Recognizing the importance of eyewitness identifications in courts of law and motivated by data showing that at least one erroneous eyewitness identification was associated with almost 75% of cases where defendants were later exonerated by DNA evidence, in 2013 the Laura and John Arnold Foundation asked the National Academy of Sciences to undertake an assessment of the scientific research on eyewitness identification and offer recommendations to improve eyewitness performance. The appointed committee issued its report, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, in 2014. In order to stimulate new and innovative research on statistical tools and the interrelationships between system and estimator variables, the Arnold Foundation in 2015 again called upon the National Academies. This report describes the development of the request for proposals, the processes followed by the committee as it evaluated the proposals, and the committee's assessment of the scientific merit and research design of the proposals.
Recognizing the importance of eyewitness identifications in courts of law and motivated by data showing that at least one erroneous eyewitness identification was associated with almost 75% of cases where defendants were later exonerated by DNA evidence, in 2013 the Laura and John Arnold Foundation asked the National Academy of Sciences to undertake an assessment of the scientific research on eyewitness identification and offer recommendations to improve eyewitness performance. The appointed committee issued its report, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, in 2014. In order to stimulate new and innovative research on statistical tools and the interrelationships between system and estimator variables, the Arnold Foundation in 2015 again called upon the National Academies. This report describes the development of the request for proposals, the processes followed by the committee as it evaluated the proposals, and the committee's assessment of the scientific merit and research design of the proposals.
Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification makes the case that better data collection and research on eyewitness identification, new law enforcement training protocols, standardized procedures for administering line-ups, and improvements in the handling of eyewitness identification in court can increase the chances that accurate identifications are made. This report explains the science that has emerged during the past 30 years on eyewitness identifications and identifies best practices in eyewitness procedures for the law enforcement community and in the presentation of eyewitness evidence in the courtroom. In order to continue the advancement of eyewitness identification research, the report recommends a focused research agenda.
Value-added methods refer to efforts to estimate the relative contributions of specific teachers, schools, or programs to student test performance. In recent years, these methods have attracted considerable attention because of their potential applicability for educational accountability, teacher pay-for-performance systems, school and teacher improvement, program evaluation, and research. Value-added methods involve complex statistical models applied to test data of varying quality. Accordingly, there are many technical challenges to ascertaining the degree to which the output of these models provides the desired estimates. Despite a substantial amount of research over the last decade and a half, overcoming these challenges has proven to be very difficult, and many questions remain unanswered-at a time when there is strong interest in implementing value-added models in a variety of settings. The National Research Council and the National Academy of Education held a workshop, summarized in this volume, to help identify areas of emerging consensus and areas of disagreement regarding appropriate uses of value-added methods, in an effort to provide research-based guidance to policy makers who are facing decisions about whether to proceed in this direction.
A Strategy for Assessing Science offers strategic advice on the perennial issue of assessing rates of progress in different scientific fields. It considers available knowledge about how science makes progress and examines a range of decision-making strategies for addressing key science policy concerns. These include avoiding undue conservatism that may arise from the influence of established disciplines; achieving rational, high-quality, accountable, and transparent decision processes; and establishing an appropriate balance of influence between scientific communities and agency science managers. A Strategy for Assessing Science identifies principles for setting priorities and specific recommendations for the context of behavioral and social research on aging.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.