Advancing Research That Improves Lives and Renewing Trust Through Impact

An economist and longtime champion of research shaped to serve the public good, Stanford Impact Labs’ new faculty director, Matthew Gentzkow, the Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy in the School of Humanities and Sciences, brings deep experience in working with public agencies, schools, and other collaborators to generate actionable insights.

In conversation with SIL’s Kate Green Tripp, Gentzkow shares his perspective on the role Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) can play at a moment when universities face a crisis of trust, why large-scale support for social science is essential, and how engaging deeply with collaborators beyond the university leads to research that is more relevant, useful, and impactful.

Kate Green Tripp: How do you see Stanford Impact Labs’ role when it comes to supporting field-leading, impact-driven research? 

Matthew Gentzkow: To begin with, I want to call out what an amazing organization Stanford Impact Labs is and how lucky I feel to be part of it. When thinking about how we are best positioned to support research, I go back to SIL's original mission.

This initiative was born of the idea that with the right resources, knowledge, and support, scholars and research teams can help put cutting-edge social science to work for society, either through informing policy or other key decisions, or through evaluating specific programs or interventions. 

There's a vast amount of innovative social science underway here at Stanford. And yet, in order for that science to reach its full potential beyond the university—to really make peoples’ lives better—it requires several things. It needs resources at a scale beyond what is traditionally associated with social science research, and more akin to what is associated with lab sciences like chemistry or engineering. It needs a network of connections—among scholars doing similar work, and outward from the university to thinkers and doers and innovators in the wider world. And it needs a base of knowledge, experience, and shared resources to help scholars work with outside partners and collaborators effectively. 

Stanford Impact Labs was built to serve these needs by providing researchers with resources and support, including funding, capacity-building, and professional development that can enable their frontier research to reach its full potential.

How is Stanford Impact Labs best positioned to work in service of Stanford University in this particular moment when universities face a real crisis of trust?

Stanford is known around the world for being an institution where cutting-edge science gets turned into innovations that change the day-to-day experience of people's lives. We see that across domains like engineering, computer science, medicine, and the life sciences. In all of those areas, this university has an incredible track record of developing and incubating ideas and then translating them out into the real world to solve problems and improve lives. 

At the same time, Stanford has some of the best social science departments in the world and an enormous amount of frontier social science research happening here that is capable of delivering profound real-world impact. That creates vast potential for Stanford to serve as a pioneering leader in putting this kind of research to work for society. 

At Stanford Impact Labs, we are developing and incubating a portfolio of research that aims to do just that. I see this work as an anchor for Stanford at a moment marked by a crisis of trust in universities’ research mission. Universities like ours can respond by continuing to prioritize research and initiatives that advance societal well-being and demonstrably improve lives, while ensuring the impact is accessible and relevant to people across economic, geographic, demographic, and political lines.

As an economist engaged in research about kids and phones—a frontier of knowledge the world is clearly asking for—at a time marked by significant changes to the research funding landscape, what is your perspective on how universities must respond? 

I think universities need to respond by doubling down on support for research that is addressing urgent and immediate needs. The world is changing faster than it's ever changed before. A lot of things that we've taken for granted and counted on—from local newspapers to international economic institutions to democracy—are coming into question. In moments of that kind of uncertainty, science becomes indispensable. The potential to put science to work for society is bigger than it's ever been, and yet the resource needs of social scientists are also bigger than they've ever been. As I see it, universities—as well as philanthropic institutions, businesses, and governments—have an opportunity to really renew their commitment to research, and make it work as effectively as possible.

Speaking of efficacy, the basic thesis of Stanford Impact Labs is that research is greatly enhanced when scholars work in partnership, or close collaboration, with entities beyond the university like government agencies, schools, or hospitals to name a few. That means not just doing the research first and then bringing it to frontline practitioners after the fact, but rather involving them in the process, engaging them from the beginning, and ensuring that research is shaped to answer the right questions and provide actionable knowledge. 

I also believe that approach is critical for universities to support at this moment. 

Let me share an example. As part of my research on kids and phones, I work with school districts that are trying to understand what phone policies work better or less well, and how changing policies in schools affects kids’ learning and mental health and social relationships. 

At the beginning of that research, if left to my own devices, I might have framed our investigation as determining whether cell phone bans are good or bad. Through lots of conversations with principals and teachers and parents, however, our research team learned that is not really the question to ask. Many of the stakeholders most immersed in the issue are clear that phones must be restricted in schools. What they need help with is figuring out how to do it. What kinds of specific policies should we use? Should phones go in lockers or backpacks or pouches or centralized collection areas? Should kids leave them at home altogether? How do we enforce policies? 

Once our research team understood this, we were able to design our approach to make sure we captured that level of nuance and ran a study that could provide useful insights to the key decision makers poised to act on the knowledge we generated.