Putting the Research Boot on the Policymakers' Foot: Can Participatory Approaches Change the Relationship between Policymakers and Evaluation?

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Barriers to the full use of social science in public policy-making are related to a separation of knowledge production from its consumption, and by a lack of mechanisms to accommodate the political nature of decision-making processes. Policymakers can ignore evidence in favour of conventional wisdom or ideologically driven choices. Avoiding policy engagement is a denial of some core ambitions for applied social science, but attempts at policy engagement have sometimes resulted in academic regret or little impact. One implication is that more participatory and co-productive approaches to evaluation could be used by researchers and policymakers, particularly politicians, working together. However, participatory approaches have tended to align with methodologies which de-privilege the idea of objective evidence of policy effectiveness. A case study of self-evaluation by local government politicians attempted to overcome an artificial separation of positivist and non-positivist methods into non-participatory and participatory approaches, and close the divide between evidence and politically situated policymakers. It finds interest by local councillors in outcome evaluation, and some efforts to temper ideological biases with evidence, although a bias towards positive results remained. Successful self-evaluations used data on policy outcomes in mixed methods pre- and post-intervention designs, but not all were successful. One conclusion from the case study is that the participation of policymakers in conducting research may simply replicate difficulties faced by academic researchers using more conventional methods. However, the example suggests that a belief in positivism and a commitment to participatory approaches do not need to be in conflict. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)483-500
Number of pages17
JournalSocial Policy and Administration
Volume47
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2013

Keywords

  • Evidence-based policy-making
  • Local government
  • Participatory research
  • Research utilization

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