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Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is an essential element for generating credible and actionable evidence on Extension programs. This paper offers a discussion of ECB efforts in Cooperative Extension and how such efforts enable Extension professionals to collect and use credible and actionable evidence on the quality and impacts of programs. Sufficient investments in ECB, both at the individual and organizational levels, can better equip Extension to advocate for and make changes to programs, advance as a learning organization, and have a more powerful impact on communities. Furthermore, as Extension program stakeholders often have varying perspectives on the credibility of evidence, these perspectives must also be accounted for in efforts to build Extension's evaluation capacity. Intentional investments in ECB efforts provide an opportunity for Extension to further deepen and expand impact, positioning programs to most effectively and positively benefit individuals and communities.

AbstractHow impressionable are in‐group biases in early childhood? Previous research shows that young children display robust preferences for members of their own social group, but also condemn those who harm others. The current study investigates children's evaluations of agents when their group membership and moral behavior conflict. After being assigned to a minimal group, 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children either saw their in‐group member behave antisocially, an out‐group member act prosocially, or control agents, for whom moral information was removed. Children's explicit preference for and willingness to share with their in‐group member was significantly attenuated in the presence of an antisocial in‐group member, but not a prosocial out‐group member. Interestingly, children's learning decisions were unmoved by a person's moral behavior, instead being consistently guided by group membership. This demonstrates that children's in‐group bias is remarkably flexible: while moral information curbs children's in‐group bias on social evaluations, social learning is still driven by group information.

For children experiencing chronic stress, succeeding academically in the face of other obstacles can be daunting. Many efforts focused on supporting students fail to address nonacademic aspects of well-being that can impact their ability to succeed. Working to bridge the gap between research and practice, here we describe the results of an Extension-Community partnership that sought to design learning environments to support elementary students' healthy bodies and minds. Project leaders took an ecological systems approach, intervening with students at a local elementary school across multiple contexts. This entailed creating a calming room in the school, building a community garden on the school grounds, and providing wrap-around educational programming for teachers, staff, and families. Interviews were conducted with teachers and school staff (N = 20) to measure their perceptions of the impact of this intervention. Results are presented within the framework of the socio-ecological model, accounting for the multilevel nature of the project impacts. Interview themes revealed the program's success in supporting positive outcomes for students, staff, the school, and the surrounding community. Discussions center around the program's impact on students and on lessons learned that could inform future efforts.

AbstractThe experiences of social partners are important motivators of social action. Can infants use such experiences to make predictions about how social agents will behave? Sixteen‐month‐old infants were introduced to two social pairs. Initial events established within‐pair cooperation as well as between‐pair conflict involving an individual from each pair. Following these events, infants looked longer when between‐pair members who had never previously interacted now cooperated – instead of conflicted – with each other. Thus, infants tracked the third‐person allegiances and inferred that the conflict would generalize across social partnerships. These findings demonstrate a critical feature of early social cognition and promote needed, further research on the role of social allegiances in social cognition across development.