Princeton Project Funded by Two PNY Members Reveals Insight into Behavior-Change Campaigns
The William T. Grant Foundation's Scholars Program and the Russell Sage Foundation fund a project that asked students to report who they socialized with on a regular basis — both in person and online — and then used the data to identify the most connected students to position as "social referants" to spread social change.
The researchers encouraged this small set of students to take a public stand against bullying at their schools and found that middle schools that instituted Roots experienced a 30 percent reduction in reported "conflict incidents." The results suggest that behavior-change campaigns may be made more effective when they harness networks of influence to change societal norms...