Credibility and Use of Scientific and Technical Information in Science Policy Making: An Analysis of the Information Bases of the National Research Council's Committee Reports

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Policy makers and researchers often voice disappointment with the limited extent to which scientific and technical information is used in public policy decision-making. However, does the perception of the limited use of formal scientific and technical information (STI) accord with empirical reality? If STI is not the predominant information base in public policies, what other types of information are employed and how do these types of information compete with STI for inclusion in policy making? The project focuses on the use of STI in science policy deliberations, an area typically rife with relevant STI and advantaged by a STI user- and a STI producer-base practiced in the use of information. If the role of STI is limited in science policy, one would expect the role to be at least as limited in most other public policy domains. The present study examines the use of STI, and other information types, in National Research Council (NRC) reports of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. These reports seem especially useful for examining STI use. First, the National Academies apparatus is a quasi-public body charged by the U.S. Congress with providing advice about science and technology intensive policy issues. Thus, there is built-in policy demand for the reports produced by committees. Second, the NRC committee work is unusually information rich. The combination of the institutional prestige of the Academies, taken with the typically high level of prominence of NRC committee members, ensures a level of access to a wide variety of person-to-person and informal information resources. The project's research approach entails developing a sample of 60 reports and subjecting them to intensive bibliometric analysis, determining the proportion of formal STI (defined as studies from peer-reviewed journals) to other type citations (e.g. gray literature, government documents, and expert testimony). The study considers a number of factors possibly related to the use of STI, including the composition of committees' panels, disciplinary backgrounds and the public visibility and controversy of the NRC study topics, as determined in content analyses of media coverage. Finally, the project considers the extent to which the use of STI affects the impacts of reports, determined by content analyses of media, including leading newspapers (e.g. column inches of coverage over time), number of page views on the Internet, citations from Scopus and Web of Science, and, especially, citations to the reports in actual laws and public policy documents. Broader impacts. The project is expected to provide knowledge not only of the extent of STI use but the factors that affect its use in science policy making and the relationship of STI use to other information resources. Thus, findings have the potential to improve policy information and policy decisions. Study results will be used to develop a workshop conducted at national meetings of the AAAS. The workshop will bring together policy-makers and STEM researchers to discuss respective views about information needs for policy-making.