Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy (2012) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Use of Research Knowledge: Current Scholarship
3 The Use of Research Knowledge: Current Scholarship
Pages 35-52
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From page 35... ...
To begin with, investigations of these phenomena are launched in different disciplines, including anthropology, political science, psychology, and sociology and their myriad subfields and cross-fields, from science and technology studies to political psychology, from behavioral economics to historical sociology. Each of these fields has its own established principles of evidence and inference.
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From page 36... ...
. There are models that focus on different stages of the policy process and thus on different ways that social science can contribute, including: descriptive analyses that present conditions needing policy attention, such as a slowdown in small business start-ups; social indicators that document long-term trends, such as gender differences in pay scales; social experiments on alternative policy designs, such as school vouchers; and evaluation research on the effectiveness of a policy, such as neighborhood policing.1 Political science is the discipline that has devoted the most attention to the policy process.
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From page 37... ...
A school district deciding whether to establish charter schools is less interested in a comparative study of charter and public schools across the country than in wanting to know how well a charter school will perform under its conditions, which differ depending on whether the district is in the central city or suburb, with a homogenous or diverse population, with a historically competent or incompetent school administration. The usefulness of research is not assessed in terms of variance explained from a large sample of schools, but whether it is informative about a very specific choice.
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From page 38... ...
This complaint, however, overlooks the fact that, when policy makers argue on the basis of evidence, it is more difficult for their opponents to ignore that evidence, or to leave it unchallenged. "My science versus your science" has the merit of putting science in play, and over time opens more space for policy arguments that include scientific evidence.
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From page 39... ...
DECISIONISM AND ITS CRITIQUE The scholarship on knowledge utilization has, virtually from its beginnings, been skeptical of rational models of the relationship between research and policy. Rational models assume that decisions unfold through five stages (Nutley and Webb, 2000, p.
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From page 40... ...
263) summarized the essence of this model: "a decision is pending, research provides information that is lacking, and with the information in hand the decision maker makes a decision." Rational models have also been characterized as "decisionism" -- "a limited number of political actors engaged in making calculated choices among clearly conceived alternatives" (Majone, 1989, p.
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From page 41... ...
Rather, multiple decision makers are embedded in systemic relations in which use not only depends on the available information, but also involves coalition building, rhetoric and persuasion, accommodation of conflicting values, and others' expectations. In criticizing rational models and decisionist thinking, Weiss and others suggest that use is less a matter of straightforward application of scientific findings to discrete decisions and more a matter of framing issues or influencing debate (Weiss, 1978, p.
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From page 42... ...
Like any binary distinction, this one oversimplifies, though there is a crude truth to several distinctions rooted in the different tasks facing researchers and policy makers. They differ in the outcomes they value-knowledge about the world in all its complexities versus knowledge helpful in reaching feasible solutions to pressing problems -- and in the incentives, rewards, and cultural assumptions associated with these different outcomes.
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From page 43... ...
On the demand side are policy makers who fail to spell out objectives in researchable terms, have few incentives to use science, and do not take time to understand research findings relevant to pending policy choices. This framing of the use problem offers little guidance as to which of the long list of factors, from either side, best explains variance in use, let alone how the factors interact and whether they apply only in specific settings or have general applicability (Bogenschneider and Corbett, 2010; Johnson et al., 2009)
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From page 44... ...
was established in part to develop the science that could be translated into strategies to change education practice in public schools. The What Works Clearinghouse of the IES aims to provide educators, policy makers, and the public with an independent, and trusted source of scientific knowledge relevant to education policies and practices.4 IES also supports 10 regional educational laboratories, the role of which is similar to that of extension agents in the agricultural field: taking research results and putting them into practice in school districts and classrooms (see U.S.
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From page 45... ...
Brokering involves filtering, synthesizing, summarizing, and disseminating research findings in user-friendly packages. It is generally seen as the task of intermediary organizations, such as think tanks, evaluation firms, and policy-oriented organizations, including those focusing on specific target populations or specific social issues as well as those organized around particular political persuasions.
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From page 46... ...
. This model goes beyond transfer, diffusion, and dissemination and even beyond translation and brokering.
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From page 47... ...
Collaborations of this kind formed the basic design concept for the Strategic Education Research Partnership. These involved connecting researchers to teachers, bringing in research communities, school administrations, and educational policy makers (see National Research Council, 1999a; Smith and Smith, 2009)
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From page 48... ...
It involves negotiating what kind of situation-specific knowledge is relevant to a policy choice, whether it is firmly established and available under the constraints of time and budget, and what political consequences might follow from using it. In this framework, formal linkages and frequent exchanges among researchers, policy makers, and service providers occur at all steps between knowledge production and knowledge use (Huberman and Cox, 1990)
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From page 49... ...
For example, a study of drug misuse in government agencies in Scotland and England (Nutley et al., 2002) suggests that three aspects of microinstitutional arrangements within and between the agencies mattered a great deal in understanding how research evidence was (or was not)
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From page 50... ...
EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY AND PRACTICE Current discussions about the use of research knowledge are heavily influenced by "evidence-based policy and practice." The goal is realizing better and more defensible policy decisions by grounding them in the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the best available scientific evidence ( Davies et al., 2000)
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From page 51... ...
The active debate regarding the appropriate methodology for a given research question promotes attention in the policy community to the desirability of producing the best possible evidence under a given set of circumstances, especially the strongest evidence that bears on policy implementation and policy consequences. Bringing attention to the importance of strong evidence in policy making advances the goal of using science even though the specific formulation of an evidence-based policy approach offers little insight into the conditions that bring about its use.
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From page 52... ...
. One extensive review of the literature reaches the striking conclusion that knowledge use is "so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming" (Contandriopoulos et al., 2010, p.
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