Navigating towards Responsible Research and Innovation (original) (raw)
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Navigating towards responsible research and innovation. Res-AGorA Policy Note #2
2016
Parliaments perform an important democratic function in overseeing and scrutinising government, making new laws, and debating the issues of the day. Effective research use can ensure that policies are cost effective, ensure that those debating and scrutinising policy are informed by the best possible evidence, and scrutinise the work of government effectively. Yet, despite having a long history, little is known about how research is used in decision making. The ways that research feeds into parliamentary processes were examined in a recent session organised as part of the 2015 PACITA conference. This chapter outlines two empirical examples of work in this area: an analysis of two parliamentary debates and the work of an internal parliamentary research advisory service. However, gaps in knowledge remain. The chapter goes on to discuss a study being conducted, which is examining how research, of all types, feeds into parliamentary processes and the demand for such services from policy makers and parliamentary staff.
Improving the use of evidence in legislatures: the case of the UK Parliament
Evidence & Policy, 2020
Despite claims that we now live in a post-truth society, it remains commonplace for policy makers to consult research evidence to increase the robustness of decision making. Few scholars of evidence-policy interfaces, however, have used legislatures as sites of study, despite the fact that they play a critical role in modern democracies. There is thus limited knowledge of how research evidence is sourced and used in legislatures, which presents challenges for academics and science advisory groups, as well as to others interested in ensuring that democratic decisions are evidence-informed. Here, we present results from an empirical study into the use of research in the UK Parliament, obtained through the use of a mixed methodology, including interviews and surveys of 157 people in Parliament, as well as an ethnographic investigation of four committees. Here we are specifically interested in identifying the factors affecting the use of research evidence in Parliament with the aim of i...
The research–policy–deliberation nexus: a case study approach
Health Research Policy and Systems
Background: Decision-makers tend to make connections with researchers far too late in the game of public policy, expecting to find a retail store in which researchers are busy filling shop-front shelves with a comprehensive set of all possible relevant studies that a decision-maker might some day drop by to purchase. This linear type of relation between research and policy needs to be replaced by a more interactive model that facilitates both researchers obtaining a better understanding of policy processes and policymakers being more aware and involved in the conceptualisation and conduct of research. This paper explores the role of governance in facilitating the researchpolicy nexus, testing a typology of research utilisation based on Murray's (Soc Policy Society 10(4):459-70, 2011) analysis that considers various degrees of researcher-policymaker deliberation in decision-making processes. The projects were all part of various evaluation efforts carried out by the researchers to explore the use of governance in health promotion activities. Methods: Three case studies were chosen to provide some specific examples that illustrate each level of Murray's typology. The examples involve intersectoral health promotion collaborations that combine evidence-based research in health policy initiatives with various levels of researcher involvement. For all three projects, interview data was collated in the same way, coded thematically and analysed to consider the relationship between researchers and policymakers. Results: Comparing the three models and their applicability to health promotion interventions, it could be observed that all programmes demonstrated successful examples of research translation. Strong governance imperatives structuring relationships led to more successful outcomes, whereby research was successfully translated into a public policy initiative that also led to improved health outcomes. The key idea across all of these models was that strong governance arrangements mitigated some of the barriers evidenced by the varying degrees of deliberation and researcher involvement in processes. Conclusions: The paper demonstrates that successful research utilisation is related to strong governance agendas and that early and ongoing involvement of relevant decision-makers and researchers in the governance processes, that is both the conceptualisation and conduct of a study, tend to be the best predictors of success.
Creating a Linkage Between Academic Research and Policy-Making
Europolity: Continuity and Change in European Governance, 2013
There is a consensus in literature that the process of policy-making should be based on strong evidence in order to increase quality, credibility and relevance of a policy. Academic research is one of the most important contributors to the process of collecting, analyzing and providing data for stakeholders. In this paper I analyze the relationship between research and the process of policy-making, in order to demonstrate that the latter will benefit from academic research. For this purpose, I will divide my analysis in four chapters as following: the first one will contain a short history about the moment when this problem was first brought into question and arguments about the importance of the research for policy-making process, along with the clarification of the main terms that I will use in my analysis. The second chapter will be dedicated to the main problems that both policy-makers and academic researchers faced when it comes to work together in the decision making process. ...
Supporting evidence-informed policy and scrutiny: A consultation of UK research professionals
PLOS ONE
Access to reliable and timely information ensures that decision-makers can operate effectively. The motivations and challenges of parliamentarians and policy-makers in accessing evidence have been well documented in the policy literature. However, there has been little focus on research-providers. Understanding both the demand-and the supply-side of research engagement is imperative to enhancing impactful interactions. Here, we examine the broader experiences, motivations and challenges of UK-based research professionals engaging with research-users relevant to policy-making and scrutiny in the UK using a nationwide online questionnaire. The context of the survey partly involved contributing to the UK Evidence Information Service (EIS), a proposed rapid match-making service to facilitate interaction between parliamentary arenas that use evidence and research-providers. Our findings reveal, at least for this sub-sample who responded, that there are gender-related differences in policy-related experience, motivations, incentives and challenges for research professionals to contribute to evidence-informed decision-making through initiatives such as the EIS. Male and female participants were equally likely to have policy experience; however, males reported both significantly broader engagement with the research-users included in the survey and significantly higher levels of engagement with each researchuser. Reported incentives for engagement included understanding what the evidence will be used for, guidance on style and content of contribution, and acknowledgement of contributions by the policymaker or elected official. Female participants were significantly more likely to select the guidance-related options. The main reported barrier was workload. We discuss how academia-policy engagement initiatives can best address these issues in ways that enhance the integration of research evidence with policy and practice across the UK.
The British Journal of Sociology, 2022
Organizations far beyond traditional academic institutions have become prolific science producers, with many now providing evidence-based advice for national governments and policy-makers. Neo-institutional sociology explains organizations' growing investment in research activities and research-based policy advice by the all-embracing scientization and the expansion of the educated popula-tion, phenomena observable throughout the world. There is, however, considerably less knowledge about how the organizations' increased knowledge production and the supply of science-based policy advice are reflected in national policy-making, including the legislative work of parliaments, and to what extent distinct organizations are deemed authoritative in different countries. In this paper, we examine how different organizations are used as scien-tific authorities in parliamentary debates over new legis-lation. Drawing on analyses of 576 parliamentary debates from Australia, Finland, Kenya, and the United Kingdom, we study what organizations are acknowledged as scien-tific authorities and the relative weight of different organ-ization types in the context of political debates over new legislation. The results reveal that while organizations in general are frequently evoked as scientific authorities in all four countries, there is remarkable variation in the types of organizations considered authoritative in different national contexts. We elaborate these findings by analysing ways in which politicians evaluate organizations as sources of scien-tific authority. While the same set of evaluative schemas are used in all four countries, each is typically applied to certain types of organization. The results suggest that both the supply of scientific policy advice and political culture shape legislators' rhetorical practices when drawing on organiza-tions' scientific authority. KEYWORDS: epistemic governance, organizations, parliamentary debates, policy advice, scientific authority, world society
Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2019
This article explores growing pessimism among those scholars who wish to see rigorous research used more frequently to formulate public policy. That commonsense aspiration is threatened by the impoverished dialogue between the communities that conduct studies (researchers) and those that apply them to decisions (policymakers). To examine this disconnect, the authors advance community dissonance theory, which proposes that a better understanding in the research community of the inhabitants, institutions, and cultures of the policy community could increase communication and trust. Community dissonance theory extends earlier two‐communities theories by deconstructing the cultural impediments to optimal communication. Building on previous literature and supported with in‐depth interviews of state policymakers, this article examines professional culture and institutional culture (e.g., preferred decision‐making processes, interactional preferences, favored epistemological frameworks, dom...