Where are the gaps in broadband data?
How do broadband access and digital skills affect the workforce?
What are the regional economic implications of digital access?
What fundamental aspects of research could help practitioners evaluate their programs to more effectively tell their story?
These are just a few of the many research topics to be explored at the 2025 Digital Access Research Forum in Kansas City, September 16-18, 2025. External LinkView the agenda and register here.
The research forum connects community development practitioners and funders
with the latest research on broadband and digital access. While often considered a distinct field within community development, research topics presented at this year’s forum support many other fields of community development, including affordable housing, rural development, workforce development, and financial inclusion.
The objectives of the research forum are to provide:
- A framework for existing research
- Relevant context and appropriate applications for existing research
- A forum for informing and advancing new research
- Workshops on qualitative and quantitative fundamentals
The 2025 research forum builds off a similar forum hosted at the Dallas Federal Reserve in 2023. New this year is the addition of capacity-building workshops. These workshops, held September 16, are designed for community development practitioners and explore the use of qualitative and quantitative research for program evaluation and communicating program impact.
The research forum is a collaboration of the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, New York and Philadelphia. As with the research forum in 2023, the Reserve Banks formed an external advisory committee consisting of 39 researchers and practitioners to shape the forum objectives, selection criteria and to identify prospective presenters.
Organizers then issued a public call for presentation proposals, which generated more than 40 submissions from across the country. The planning team reviewed each proposal according to the following criteria:
Does the proposal
- Present a framework for existing research?
- Provide relevant context and appropriate applications for existing research?
- Inform or advance new research?
- Inform gaps in existing literature or data?
- Present clear objectives and/or learning outcomes?
- Present recent data?
- Demonstrate expertise in the field?
After careful consideration, organizers selected 25 proposals for presentation. The planning team wove the proposals into 13 sessions and combined them with several networking sessions to form the final agenda.
Attendees can register for the pre-forum workshops on the 16th, the two-day research forum, or for all three days External Linkhere.
Questions? Please contact Marisa Martinez.