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Over the past two years while the NCFR Board of Directors has worked with NCFR members on NCFR’s policy direction, work has continued on the research and policy briefs. Author guidelines for writing the briefs and a publication process were developed, and NCFR hired Joyce Arditti, Ph.D., as the research and policy brief editor to enhance the peer-review process and to begin publishing research and policy briefs.  

The purpose of the research and policy briefs is to provide policymakers with research on families to help inform decisions that affect families at the federal, state, and local levels. Brief topics must be timely and include a family perspective. Briefs are based on high-quality research; are educational, nonpartisan, and objective; and are written by experts in the field.

NCFR has published three peer-reviewed policy briefs under Dr. Arditti’s editorship. Those briefs include the following:

• Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, by Charlotte Patterson, Ph.D., and Abbie Goldberg, Ph.D. (November 2016)
• Alleviating the Stress on Working Families: Promoting Family-Friendly Workplace Policies, by Bahira Sherif Trask, Ph.D. (January 2017). This brief also includes an executive summary.
• How Parental Incarceration Harms Children and What to Do About It, by Sara Wakefield, Ph.D., and Christopher Wildeman, Ph.D. (January 2018). This brief also includes an executive summary.

These briefs, along with the research and policy brief author guidelines and the reviewer guidelines and evaluation form, can be found online at bit.ly/NCFRpolicy.

Dr. Arditti commissioned two additional briefs that are still in the publication process—one on parent and family education in the context of early childhood education and the other on childhood obesity.

We want to thank Dr. Arditti for serving as NCFR’s first research and policy brief editor. She has provided great insight, direction, and thoughtfulness into the brief development, publication, and peer-review process. We also want to thank those individuals who were originally involved in developing the research and policy briefs, those who have thus far served as reviewers, and the leadership of NCFR’s Family Policy Section in advancing the research and policy briefs.

In 2016 and early 2017, the NCFR Board of Directors invited NCFR members to participate in two surveys to examine NCFR’s approach to public policy. The results of those surveys were shared in the NCFR Report and can be found online at bit.ly/ncfrpolicysurvey1 and bit.ly/ncfrpolicysurvey2. These results provide evidence that NCFR members would like to see family-relevant research being disseminated to policymakers and the public with the research and policy briefs as one method of dissemination.

As NCFR moves forward in publishing additional research and policy briefs, the Family Policy Section leadership will continue to be an integral part of the process. Dr. Arditti has concluded her term as editor, and we will begin the search for a new editor and continue to look for brief authors. Please visit bit.ly/NCFRpolicy to review the author guidelines and to indicate your interest in writing a research or policy brief.

The results of the two board policy surveys also indicate that NCFR members are interested in NCFR developing additional methods for disseminating Family Science research to policymakers and the public. Ideas for translating Family Science research from our three journals, Journal of Marriage and Family, Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science, and Journal of Family Theory & Review, are being discussed so that the research can be more widely understood and used by the public, practitioners, and policymakers.

We look forward to the further development of NCFR research and policy briefs and additional tools for disseminating research.