Influencing policy

You can work out how to engage with the
Governments and organisations you want
to influence…
Question:Informing policy
Submit evidence to
• Public Bill Committees
• Select Committee Inquiries
• All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiries
Suggest a POSTnote (England)
or SPICe briefing (Scotland) or
equivalent in Wales & NI
Consultation responses
Contribute to international
science-policy interfaces e.g.
IPCC and IPBES
Speak at a side-event
at an international
policy conference

Question:Informing policy
Or take advice from in-
country researchers on
the appropriate
channels to use

We need to use the established channels,
but it is hard to know if your evidence
made a difference (my last consultation
response was 1 of 40,000)
 Is our job simply to inform policy (make
evidence available when requested)?
 Should we try and influence policy (pro-
actively target and clearly communicate
evidence to relevant teams)?
Question:Why influence?

Why inform?
Why influence?

Why inform?
 Save yourself time
 Don’t waste time of
civil servants
 Don’t get asked
difficult questions
 Don’t risk your
professional
reputation
Why influence?
 Don’t risk important
evidence being
missed
 Engage with
questions to avoid
misinterpretation
 Build relationships,
get asked to help

Do high quality research
Question:Policy influencing principles
Make your research
relevant and readable
Understand policy
processes
Be accessible to
policymakers: engage
routinely, flexible, and
humbly
Decide if you want
to be an issue
advocate or
honest broker
Build
relationships
(and ground
rules) with
policymakers
Reflect continuously:
what’s working?
Based on a systematic review of literature by Oliver and Cairney (2019)

How do you feel?
Question:Identifying your red lines
Limited Influence and Impact More
Lower risk Higher risk
Session 2:
Tools
Session 3:
Writing a
policy brief
Session 4:
Using a
policy brief
Session
5:
Pitching
policy
options
Session 6:
Pincer
movement
Session 7:
Evidencing
impact

5 WAYS
to Fast Track your
Research Impact
Impact
tools

Question:Defining policy impact
What is the difference between
Policy-relevant
applied research
Policy engagement
Policy impact
?

Question:What is policy impact?
benefit

Question:What is policy impact?
Who benefits?

The good that
researchers do
in the world
Question:A definition of research impact

The good that
researchers do
in the world
Question:Types of policy impact
Types of impacts from
good policies
implemented well, for
example:
• Health/wellbeing
Interim/initial impacts you might see on the pathway
to policy impacts, for example:
• Increased awareness or understanding of an issue

Capacity building
Understanding and awareness
Attitudinal
Other forms of decision-making and behaviour change impacts
Policy
Health and wellbeing Economic
Cultural
Other social
Environmental

 Attribution is the causal link between claimed
impacts and underpinning research
 Significance is the degree to which the impact
has enriched, influence, informed or changed
policies, practices, products, opportunities or
perceptions of individuals, communities or
organisations
 Reach is the extent and diversity of the
communities, environments, individuals,
organisations or any other beneficiaries that may
have been impacted by the research
Evaluating ImpactPolicy impacts that matter

5 WAYS
to Fast Track your
Research Impact
Practical
tools

Who has a stake in my research?What works?

Who has a stake in my research?
1. Stakeholder analysis
2. Impact planning
Two Tools

1. Who is interested (or not)?
2. Who has influence (to facilitate or block
impact)?
3. Who is impacted (positively or negatively)
e.g. playing into or compromising political
interests?
Why?
Stakeholder analysis: 3i’s

...adapt to your own needs
Stakeholder/publics analysis

Writing a
policy brief
that has real impact

 Summary or synthesis of research evidence
 Targets an issue, evidence gap or policy
need
 Provides policy options, advice or actions
 You can write and design you own policy
brief or be part of a series
What is a policy brief?

 When you’ve submitted evidence to a
consultation or inquiry that you also want to
get to specific people or teams
 As a visual aid for a talk or meeting to leave
with participants for follow-up
 When your research is only part of the
picture – integrate with other projects or
evidence synthesis
When is a policy brief useful?

 Choose a policy brief
 Explain what you like or dislike?
What makes a good policy brief?

Getting your focus right:
 Use your stakeholder analysis to identify
warm contacts from relevant policy networks
(e.g. engaged researchers, third sector,
consultants, agency staff, civil servants,
MPs)
 Tailored email based on intersection between
your interests and theirs
 Meet to discuss evidence gaps, policy needs
and other questions
Co-producing a policy brief

Getting your content right:
 Get their help to identify keywords that will
resonate with your audience
 Get their feedback on draft text and design
(including photos and infographics)
 Stress-test drafts with stakeholders
Co-producing a policy brief

Who has a stake in my research?Case study

Using your policy brief
in
meetings and
policy
seminars

 Revisit your stakeholder analysis
 Focus on high interest/influence groups that will
directly benefit from your research
 Fine-grain your analysis if necessary to identify
specific teams and individuals via online research
and help from colleagues
 Create invitations based on their interests
(tailored for one-to-one meetings or list most
important benefits for seminars)
Targeting key people and teams

Options to consider:
 Single issue/presenter versus curating a
programme
 Joining a seminar series versus creating a
stand-alone event
 In-house or a nearby venue with a nice lunch
 Presentation/questions or participatory
format
 Feedback questionnaire or post-card to your
future self
Policy seminars

Options to consider:
 Cold call or be introduced via a trusted
intermediary
 Send key messages and policy brief via
intermediary, visit with them or go yourself
 Come in listening mode or with key
messages
 Their office or a coffee shop
One-to-one meetings

Who has a stake in my research?What could go wrong?
UNCCD COP9: The talk was
the only thing that went right
Rural Economy and Land Use
programme: “I think this
question’s for you Mark”

 What is the difference between influence and
manipulation?
 How might researchers inadvertently cross
their own red lines?
Discussion exercise

Pitching
policy options in
meetings and seminars

1. Purpose
2. Communicate tangible benefits
3. Explain why these benefits are important
4. Give people a reason to trust you
5. What’s coming next
1. Have purpose

 The best speakers empathise with their
audiences, and their audiences identify with
them
 How can you empathise and connect with
an audience?
2. Connect

 Know your audience
 If you don’t, start off getting to know them
 What concerns and motivates them most?
 The power of stories
 Stories with impact are personal, unexpected,
visual, visceral
 Use your body language:
 Open & approachable; positive & energised
 Your audience will mirror you emotionally
2. Connect

 Authoritative ≠ intimidating
 Posture: be aware of your feet
 Start/end at “home” position and use different
stage positions for different points
 Use emphasis to make every word and
sentence count:
 Slow down and spell out key points
 Use volume
 Vary intonation
 Pause/silence
3. Be authoritative and passionate

 Identify one, memorable key message
 Repeat it in different ways, coming at it
from different angles to communicate your
secondary messages
 People will forget the detail, so use the
detail to build and convey your key message
 Use stories, images and metaphors to make
your message stick
4. Keep it simple

 Practice and practice again
 Record yourself, get feedback, identify bad
habits and practice breaking them
 Speaking too fast, pacing, verbal fillers
 Use your visual aids to add impact to your
message, not as your notes
5. Polish

Ella aged 2 wearing
mum’s shoes
Ella aged 22
Put yourself in their shoes: have purpose, connect, be
authoritative & passionate, keep it simple, and polish your
shoes regularly

The bottom-up and top-
down pincer movement

Which do you feel more comfortable with and
why?
 Issue advocate
 Honest broker
Bottom-up: the trusted advisor

You don’t have to be the world expert to become
the “go to” person:
 Identify junior civil servants who work with
evidence in your field
 Offer targeted help based on their
interests/remit, asking what else you can do
 Work in the public interest, not just to get your
research used
 Deliver useful, understandable and on time, via
your network if outside your expertise
 Wait for them to connect you to their teams
Bottom-up: the trusted advisor

 Identify influential stakeholder organisations and
decide if you can work with them (considering
risks to your values and reputation)
 Offer help to junior staff who work with evidence,
build trust and get to know their teams
 Provide evidence for them to use in high-level
meetings, if possible briefing and de-briefing
before/after
 The risk: they cherry-pick or distort the evidence
to lobby using your name and credibility
Top-down: intermediaries

 When it all comes together…
Top-down and bottom up

Read and discuss
 Evaluation:
 Track indicators/milestones identified in
your impact plan
 Design a more sophisticated evaluation to
establish whether you had impact
 Think about it early in case you need
before/after comparison etc.
 Monitoring:
 Opportunistically capture impacts as they
arise, whether expected or unexpected…
You need to do two things…

Read and discuss
 Do you systematically track the impact of
your research?
Monitoring impact

Read and discussMonitoring impact
 Find a way to continually track your
impacts easily to take the pain out of
reporting:
 Email impacts/evidence to yourself and file
 Ring binder/scrap book
 Evernote: enable team members from any
institution to collate impacts in a shared
notebook without having to log into
anything…

www.fasttrackimpact.com/evernote

 The process of assessing the significance and
reach of both positive and negative effects of
research
 Your task is to identify causal links between:
 Research (cause)
 Impact (effect)
 To create an evidence-based argument that
your research was sufficient or necessary to
generate the claimed impact
Evaluating ImpactWhat is impact evaluation?

 Entry level evaluation: use common sense to
assess milestones and indicators (establishing
baselines as necessary)
Evaluating ImpactEvaluating impact

 Evaluation design = research design
 Get win-wins for your research by asking “what’s
my impact” as a research question and identifying
methods already in your toolkit
 Get targeted help when there’s a tool missing
 Be proportionate
 Do parts of your design e.g. online survey,
interview
 Rigour from triangulation
 Get feedback, plugging gaps till it is believable
Evaluating ImpactEvaluating impact

 What are you claiming?
 Whole or part of policy?
 Why is the component you influenced important?
 Ideal situation: policy citation
 Likely situation:
 Policy reflects research findings or
recommendations
 Evidence of significant engagement and uptake in
policy processes
 Testimonial interview: significance, reach,
attribution and ethics
Evaluating ImpactEvaluating policy impacts

 The Eureka moment
 The concept paper
 The Guardian
 It was just an idea
 The funding
 Reaching scientific consensus with IUCN
 The Peatland Code
 Keeping new Governments on side
 Evidence to justify peatland spend in austerity
 Private investment, significant new public spend
 UN interest, IUCN and UN resolutions, Global
Peatland Assessment
Evaluating ImpactCase study

 What will I do to take a step towards a more
relational approach that could generate more
impact from my evidence?
 How can I mitigate risks? Where do I draw the
line?
Evaluating ImpactPaired discussion

www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources

Influencing policy

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