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PRS students testify at NH Legal Advice and Referral Center

Rockefeller Center Policy Research Shop students Zheng-Yi Yang '14, Danielle Unterschutz '14, and Ayushi Narayan '14 posing with Connie Rakowsky, Director of the New Hampshire Legal Advice and Referral Center in Concord, NH on February 8, 2012.
On Wednesday, February 8, 2012, three Dartmouth students from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center Policy Research Shop (PRS), Zheng-Yi Yang '14, Danielle Unterschutz '14, and Ayushi Narayan '14, traveled to the headquarters of the NH Legal Advice and Referral Center, in Concord, NH, to present their findings of a months-long analysis of complex data from the center's phone system. At a meeting of the entire LARC staff and Director Connie Rakowsky, the team discussed the challenges they face in the analysis and their research methodology, provided summary statistics of the center's call intake data for one week, and made recommendations for strengthening their call intake process to reduce hang-ups, wait times, and to improve client service overall. Based on their findings, the team recommended altering staff assignments to match high-call-volume days, altering the center's automated phone answering system to direct clients to the center's website, providing more information during clients' waiting period, and making significant improvements to the center's website.

The Policy Research Shop is supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) program.

To learn more about the Policy Research Shop, click here.