How Research–Practice Partnerships Can Strengthen Experiments Designed to Build Trust in American Elections

To address the challenge of declining trust in American democracy in the wake of the 2020 presidential contest, election officials across the nation have undertaken innovative public information campaigns. Academic studies demonstrate that exposure to these messages can increase public confidence but do not show which types of messages are most effective. We report a set of three experimental studies that harness research–practice partnerships with these officials to vary one key aspect of an informational message while holding other features constant. The pre-registered experiments (accessible at: https://osf.io/y38sp; https://osf.io/fya69): (a) compare the impact of messages conveyed through earned versus paid media; (b) ask whether Americans are more responsive to messages from federal or from state election officials; (c) explore the impact of videos and static visuals. Taken together, this set of collaborative experiments demonstrates the unique opportunity that research–practice partnerships allow to test real-world messages through strong causal inference techniques, providing rigorous evidence that can inform practice on the front lines of American democracy.