Lawmakers' use of scientific evidence can be improved

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.

Automated summary

This experiment evaluated a new outreach model to support legislative use of research evidence with the US Congress. The findings showed that the intervention group valued research more and used more research in legislation compared to the control group. Researchers in the intervention group also improved their policy knowledge and engagement as well as reported benefits for their research.