There has been a proliferation of research examining the relationship between academics and policy-makers and outlining the enablers of and barriers to knowledge mobilisation in government agencies (Head 2015, Oliver et al. 2014). This research has significantly improved our knowledge on how evidence generated by researchers can inform the policy process and which mechanisms work best in encouraging greater use of evidence. It has now been widely recognised that research needs to go beyond the relatively simplistic ‘solution’ of improving the supply of evidence and its use by policy-makers (Martin, 2016) and accept the importance of political factors in decision-making (Cairney, 2016; Head, 2015). Powell et al. (2017), for example, highlight four key practices which the literature suggests encourages research use: fostering and sustaining relationships between researchers and research users over time; paying attention to the research users' context; integrating different kinds of knowledge alongside knowledge from research, and, testing and evaluating knowledge mobilization interventions in use.
Despite the rise in academic research on evidence informed policy-making and various ‘how to guides’ for both communities, there has been little research into how evidence is actually viewed and used by policy-makers in different policy domains and different tiers of government (Head, 2015). This paper responds to the call for more empirical research of how evidence can inform policy by examining evidence use across different policy areas in devolved government in Wales.
The paper uses a framework based on Oliver et al.’s (2014) systematic review of the enablers and barriers evidence use to report the findings of a baseline survey which explored the sources and types of evidence that policy-makers use, the perceived strengths and weaknesses of different types of evidence, and ways in which processes of knowledge mobilisation can be improved. In so doing the paper directly answers one of the questions posed in the panel of ‘understanding how expertise and rigorous analysis are utilized in different policy areas’.
We hypothesise that evidence use is likely to vary across policy domains according to a range of factors including: the strength of a policy network or ‘evidence ecosystem’ (Shepherd, 2014), the quality of the evidence, past approaches to evidence use, and the ‘solutions’ that it offers, for example whether policy issues are considered to be ‘wicked’ or ‘tame’ (Cairney, 2017; Jennings and Hall, 2012). The survey data are complemented by semi-structured interviews with senior policy-makers which explore these issues in more depth.
The findings reveal biases towards certain types of evidence and has clear practical impact in sharing examples of ‘good practice’ across the organisation that has the potential of improving evidence-informed policy-making. The paper advances theoretical understanding of evidence use and provides practical recommendations, co-produced with policy-makers, about practices that they and researchers can adopt to institutionalise improved evidence use.
Evidence use in government – its contribution to creating public value
