Leveraging Research Synthesis Methods to Support Evidence-Based Policy- and Decision-Making.

This commentary discusses the potential utility of research syntheses for evidence-based policy- and decision-making, examining the papers that comprise the special issue on modern meta-analytic methods. Evidence and data have the potential to play a critical role in the development of policies and in the administration of programs that meet the social and economic needs of children and families. Novel, innovative, and methodologically rigorous methods that allow for comprehensive and systematic research synthesis, such as those disseminated in this special issue, can help inform the work of the federal government and the prevention science field at large. Overall, the papers hold promise for strengthening the rigor of existing approaches, illustrate novel approaches, and demonstrate the utility of information that research syntheses can produce. Collectively, the studies in this special issue advance the available toolbox of methods that can be used to support evidence-based policy- and decision-making.

To Have the Best Interest at Heart: Analyzing the Match Between Laypersons' Interests and Publication Activity in Psychology.

There is a growing public interest in science and, by extension, in psychology, and human behavior. Yet, detailed investigations on whether academic psychological research activity matches lay interests are still scarce. In addition, while lay-friendly communication of research findings becomes continually more important, it is unclear which subfields of psychological research are particularly interesting to laypeople. To address these research gaps, we carried out an explorative study of psychological literature included in two large reference databases, one with a German (PSYNDEX) and one with an international (PsycInfo) scope. The years of 2018-2020 were scanned for articles belonging to one of 20 topic areas assessed as most interesting by lay participants in a previous study. We determined and compared the share of empirical research and research syntheses for each topic area and database and computed rank correlations between lay interest and academic publication volume. Results suggest a positive relationship between lay interest and academic publication activity specifically for research syntheses. Additionally, topic areas associated with clinical psychology offered a large share of research syntheses, while other topic areas such as "Psychodynamics" or "Industrial & Organizational Psychology" encompassed a smaller share of syntheses. Finally, we outline perspectives for long-term monitoring of psychology-related lay interests. Thus, the present study connects academic activity with the public interest in psychology by identifying and quantifying research syntheses for topics garnering the most lay interest.