Six tips for using research to influence policy

By David R. Garcia.

How can academics, researchers, and educators become skilled at the craft of engaging with policy makers? Who should they aim to engage with and what are some key factors in engaging effectively? 

Based on my experiences as a US legislative staffer, state policy director, statewide political candidate and professor, here are my six best tips.

Tip #1: Be prepared to work with politicians. Yes, politicians

In academic contexts, “policymaker” is an ill-defined term that is often applied to all policy actors, and does not account for relevant distinctions between different policy actors.

Influencing policy on a large scale requires interactions with politicians, defined as elected officials and their appointees, because politicians set policy. Professional staff, such as agency heads and local administrators, make key decisions to carry out the policy directives set by politicians. While these professional staff are certainly important to the policymaking process and policy implementation, they cannot get ahead of the public positions held by their political bosses, who possess the decision-making power.

Tip #2: Start with a practical problem

Academics should understand that politicians are not inclined to engage with research for the sake of understanding. Rather, politicians learn for the purpose of taking action on specific issues. Thus, academics should always connect their research to a real-world, practical problem facing politicians or run the risk of being filtered out as surplus knowledge.

Engaging with politicians begins with connecting your research to a real-world practical problem facing their constituents. The practical problem is a real-world condition that exacts a cost, such as time, money or opportunity. Keep in mind that a lack of resources or failure to implement a specific program is generally not the practical problem. The practical problem concerns whatever local conditions are getting worse as a result of a lack of resources or what local conditions will improve as a result of additional resources or implementing a specific program. Once politicians connect to a practical problem, introducing research follows readily.

Tip #3: Understand that politicians are novices, by design

Politicians do not have formal academic training and professional experiences in all the policy areas in which they are called to act. Politicians serve on many different committees and routinely make decisions outside their academic and professional expertise. In these instances, politicians are novices.

Novices understand issues in isolation. They are unable to connect specific instances to a broader context or anticipate next steps with accuracy. When presenting complex and nuanced academic research, I recommend that academics follow a sequenced four-step scaffolding strategy to take the novice politician from straightforward questions to more complex concepts:

1. Answer the questions as posed by politicians. Academics should not discount straightforward questions from novice politicians, even though the content of the questions may be limited in scope compared with how academics study and understand issues.
2. Anticipate the next question that politicians are likely to pose and then answer that subsequent question. Remember that novices are unable to relate issues to a broader context, so academics should leverage their expertise to connect the content of the politicians’ straightforward questions to other issues by anticipating and answering the next question that politicians are likely to ask.
3. Identify consequences that are likely to thwart policy implementation or adversely impact outcomes. As experts, academics should be able to anticipate potential consequences associated with politicians’ policy ideas. Focus on those consequences that politicians are likely to experience themselves to reinforce the connection between research evidence and real-world outcomes.
4. Provide a framework to help novice politicians recognise meaningful patterns and to guide future actions based on research. Novice politicians are now in a better position to understand more complex concepts and make connections to broader contexts. Academics can then provide politicians with more complex answers, in line with the academics’ research.

Tip #4: Find unexpected allies

Commonly, academics turn to issue networks—an alliance of interest groups united around a common cause—as natural allies to disseminate their research. When your research is brought to politicians by issue networks alone, your research simply becomes a refrain in a wider repetitive message. It does not stand out.

Therefore, academics should enlist unexpected allies to advance their research. Unexpected allies are people or organisations outside the issue network for a particular issue that are willing to bring your research to others, including politicians. When politicians learn about your research from unexpected allies, they are more likely to pay attention. The broader or more unexpected the allies, the more likely your findings will stand out and garner political attention.

Tip #5: Teach to champion

When politicians champion a policy issue, they take action and expend political capital to achieve desired policy outcomes, on their own accord. The academic’s role is to teach to champion – to teach politicians so they can bring research forward themselves to the people and networks that they choose – without the academic in the room.

Three useful points for teaching to champion are:

1. Understand that you are not presenting research yourself, instead, politicians take research forward as they engage with colleagues and interact with the public.
2. Empower politicians to communicate the research findings at the layperson’s level of understanding, as this will be their audiences’ level of understanding.
3. Remember that politicians choose the audiences to whom they present the research and, in so doing, take some ownership over the content. The materials should avoid politically charged language, strike a conversational tone and incorporate frameworks that politicians can appropriate as their own.

Tip #6: Communicate differently

A shortened version of an academic article is no more useful to policymaking than the full version. Translating research to a policy context requires developing an entirely new written product that is intended specifically for politicians and is tailored to the fast pace of policymaking. This product, known as the “action release,” connects the politician to research through a practical problem, highlights research evidence for specific policies, tells the politician exactly what they can do to take action, and does it all in 20 seconds. Yes, 20 seconds.

When creating a research one-pager you should:

1. Start with a practical problem.
2. Accompany statistics with stories, especially those that the politician can retell themselves.
3. Downplay or delete research methods.
4. Omit the literature review.
5. Close with the “ask.” Tell politicians exactly what they can do to improve the practical problem identified by your research.
6. Display all the content on one page, with white space and legible fonts, so that the document is not only easy to read but also looks approachable.

Concluding questions

What has your experience been in interacting with politicians, specifically? Do these lessons from the US resonate in other countries? Are there other tips that you would share?

To find out more:

This i2Insights contribution has been taken, often verbatim, from the following two blog posts published in Times Higher Education Campus:

1. Garcia, D. (2022). Learning the craft of using your research to engage in policy. Times Higher Education Campus website. (Online): https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/learning-craft-using-your-research-engage-policy
2. Garcia, D. (2022). Want your research to have an impact on policy? Know your audience. Times Higher Education Campus website. (Online): https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/want-your-research-have-impact-policy-know-your-audience

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography: David R. Garcia PhD is a Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, USA. His professional experience includes extensive work in education policy development and implementation. His scholarship centers on school choice, accountability, and research utilization. His current book, Teach Truth to Power (MIT Press, 2022), is on the intersection between research, policy, and politics, based on his experiences as the 2018 Democratic candidate for Governor of Arizona.