When policy meets academe
Gaining insights into how the policy and academic communities connect was a key driver behind a recent School of Government survey – one of the first of its kind for this country.
Gaining insights into how the policy and academic communities connect was a key driver behind a recent School of Government survey – one of the first of its kind for this country – undertaken by Associate Professor Karl Löfgren.
"For several decades there’s been a notion that while universities train the policy makers of the future, policy workers don’t make good use of academic resources, and likewise, academics don’t take much notice of what's going on in the world of policy," says Karl.
"So, Professor Brad Jackson and I surveyed 1300 policy workers, identified with the assistance of the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand and Public Service Association, about how they use academic outputs."
Targeting workers with 'policy' in their job title
They targeted policy workers with 'policy' in their job title, and received 220 responses.
"We were pleasantly surprised when it came to the accessibility of academic output. People usually say they don't have access to this material – things like library catalogues and online resources," says Karl.
"Actually, 52 percent of respondents do have access. Why there should be this perceived lack of access is something we want to follow up.
"As to whether policy workers find academic output useful, some people found our output quite inaccessible in terms of language, too technical and too abstract in nature, with little New Zealand relevance.
"Yet, paradoxically, when asked about what academic resources they do use, the top score was articles in peer-reviewed journals, followed by public lectures."
In terms of the most useful academic disciplines, Karl says the top-scorers were political science, public policy, economics, statistics, and demography.
"Māori Studies also scored quite highly and we will explore this further."
When it came to useful academic methods, quantitative analysis scored highest, then case studies.
"We asked students in our Master's courses about case studies," he says.
"Their view was that in policy analysis you are working under pressure and Ministers often request good examples from overseas, so you try to find what works and are good examples of best practice.
"This ties in with another finding that what mainly encourages people to use a particular academic output is whether it provides good examples. As a consequence, policy workers tend not to search for particular authors.”
Academic involvement in policy
Most respondents thought that academics should not be involved in formulating policy, but should be involved in policy evaluation.
"I think a lot of that has to do with the neutrality a university brings to an evaluation. And perhaps this partly explains why most people talk to colleagues when needing help, but a significant proportion will turn to universities.
"I think this is intriguing in light of people also saying that an issue for them is that academics don’t provide clear policy solutions."
Karl says that when it comes to clearly articulating what the policy and academic communities need and want from each other, there is a bit of a gap.
"But, this gap is not as sharp as perhaps we imagine and there are differences between sectors. We will be organising focus groups to delve further into our findings," he adds.
"It's in everybody’s interest to find out how we in the universities can best serve the needs of the public sector, whilst maintaining academic integrity and neutrality."
Associate Professor Karl Löfgren can be contacted at karl.lofgren@vuw.ac.nz.