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

政策制定者和研究人员经常对科学技术信息在公共政策决策中的使用程度有限表示失望。然而，正式科学和技术信息(STI)有限使用的看法是否符合经验现实？如果科技信息不是公共政策中的主要信息库，还使用了哪些类型的信息？这些类型的信息如何与科技信息竞争，以便纳入决策？该项目的重点是在科学政策审议中使用科技创新，这一领域通常充斥着相关的科技创新，并由科技创新用户和在利用信息方面实践的科技创新生产者基地发挥优势。如果科学、技术和创新在科学政策中的作用受到限制，那么人们可以预期，在大多数其他公共政策领域，这种作用至少也会受到同样的限制。本研究考察了国家科学院和国家工程院国家研究委员会(NRC)报告中STI和其他信息类型的使用情况。这些报告似乎对检验性传播感染的使用特别有用。首先，国家科学院机构是一个准公共机构，受美国国会委托，负责就科学和技术密集型政策问题提供建议。因此，对委员会编写的报告有内在的政策需求。其次，NRC委员会的工作信息异常丰富。学院的机构声望与NRC委员会成员典型的高级别显赫地位相结合，确保了对各种面对面和非正式信息资源的访问水平。该项目的研究方法需要对60份报告进行抽样，并对其进行密集的文献计量分析，确定正式的STI(定义为来自同行评议期刊的研究)与其他类型的引用(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STI有关的因素，包括委员会小组的组成、学科背景以及根据媒体报道的内容分析确定的NRC研究主题的公众知名度和争议性。最后，该项目考虑了科技创新的使用在多大程度上影响了报告的影响，这取决于媒体的内容分析，包括主要报纸(例如，随着时间的推移，报道的栏目英寸)、互联网上的页面浏览量、Scope us和Web of Science的引用，特别是在实际法律和公共政策文件中对报告的引用。更广泛的影响。预计该项目不仅将提供关于科技创新使用程度的知识，而且将提供影响其在科学政策制定中使用的因素以及科技创新使用与其他信息资源的关系的知识。因此，研究结果有可能改善政策信息和政策决策。研究结果将用于在美国科学促进会的国家会议上举办讲习班。研讨会将使政策制定者和STEM研究人员聚集在一起，讨论各自对决策信息需求的看法。

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.