The New Jersey State Policy Lab has awarded funding to the proposal “IMPACT-NJ: Improved Policy-based Advancements for Chatbot Technology in New Jersey” submitted by SC&I faculty members Assistant Professor of Communication Yonaira Rivera and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Vivek Singh.

“As the public sector continues to adopt chatbots to assist individuals in acquiring information about important health and government services, multilingual access is key to fostering equitable digital health adoption. IMPACT-NJ aims to address this issue by developing policy guidelines to enhance language equity in chatbot responses, with an emphasis on New Jersey’s two most spoken languages, English and Spanish,” wrote Rivera and Singh, describing the goals of the project.

Of the proposal, NJSPL Executive Director Elizabeth Cooner said to Rivera and Singh, “We appreciate the quality of the submissions, the breadth of innovative research approaches, and the commitment to engaging students in the research process.  Working together, we are collectively advancing understanding on a wide range of policy issues impacting the state of New Jersey -- always with an eye towards equity and social justice. Thanks for your contributions to the greater good.”

As the first step in the project, Rivera and Singh, with SC&I Ph.D. student M.J. Salas, conducted an audit of chatbots on different U.S. state-level websites that provide information on public services, and they published their findings from the audit in the NJSPL blog: "Insights from an Audit of SNAP Websites' Chatbot Services." 

As the first step in the project, Rivera and Singh, with SC&I Ph.D. student M.J. Salas, conducted an audit of chatbots on different U.S. state-level websites that provide information on public services, and they published their findings from the audit in the NJSPL blog: "Insights from an Audit of SNAP Websites' Chatbot Services." 

The audit, Rivera and Singh said, focused “on state websites that house information about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which offers food assistance to low-income families. We selected SNAP as a starting point due to its availability to eligible participants across all 50 states and territories, paying particular attention to the chatbot features of each site.”

Their findings, they wrote, “suggest newly developed chatbots should be easily visible (e.g., large widget and ‘pop-up’ upon entering the website), provide a privacy warning, prime users to its response capabilities, elicit real-time feedback, and recognize and respond to nuanced English and Spanish prompts equally.”

The next step in the project, they said, will be to apply these findings to the development of a prototype bilingual chatbot for populations in New Jersey.

The next step in the project, they said, will be to apply these findings to the development of a prototype bilingual chatbot for populations in New Jersey.

The New Jersey State Policy Lab, according to the website, assists the State of New Jersey and its many communities in the design, implementation, and evaluation of state policies and programs by conducting rigorous evidence-based research that considers equity, efficiency, and efficacy of public policies and programs in holistic and innovative ways. The NJSPL is housed in the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and run as a partnership between the Bloustein School and the School of Public Affairs and Administration in Rutgers-Newark.

Learn more about the Communication and Library and Information Science Departments at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.