Closing the Loop Posted on March 19, 2007 It's essential to let the community know about your research findings, states Pamela DeCarlo (bio).

There's different audiences that are important to report back to. Sort of like closing the loop in research. So if you've got a research project and you are recruiting in schools and you're using the PTA or you're using the local community organizations and then you're giving surveys to the kids or the parents, it's really important that when you find something you don't just present it at an academic conference, but that you report back to the places where you recruited.

So if you're talking to kids, the kids need to know what you found. The organizations need to know, the school needs to know, the principals need to know. And that can be done in a lot of different ways; that can be done through the Internet; it could be done just with a newsletter. You could have a community forum. You could come and talk at a town hall if there is something like that. There's lots of really easy, direct ways to get information back that don't require writing a press release and trying to get someone to find your information, but it's really more directly community oriented.

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