TY - JOUR
T1 - Lawmakers' use of scientific evidence can be improved
AU - Crowley, D. Max
AU - Scott, J. Taylor
AU - Long, Elizabeth C.
AU - Green, Lawrie
AU - Israel, Azaliah
AU - Supplee, Lauren
AU - Jordan, Elizabeth
AU - Oliver, Kathryn
AU - Guillot-Wright, Shannon
AU - Gay, Brittany
AU - Storace, Rachel
AU - Torres-Mackie, Naomi
AU - Murphy, Yolanda
AU - Donnay, Sandra
AU - Reardanz, Jenna
AU - Smith, Rebecca
AU - McGuire, Kristina
AU - Baker, Elizabeth
AU - Antonopoulos, Ana
AU - McCauley, Mary
AU - Giray, Cagla
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/3/2
Y1 - 2021/3/2
N2 - Core to the goal of scientific exploration is the opportunity to guide future decision-making. Yet, elected officials often miss opportunities to use science in their policymaking. This work reports on an experiment with the US Congress-evaluating the effects of a randomized, dual-population (i.e., researchers and congressional offices) outreach model for supporting legislative use of research evidence regarding child and family policy issues. In this experiment, we found that congressional offices randomized to the intervention reported greater value of research for understanding issues than the control group following implementation. More research use was also observed in legislation introduced by the intervention group. Further, we found that researchers randomized to the intervention advanced their own policy knowledge and engagement as well as reported benefits for their research following implementation.
AB - Core to the goal of scientific exploration is the opportunity to guide future decision-making. Yet, elected officials often miss opportunities to use science in their policymaking. This work reports on an experiment with the US Congress-evaluating the effects of a randomized, dual-population (i.e., researchers and congressional offices) outreach model for supporting legislative use of research evidence regarding child and family policy issues. In this experiment, we found that congressional offices randomized to the intervention reported greater value of research for understanding issues than the control group following implementation. More research use was also observed in legislation introduced by the intervention group. Further, we found that researchers randomized to the intervention advanced their own policy knowledge and engagement as well as reported benefits for their research following implementation.
KW - Congress
KW - Evidence-based policymaking
KW - Randomized controlled trial
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101631060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85101631060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2012955118
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2012955118
M3 - Article
C2 - 33593938
AN - SCOPUS:85101631060
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 118
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 9
M1 - e2012955118
ER -