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Many scientific projects are intended to inform public policy, however there are often difficulties transferring or translating research from scientists to policy makers. This paper reviews the existing literature on the quality of communication between scientists or field experts and policy makers and the challenges they face in conveying their research. A majority of best practice recommendations related to effective communication are rooted in anecdotal evidence and have not yet been subjected to systematic scientific study. This is, in part, because the nature of public policy makes data collection, randomization, or correcting for confounding factors extremely challenging. Studies that do put these recommendations to the test are most commonly fielded as national surveys of field experts and policy makers in comparative contexts. Few studies examine this subject in the United States, however, and most find mixed results as to the efficacy of well-accepted scientific communication strategies. Further, existing work often fails to account for the impact of reputation on the willingness of scientists to engage in policymaking and the willingness of political actors to seek and accept expert input in the policymaking process, unless it confirms pre-existing biases. The authors explain how this gap in the literature has important consequences for the quality of policies produced and suggest future avenues of research in the pursuit of sincere evidence-based policymaking.View the NCST Project Webpage

AbstractWith the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, many state and local governments were forced to implement necessary policies to contain transmission of the deadly virus. These policies ranged from closing most businesses to more controversial proposals, such as postponing primary elections. In this research note, we examine the role that scientific knowledge and gender played in citizen perceptions of these virus containment policies, both in the general population and among partisans. We find that while a gender gap persists in scientific knowledge, both in the general population and within the parties, women are generally more likely to use this knowledge to inform their policy views on necessary government action during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings shed light on how knowledge and gender intersect to drive support for government intervention during the time of a severe public health crisis in a partisan America.

While scholars increasingly link affective polarization to the rise of populist parties, existing empirical studies are limited to the effects of radical right parties, without considering the possible effects of leftist populist parties or of parties' varying degrees of populism. Analyzing novel survey data across eight European publics, we analyze whether citizens' affective party evaluations broadly map onto these parties' varying degrees of populism, along with their Left-Right ideologies. We scale survey respondents' party feeling thermometer evaluations and social distance ratings of rival partisans using multidimensional scaling (MDS) to estimate a two-dimensional affective partisan space for each mass public, finding that in most (though not all) publics our mappings are strongly related to the parties' varying degrees of populism, as well as to Left-Right ideology. We substantiate these conclusions via analyses regressing respondents' affective ratings against exogenous measures of the parties' Left-Right ideologies and their degrees of populism. Our findings suggest that in many European publics, populism structures citizens' affective ratings of parties (and of their supporters) to roughly the same degree as Left-Right ideology.

ObjectiveIn this research note, we examine the role scientific knowledge and gender plays in citizen responses to governmental social distancing recommendations.MethodsUsing two waves of the American Trends Panel Survey and a measure of latent scientific knowledge, we test whether scientific knowledge is associated with comfort in participating in social activities during the COVID‐19 pandemic within both the full U.S. population and the two major political parties.ResultsIn both the general population and within the Democratic Party, we find that women are generally more likely to use their scientific knowledge to inform their level of comfort with social activities during the COVID‐19 pandemic.ConclusionThese findings shed light on how knowledge and gender intersect to drive compliance with government recommendations and policies during a public health crisis in a deeply partisan America.

Cities and states across the U.S. are assessing fees or taxes on transportation network company (TNC) platforms, such as Uber and Lyft. The goals of these policies include traffic and emissions mitigation, as well as revenue generation, among other objectives. This research aims to assess the goals and effectiveness of these fees in achieving some of these policy objectives, primarily congestion and emissions mitigation. The analysis addresses a core difficulty in comparing TNC fees—some fees are assessed per mile and others per trip. The researchers compared 21 fees implemented by state and local governments across the United States and apply a methodology to compare these diverse fees and taxes based on a hypothetical ride informed by Uber's fare calculator, as well as other sources. The findings show that when adjusted for comparison, the highest fees, by a wide margin, are assessed in downtown New York City and Chicago (during peak hours). A key policy implication of this research is that most fees or taxes are not large enough to affect enough travelers' choices to hail a TNC, and most do not differentiate between solo and pooled/shared rides. Only San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and New Jersey differentiate between solo and shared rides, which is likely to influence travelers in choosing to share a ride. This is problematic given that increasing passengers per vehicle mile traveled is an essential strategy in managing congestion and reducing emissions associated with all vehicle travel, including TNCs.View the NCST Project Webpage