Factors Influencing Legislators’Use Of Policy Information And Implications For Promoting Greater Use

Despite a tremendous growth in the volume of policy analysis in the past decade, recent research indicates governmental decisionmakers make little direct use of such research; at best, policy‐oriented research alters a decisionmaker's conceptualization of the policy problem over the long term. Previous efforts to explain policymakers’limited use of policy research have generally not considered the opportunities and constraints presented by specific decisionmaking contexts. To a large extent, the research utilization literature has focused on attitudinal and demographic characteristics of decisionmakers and has adopted as a central focus the “two‐communities” theory which asserts that frequent, direct use of policy research by policymakers is unlikely because of the competing worldview and belief systems of policy researchers and policymakers. While the two‐communities theory may partially explain the limited use of policy research, it ignores the institutional incentives motivating decisionmakers. More specifically, this earlier research does not consider the different motivations of policymakers and their relative impact on use of policy information. To expand the explanation of decisionmakers’use of policy information, I postulate a model of legislators’use of policy information that includes four types of factors that influence legislators’propensity to use policy information. These factors‐worldview and attitude toward social science, perception of the way policy issues are considered in the legislature, perception of the legislative structure, and legislative orientations‐combine two‐communities type of independent variables and perceptions of the legislative environment. In this way, policymakers’use of policy information can be examined more realistically and comprehensively.