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Evidence-Based Policy Making
Public policy consists of federal, state, and local policies, regulations, legislation, programs, and rules that shape the many facets of society and everyday life. Policy provides guidelines for how citizens should participate within a social system. Policy is established in areas including, but not limited to, climate change and the environment, health care, the criminal justice system, energy, tax systems, public health, social services, and K-12 education standards. Examples of applications to communication include an examination of the impact of methods for controlling access to media content, how best to construct media public health campaigns, and determining the best methods for delivering content to students in a classroom. When a problem with the current way of doing things is identified, the role of decision-makers in government is to craft public policy that corrects the existing problem. While a variety of solutions to a problem are often available, the decision-maker must carefully choose the option that fosters the best return to society. One strategy that facilitates this selection process is evidence-based policy. Evidence-based policy is policy that emerges from a comprehensive, nonpartisan investigative process of evaluating and prioritizing the relevant empirical data to support claims regarding the best course of action to solve a societal problem. This entry describes the policy cycle, the characteristics of evidence, the role of theory in evidence-based policy, and the benefits of and barriers to enacting evidence-based policy.
Policy Cycle
Taking a prescriptive approach to policy making, there are specific stages that comprise the entire process: agenda-setting and problem definition, policy proposal construction and formulation, policy selection, policy design, policy implementation, and program evaluation. The agenda-setting and problem definition stage involves the prioritization of a specific issue as one that needs attention. The problem definition identifies the scope and magnitude of the problem. The goal is to accurately and completely describe the problem using the relevant and available evidence. Policy proposal construction and formulation involves development of possible solutions and alternatives to address the problem. A key component of the proposal construction is budget development. Budget development involves examining program effectiveness in relation to an established budget resulting in funding priority to programs that demonstrate a clear return on investment. Finally, policy implementation oversight and program evaluation assess how a program is working. Implementation oversight is the monitoring of program execution in relation to the intended program design. Program evaluation involves routinely reporting about program performance. Taken together, evidence-based policy making does not end with the implementation of a program but continues in a cyclical pattern to gauge program effectiveness.
The policy cycle is the foundational mechanism that policy makers have control over in order to make decisions about interventions. While a variety of solutions may exist to solve social problems, policy makers must make educated decisions about what emerges as the best course of action. Ideally, this decision is based on a careful examination of the breadth and quality of available evidence. Because decision-makers are technically laypersons in the science world, they depend on scientific, evidence-based research and specialized expertise to help formulate public policy. As such, evidence-based policy serves as a mechanism that facilitates the selection of a more objective intervention based on a generalized global assessment of what programs work.
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- Creating and Conducting Research
- Creation of Research Project
- Authoring: Telling a Research Story
- Body Image and Eating Disorders
- Hypothesis Formulation
- Methodology, Selection of
- Program Assessment
- Research Ideas, Sources of
- Research Project, Planning of
- Research Question Formulation
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- Research, Inspiration for
- Social Media: Blogs, Microblogs, and Twitter
- Testability
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