How to have an ‘impact’ on policymaking

The concept of ‘evidence-based policy’ making has become something of a mantra within government circles. Within academia too, there is a growing emphasis on the ‘relevance’ of research to ‘real world’ issues and problems. For those of us who have been directly engaged in what might be described as ‘policy’ or ‘applied’ research for many years, this shift in emphasis is welcome and very much overdue. But the increased recognition afforded to research evidence in the policy making process belies a complex and difficult relationship between academics and policy-makers whose modus operandi is very different and who may have widely divergent motivations, objectives, methods and measures of ‘success’. Attempts to bring these two worlds together are not without their problems, which are explored in this short chapter.