Practicing And Evaluating Outcomes Of Working Across The Science Policy Interface

This paper reports on the practice and evaluation of co-constructed research conducted by researchers at the James Hutton Institute with a range of policy and other stakeholders. The research was undertaken to support a policy options appraisal for the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Scotland, a major rural policy instrument that distributes 532M(sic) per annum (equivalent to over half of the total income from farming) and, by 2019, will redistribute approximately 280M (sic) of funding. Over the course of ten years of science-policy interactions a variety of modes of working have been undertaken - the paper outlines the actors, the networks of interaction, the nature of the research undertaken and how this has evolved as the research team built credibility with policy makers and other stakeholders. The increasing degree of co-construction and even co-delivery of research through partnership between James Hutton Institute staff and analysts within government is assessed in terms of the mutual benefits, the potential pitfalls and institutional and career challenges for researchers working in this way. The research was also subject to formal evaluation of policy and other impacts by consultants employed by the research funder. The paper highlights the key findings from this evaluation for the CAP related research. A key finding from the evaluation was that instrumental change (in practice or policy) was more readily acknowledged by policymakers rather than research providing new knowledge or conceptual insights. This did not match the expectations of evaluators for whom the achievement of instrumental change was the greater challenge, and was dependant on conceptual change. The paper draws on the literatures of agricultural decision support and other literatures to ground these findings in a wider community of practice.