simple and informative narrative for the public can be particularly challenging for statisticians at an early stage in their career. As an advocacy group for early-career statisticians, our panel session aims to help recent graduates and early-career statisticians, especially those who are interested in collaborative research in policy fields, learn essential skills in communicating statistics with policy stakeholders as well as strategies of identifying collaboration opportunities and maintaining good collaboration in policy fields. We hope this session can also motivate early career statisticians to engage in collaborative work within policy fields and use scientific findings from their research to help improve policy decision making.
Informative and translational statistics play crucial roles in shaping effective public policy by providing valuable insights, evidence-based decision-making, and clear communication to policymakers and the public. Informative statistics involves the analysis and interpretation of data to extract meaningful insights. Translational statistics involves transforming complex statistical findings into actionable insights that are easily understandable by policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public. These two aspects of statistics help bridge the gap between data analysis and the formulation of policies that can address societal challenges and promote the well-being of communities thus countering misinformation and its spread. To accomplish such objectives, statisticians play a crucial role in extracting insightful findings from data and conveying them for the comprehension of both policy makers and the general public. However, these responsibilities can be particularly challenging for statisticians in the early stages of their career.


As a group of emerging and new statisticians at the Council for Emerging and New Statisticians (CENS) within ENAR, our goal is to equip early-career statisticians with the essential skills of effectively communicating data and evidence to ensure it guides policy formulation and implementation. We aim to facilitate this goal via our panel discussion with additional focus on students and early career professionals. In this panel session, we will discuss various strategies for communicating statistical findings to the public, aiming to foster informed decision-making in public policy. Our panelists represent a diverse group of policy-minded statisticians and collaborators who will share their stories and talk about how to bridge the gap between scientific findings and policy.
Broader topics for discussion that are applicable to various types of statisticians will include, but not limited to, common hurdles for new statisticians working with policy stakeholders, effective communication and strategies to avoid common statistical pitfalls to non-statisticians, resources to develop and improve skills in explaining statistics, how to identify collaboration opportunities as well as soft skills to build up successful collaboration in policy fields. This session aims to ultimately contribute to better policy decision-making and thus have a positive impact on society.
This session is proposed by the ENAR Committee: CENS. We have previously organized many invited panel sessions, including several at annual ENAR and JSM conferences, to serve recent graduates and new statisticians joining those organizations.

Yes

ENAR

Health Policy Statistics Section

International Indian Statistical Association

Scientific and Public Affairs Advisory Committee

Section on Statistical Consulting