Briefing Notes

B: Further Analysis of Research Methods

B7: Information research and public policy?

To start with, the carefully considered, weighed and tempered language, hedged with qualifications, of the responsible research report is alien to the government ministers and senior civil servants involved in setting the policy agenda. 'One side of paper double spaced' is often the order of the day and I have more than once been urged to "keep the language simple" when preparing briefing papers based on research. Researchers don't always find the right language for the task – consider how a policy maker would respond to this opening (from a real report): "Fundamentally, it is perhaps important to stress that many of these limitations seem to lie in the history and traditions of the public library ..." – not exactly a clear point of view expressed with confidence!

Opposite sides of the gulf

Then there is the issue of standpoint. The UK government is increasingly interested in accountability through planning and target setting in the public sector. They are interested in finding (or being presented with) clear outcome measures against which to assess whether health, education, social care or library services are performing. There are signs that researchers are willing to play these games, up to a point. A number of the research reports that started me on this topic had aims or objectives that included words like value, outcomes and impact. They didn't usually deliver on these aims, which was fairly predictable. Since library and information service outcomes in such fashionable public sector areas of concern as social inclusion and lifelong learning (or contributing to patient care in the health sector) are difficult to identify and still more difficult to assess, it is hardly surprising if researchers in these fields drift off into areas that are easier to address.

All but a handful of the fifty plus project reports that I read contained reams of description of activities and processes – planning the services, managing the services and delivering the services, gathered through interviews, focus groups or questionnaires. This is fine up to a point, or rather up to two points.

• First, the projects that claimed to be focussed on the value, outcomes or impact of the services being researched did every bit as much activity description as the others, even though for the most part, this process description tells us next to nothing about impact etc. Worse, several of these projects didn't get beyond such description to even begin to address impact issues and, worse still, they then blithely made recommendations for improving the situation without having assessed how well or badly things were going already.
   
• Second, research that sets out to contribute to the policy debate but does not address questions of outcomes (such as, 'Is this service really making a positive contribution?') is hardly likely to engage the attention of policy makers.
   

The age of knowledge creep?

But should researchers be pandering to the policy makers? Some social scientists evidently think that their central mission is to influence policy decisions and they have created their own cohort within the social science research dissemination movement. Ever since, more than twenty years ago, one protagonist came up with the elegant concept of 'Knowledge Creep' to describe how research findings appear to be adopted by policy makers¹, I've had a soft spot for the 'social science information in knowledge creation' lobby, but not to the extent of attending their international conferences.

The opposite view is taken by other researchers, who see the increasing tendency of government to try to channel social science research into providing them with tools to control public sector activity as pressure to be resisted. There was very considerable suspicion voiced in the UK two years ago when the Economic and Social Research Council set up a series of Social Science Research Centres². Some eminent social scientists feared that they might come under pressure to provide research that supports existing government policies. Reassuring noises were issued but the trend continues – for example, Re:source, the main UK funder of research on libraries, archives and museums has made it clear that it expects to set the entire agenda through its own policy themes.

How can researchers ensure that their research messages are taken seriously by policy makers? The answer is probably a combination of imagination and animal cunning. It is necessary to turn the richly coloured, textured and nuanced research reports into succinct, black and white policy terms if they are to be taken seriously – and if the researchers won't or can't do this themselves then somebody else without the requisite understanding might try it – or more probably won't bother!

1. WEISS, C.H. 'Knowledge creep and decision accretion' in Knowledge 13 (1980) 381-404. [back]

2. See, for example, The Times Higher Education Supplement reports on 7 and 14 April 2000. [back]

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