FC / NETWORK
Registry 01 · Domain
Behavioral Science
Seventy-five years of patient work, and a door held open for you.
Judgment, decision-making, and the design of choice architectures at scale.
Classification
Research domain
Cross-disciplinary index
Brief / 01
Context record
Behavioral-science research at RAND treats judgment and decision-making as design problems, the question is what choice architectures, institutional structures, and decision processes produce better outcomes at population scale.
RAND's behavioral and social scientists work across substance use, mental health, decision competence, community resilience, and policy design. The work is consistently coupled to implementation contexts, schools, clinics, communities, agencies, rather than confined to laboratory paradigms.
RAND's Signature Themes in Behavioral Science
Decision competence across the lifespan
How decision-making skills develop, decay, and can be supported across childhood, adulthood, and aging.
Substance use and behavioral health
Prevention, treatment, and the policy environment that determines whether evidence-based interventions reach the populations that need them.
Community resilience
Behavioral and institutional factors that predict community capacity to absorb shocks.
Choice architecture in public programs
How program design, default rules, and information delivery shape participation and outcomes in safety-net and health programs.
Representative Work
Adult Decision-Making Competence
Parker & Fischhoff
Considering Marijuana Legalization
RAND · RR-864
Building Community Resilience to Disasters
RAND · TL-109
Methodological Emphasis
Survey experiments, longitudinal cohort studies, and community-based participatory research.
Methodological Lineage →Affiliated Researchers