ARI Policy Engagement Fellow

Government Departments have produced short documents summarising their research priorities called Areas of Research Interest (ARIs). This allows researchers to better understand what Government needs to know. Through this Policy Engagement Fellowship I will interact with both policy and research experts to help the Government make the most of these ARIs. This will involve working closely with a Research Engagement Fellow, and with research and policy experts to develop recommendations for future programmes of work to address these priorities. To do this, we will draw on our social science expertise about the production and use of evidence for policy, especially on effective facilitation and collaboration. Our work involves a number of stages:

1. Prioritisation: As the Policy Engagement Fellow, I will lead work with the Departmental chief scientific advisers, directors of analysis and heads of the Policy Profession to explore how the ARIs were produced and by whom; the extent of academic involvement; and the potential for further refinement. Drawing on analysis on the content and themes of the ARIs, we will hold meeting(s) to prioritise a set of key ARIs and work out what makes them useful to different stakeholders. We will include cross-cutting ARIs, and those focusing on Departmental priorities, choosing ARIs developed in different ways. This will help us learn about the potential for collaborative working across government, and the different ways ARIs can be made useful.

2. Identifying relevant expertise: I will identify expertise relevant to these ARIs across policy leads and Departments, Government analytics teams and agencies. The Research Engagement Fellow will locate relevant research expertise across external centres such as the as What Works Centres, across disciplinary boundaries including (but not limited to) the social sciences.

3. Connecting and refining ARIs through a process of co-design: We will bring together these experts in a series of 6 workshops designed to move from the initial ARIs, to more specific research questions. We will develop recommendations for researchers, funders and government together, which may shape future funding calls, policy or evidence briefs, or lead to specific research collaborations. These workshops may be challenging as participants will have different priorities and practices. We will overcome these with tested facilitation approaches, using our experience as supportive and proactive leaders.

4. Producing guidance on developing capability for research-policy engagement: I will lead two roundtable events to maximise learning from these Fellowships: (1) With GO-Science and stakeholders, on Optimising the development and prioritisation of ARIs within government, to inform the development of ARIs in the future, and (2) with research funders, and research stakeholders on Supporting Effective and Ethical Research-Policy Engagement, to showcase our work and discuss how the research funding community and academy can respond to themes emerging from ARIs.

Throughout all stages of the Fellowship, we want learn about what types of infrastructures, initiatives and investments best support effective and ethical policy-academic engagement. We will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of collaboration, learn how to support government effectively, and about the process of evidence use more broadly. We will capture this learning through regular discussions with our advisory group, keeping regular notes on our reflections, and where possible formal research methods. This will be very useful for the UK Government, ESRC and UKRI (and potentially for other governments, e.g. US) who want to know how to maximise the value of research investments (UKRI, 2019). We will work with ESRC and GO-Science to find ways to share this learning with the wider policy, funding and research communities.

Working together, the Fellows will bring policy and academic experts together to address policy needs and shape research priorities, creating a stronger evidence base and improving government access to expertise. We will develop tools and guidance to facilitate better relationships between evidence producers and potential users in Government to support on-going dialogue about evidence use, and learn about this process, helping research funders, universities and Government work together to build capacity across these systems to embed evidence use. Ultimately, we aim to build capacity and capability for effective and ethical policy-academic engagement.

Key beneficiaries and impacts include:

Government Departments, policy analysts and advisors, and decision-makers will benefit by further developing their ARIs in workshops 1-7 and co-designing with relevant experts recommendations about future research projects, analyses and programmes, captured in reports for participating Departments. We will work with the University Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) to maximise the diversity and quality of participants, broadening Departments' connections with academic communities, which Fellows will map pre- and post- workshops. Greater interaction with academics will also bring insights about research processes and evaluation, making collaboration more likely.

ESRC and UKRI, including Research England and the higher education sector will gain a clearer understanding of detailed, specific research needs (short-term evidence syntheses and research, and longer term strategic aims) to inform future funding calls. We will develop a better understanding of, and form recommendations about training and capacity needs within government and research. There is scarce empirical evidence about how to support collaboration between researchers and policymakers (Oliver and Boaz, 2019; Sasse and Haddon, 2019; Walker et al., 2019), and this project will help funders understand how to design and support improved policy-academic engagement. We also expect this project will lead to a broader potential contribution social science can make across Government Departments.

Go-Science and Chief Scientific Advisers will benefit through increased support for, and use of the CSA Network and improved relationships across departments, which have varying levels of capacity at present. With Go-Science we will refine the ARI development process, and provide tested tools and techniques to embed these. We will advise on ways to maintain more diverse and sustainable networks with academics. In Roundtable 1, we will share learning with GO-Science, the Policy Profession and Parliamentary colleagues to develop rich understandings of evidence use and decision-making within Government Departments to inform future work.

Researchers and knowledge brokers, and the wider research community: Our showcasing event (Roundtable 2) will introduce the ARI work to this community. Theywill benefit from an increased understanding of prioritisation, decision-making and evidence cultures across Government. There is scarce empirical evidence about these topics, and the opportunity to gain in-depth experience (shared through academic outputs as appropriate) will enrich and transform our understanding of how to support evidence use. Initial ideas for outputs include integrating the learning from the fellowships into revised advice for academics, appropriately sensitive ethnographies exploring the policy prioritisation process and the knowledge economy within Government.

Finally, the public could benefit through improved decision-making moving towards better societal outcomes. The applicants have considerable experience of working with the public and service user groups on the development of research agendas. During the fellowship we would be interested in considering how public voices could be integrated into the ARI process moving forward.