Do policy actors have different views of what constitutes evidence in policy-making?

Piddington, Grace, MacKillop, Eleanor ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3345-7499 and Downe, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0772-3183 2024. Do policy actors have different views of what constitutes evidence in policy-making? Policy and Politics 52 (2) , pp. 239-258. 10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000032

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Abstract

The role played by evidence in policy-making is hotly disputed and there is no agreement over how evidence is defined. This article examines whether policy actors have different views of what counts as evidence and which factors influence these perceptions (e.g. professional background, length of service, organisation setting, cultures of evidence)? In addressing this question, we contribute to the growing research focus on the context of evidence use. Q methodology – a mixed method approach to study people’s attitudes towards a topic – is used in interviewing 67 policy actors and comparing two countries, Scotland and Wales, to find out whether there are different cultures of evidence. In both countries, we identified four distinct profiles of attitudes towards evidence: the Evidence-Based Policy-Making (EBPM) Idealist, the Pragmatist, the Inclusive, and the Political. Our research highlights important differences between the two contexts, with a greater leaning towards EBPM views of evidence in Wales, and more pragmatism in defining evidence in Scotland. We illustrate how different cultures of evidence coexist in a same context and highlight their similarities and differences. We also contribute to the understanding of the value of Q methodology research by showing that it can be used to compare two datasets collected in different countries.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics) Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Evidence; Evidence-Based Policy-Making, EBP, Q methodology; Scotland; Wales.
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
ISSN:	0305-5736
Funders:	ESRC, Welsh Government, Cardiff University
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 February 2024
Date of Acceptance:	2 February 2024
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2024 16:33
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/166138

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