Intergroup Contact for Social Impact: Researchers and Policymakers

While many scientists are interested in using research to make a difference, it can be daunting to get started. Attendees will leave this session with an enhanced understanding of evidence-based strategies for engaging with policymakers, an outline of a fact sheet on their work, and a draft email to distribute to their decision-makers. Specifically, they will learn about knowledge brokering, conveying credibility, and storytelling. Each of these lessons has been shown to improve collaborations with decision-makers in large-scale messaging tests and a randomized control trial. By using strategies that have been experimentally shown to improve engagement, attendees can increase their social impact. Engaging with policy can feed back into one's own research plan, making it more timely, relevant, and impactful. Attendees will work through an e-worksheet to immediately practice new knowledge and make policy work more tangible: create a variety of policy options related to a key implication of their work, draft the take-home message and outline of a fact sheet, write an email that introduces their fact sheet to their policymakers, and translate their research into a digestible story.

Speakers: Jessica Pugel, Research-to-Policy Collaboration; Toria Herd, Pennsylvania State University; Brittany Gay, Pennsylvania State University; Taylor Scott, Pennsylvania State University