How Can Basic Research on Children and Families Be Useful for the Policy Process?
Kristin Anderson Moore, Child Trends Basic research can inform social policy in a number of ways. First, it can draw the attention of policy makers to problems. Second, it can deflect policy makers away from focusing on issues that are not really problems. Third, it can help policy makers understand whether or not factors are causally related to problems and the processes underlying development. And fourth, it can contribute to the evaluation of programs and policies by helping policy analysts develop models of behavior and by providing the measures and methods needed to conduct rigorous evaluation studies. To communicate information to policy makers, researchers need to be very brief; write in clear, accurate, and nontechnical language; and make information easily accessible. Researchers should recognize that policy makers have diverse goals and that only rarely is research the primary factor in policy making.
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