Better Research Framework

Document Created: 2021-10-14 | Last Updated: 2021-10-14 | Status: Preliminary Draft

Introduction

Better’s mission is to research, develop, and share ways to dramatically improve people’s lives and the world. Our research is the fundamental driving force behind our activities. It enables us to directly impact people and societies by identifying and sharing the best ways to improve well-doing and well-being on an individual and collective scale. In addition to spreading awareness and inspiring change, our insights also drive the advice we provide and the initiatives we launch to more directly impact the world.

In order to ensure we promote the right interventions—right meaning everything from factually correct to having the highest impact on the margins—we’re developing a novel research method we are currently terming the EPITOME Framework.

The EPITOME Framework has five components:

  1. Exploration: There are many potential interventions out there, and we must ensure we are aware of all of those interventions and all relevant information associated with them so that we do not miss out on low-hanging fruit or make incorrect recommendations
  2. Prioritization: Given that resources are limited, we must estimate the potential impact of all the interventions we identify so that we can allocate resources to the highest-impact interventions on the margin first
  3. InvesTigation: We will start with a rough understanding of an intervention’s importance and correctness
  4. Optimization: After understanding the intervention, we need to view the information in a broader context and determine the best course of action for someone given our understanding of the intervention and all of the different goals someone has and alternatives to implementing the intervention in question
  5. MEdiatization: After we have formulated a recommendation, we need to share our recommendation with the public and do so in a way that shapes people’s behavior and our institutions/society at large