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

科学政策制定中科学技术信息的可信度和使用：对国家研究委员会委员会报告信息基础的分析

• 批准号: 1262251
• 负责人: Barry Bozeman
• 金额: $ 35万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-15 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1262251&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Credibility; Use; Scientific; Technical; Information

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.

决策者和研究人员常常对公共政策决策中使用科学和技术信息的程度有限表示失望。 然而，对正式科技信息使用有限的看法是否符合经验现实雅阁？ 如果科学、技术和创新不是公共政策的主要信息基础，还采用了哪些其他类型的信息，这些类型的信息如何与科学、技术和创新竞争纳入决策？该项目的重点是在科学政策审议中使用科技创新，这是一个通常充满相关科技创新的领域，并由科技创新用户和科技创新生产者在使用信息方面实践。如果科学、技术和创新在科学政策中的作用是有限的，那么在大多数其他公共政策领域中的作用至少也是有限的。本研究报告审查了国家科学院和国家工程院国家研究理事会报告中科技创新和其他信息类型的使用情况。这些报告似乎对审查性传播感染的使用情况特别有用。 首先，国家科学院是一个准公共机构，由美国国会负责提供有关科学和技术密集型政策问题的建议。因此，对各委员会编写的报告有内在的政策需求。第二，核管理委员会的工作信息异常丰富。学院的机构声望与NRC委员会成员的典型高水平的突出相结合，确保了对各种各样的人对人和非正式信息资源的访问水平。该项目的研究方法需要开发60份报告的样本，并对其进行深入的文献计量分析，确定正式科技创新（定义为来自同行评审期刊的研究）与其他类型引用（例如灰色文献、政府文件和专家证词）的比例。这项研究考虑了一些可能与使用科学、技术和创新有关的因素，包括委员会小组的组成、学科背景以及核管制委员会研究专题的公众知名度和争议，这些都是在媒体报道的内容分析中确定的。 最后，该项目考虑了科技创新的使用对报告影响的程度，这是由媒体内容分析确定的，包括主要报纸（例如，一段时间内的专栏报道英寸数）、互联网页面浏览数、Scopus和Web of Science的引用，特别是实际法律和公共政策文件对报告的引用。更广泛的影响。预计该项目不仅将提供关于科学、技术和创新使用程度的知识，而且还将提供关于影响科学、技术和创新在科学决策中的使用的因素以及科学、技术和创新的使用与其他信息资源的关系的知识。因此，研究结果有可能改进政策信息和政策决定。研究结果将用于在AAAS国家会议上举办研讨会。研讨会将汇集决策者和STEM研究人员，讨论各自对决策信息需求的看法。