Policy|Training - How to write a policy brief

Bulletin. Who, um, I started working for at the time of the last RF, um, they do quite a lot of this stuff, and you will probably be aware that they've worked with your, um, with your, your University already and with a lot of your departments. Particularly, I was going to say, I remember doing—I did the Winchester School of Art last ref with Jonathan Haris—Harris, one or the other anyway. So that's where I'm coming from, and that is why I'm here today.

Um, let's get a bit of an idea before we started what it is that you want to get out of this course, because I think, um, as we are quite a wide range—I've looked at your questionnaires—but perhaps you could just throw at me a couple of ideas of what it is that you actually want to get out of today. When you leave today, what you want to have, what skills, anybody? You can say nothing; that's good. We'll go home now, because that's great, done then, job done, and to written, considered an effective policy. Okay, to have written? Yeah. Okay. Anybody else? How to unpick key messages from long research papers. Okay, so identifying key messages, or identifying? Yeah. Okay, we'll say key messages for now. Yeah, good. Anybody else? So I said one, differentiation between policy and practice. Yep. H, yes. MH. Anyone? Some of the key out ways to publish these, get the messages out. Okay, hold on. Practice, um, sorry, you said repeat, please? The outlets. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, gotcha. I was so busy trying to remember if it was a C or an S, but, um, yes. Anybody else? Who are the policy mak—oh, who are? Yes. Now we are a really wide range obviously, but who are the key policy makers? Okay. Anybody else? Own. I also—oh, are you? Ideas from? Yeah, well, or I might get some ideas from you. Okay. Okay.

Well, I mean, in many respects, pretty straightforward and pretty basic. I mean, I think, um, this is what we'll be doing today. This is how I've sort of organized this course, so it's a relatively short workshop, and we are going to be concentrating on how to influence UK policies and not really International policy, although there are my—there are areas which will work for you if you're looking at doing things in Turkey, um, we can talk about that a little bit later. I can, as we go along, it'll become more clear what those are, um, but uh, influencing policy is obviously just one of a whole host of ways that you can create impact with your research. Um, that said, many of the principles, a lot of what we will be talking about today with regards to structure, with regards to style, with regards to how you approach it can be transferred to different areas. So if we're talking about any kind of public engagement, so even if at the end of today you think, ah, you know what, I'm not really sure that this is the right thing for me, I'm not sure if MPs or or policy groups or whatever you are, there will still be something you can take away from this that will be applicable to you in your situation when it comes to how you present your research to the public or to it for public engagement. Yeah. Okay. So let me just move over here. I think, um, what we want to start with next is one of these questions here, and that is, um, who is a policy maker? Okay. So I'm going to ask you—you're the experts in your area—who are the policy makers? Anyone? Yes. Specialist advis—so specialist advisor, so basically SPADs, right? SPAD, special advisers, um, ministers, particularly if they're in cabinet, have special advisers or a whole host of whom they, um, depend upon. Sorry, civil servants. Civil servants. Yep. Anyone else? Who else is a policy maker? Who makes policy? We're missing the most basic one. Politicians. Exactly. Politicians, MPs, politicians, um, you know, uh, you know, anybody? Counselors, MPs, you know, anybody in a Civic role like that. Anybody else? I'm just going to ask you to spread—have a little bit of a think about that a little bit wider. Who else directs policy or has a big influence on policy? Because pressure groups. Ah, yes. Pressure groups. Y, y. Yeah, yeah. All of these. When we talk about policy makers, I think one of the things that's quite important to remember that while as policy makers obviously include government ministers, MPs, civil servants and local councils, what's equally important, and for some of you will be actually more important than those top ones, there are the policy community. So there's a pressure groups, charities, community organizations, trade units, the media. Anyone who can actually influence these people here. So these can be your allies, and in like I said—said—depending on what your research area is, some of those people will be particularly, or representatives of some of those groups will be particularly useful for you. So when you're writing your policy brief, you have to remember it's not just the top, it's also the bottom as well. Okay. Okay. So now that we know who they are, I think the next question has to be what do policy makers want out of a written brief? And in order to figure that out, let's start by considering some general truths about who, what po—this is what policy makers, the ones that I deal with, say they tell me that they're very busy, they're not academic experts, they're keen to achieve something before the next election, they want to make a difference, they need to show that they're giving value, right? And they also tell me that they are constantly being bombarded with stuff, not just policies, but all sorts of stuff, letters from people who have different, you know, all sorts of things. You, you need some paperwork, don't you? Um, so given what we know here about who they are, what would you say that means with regards to how you organize a policy brief or what kind of qualities should your policy brief have in order to answer these, these, these qualities? Or, M—language, lay language. Is it that? So yes, lay language, or basically everyday language, right? Yep, that's right, because they're not academic experts. Right. Anything else? Oh, sorry, I had two at the same time. One at a time. Ah, short and precise. Yes. If you're very busy, short and precise, quite useful, isn't it? Anybody? Supported by evidence. Supported by evidence. Okay, we're going to consider this a little bit more later, because yes, absolutely, supported by evidence, but I would argue that it's actually, funnily enough, not your first priority; in fact, on the list of priorities, it's kind of low down, but anyways, anybody else? Put she what they want out of it, what they need out of it. Oh, thank you. That is, and I have to tell you that is the absolute fundamental of what do policy makers want: they want to know what's in it for me. Why, why should I pay any attention to what you're saying? Now, how do you answer that question? Solutions to a problem. Solutions to a problem. Yeah, absolutely. So what you are doing and what policy makers are absolutely dependent upon researchers like yourselves for are potential solutions to problems. Right. A lot of people who go into public service or even, you know, so charities or what have you will say that, you know, they went there to make a difference, right? You can help them make a difference. You are there to help, to help them, and they need you quite blatantly, and if you offer them something that allows them to do what their job and to fulfill their ambition of making a difference, they will smile upon you. There's no doubt about that. They, they absolutely do need you.

Okay, let's just, uh, look at what we've got up here. So running through this again, so a strong policy brief, basically, as we said, you know, policy makers are very busy people, and they don't have time to read long documents. Um, for the same reason, you want to structure it well and lay it out clearly. Policy makers very often will skim, but if you've got 20 things coming in at the beginning of the week, right, you're going to skim what's there, so what you are offering them has to be very clear and straightforward and on a plate, right? Um, the language needs to be suitable for an educated non-academic audience. So make it clear, accessible, free from unexplained jargon and obscure acronyms, but not dumbed down; it's quite a fine line there and quite a difficult thing to do. Um, I used to work with Jenny Murray on Woman's Hour at Radio 4, and one of the first things she told me in my first week at work was, when you are writing for radio, when you write a script, think of it as you addressing your mother: so somebody that you respect, um, you respect your opinion, you want to impress her, you don't want to, but she might not be an expert in the area that you're expert in. So if, when you're writing your policymaker and you're going through your language, it's very easy to slip into jargon, think of it as your writing for your mother, your mother is reading it, or your best friend, or possibly your husband and wife, depending on whether or not you married in or out of your academic field, um, but you know, you're writing it for somebody who's intelligent but not necessarily expert as you are. Right. Um, now, contrary to a lot of research papers, a policy brief needs to be front-loaded. You need to tell them right up front, for the same reason that we were talking about before, because people skim, because people read quickly, because often the way it needs to be front-loaded, you tell them on the first paragraph why it is that you are there and what it is you can do for them, right? Um, and that's often done in the form of an executive summary. We'll come back to that later and have a bit of a run over that and how to do them. Um, what we would generally do is, you know, say that, uh, well, we'll get to that later, so don't worry about it, but that's absolutely—yeah, that's that's kind of a key part of what we're talking about here. Um, the purpose is of a policy brief is to facilitate policymaking, so it needs to show that there's something wrong with the current policy, and that means that there needs to be enough context to show why what you were saying is relevant. So we were talking here about supported by evidence, yes, but don't go bananas on it, because if you go too crazy proving it, you've lost some of the, the, the things we were talking about earlier, the fact that people are skimming; if you get bogged down in a case study, you know, people, people will stop reading; might be interesting, but if you're skimming, you don't do the case study, you don't read through it. Um, okay, what else we got here? Ah, and following on from that, yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry, I'm just making a note from the question forms that came back. Yeah. Okay. So, um, following on from that, your policy brief needs to include a recommendation based on your research on what you think the policy maker needs to do or recommend. If you can't do that, if by the end of today you don't know what it is that you are recommending a policy maker does, you have a slight problem, because if you don't know what you want them to do, they're not going to know what to do. Again, you are the expert in this area, and they are looking for guidance from you, so you do really need to have a think and clearly define—we will do that today, don't worry about it, that's part of our workshop—but, um, you need to have a think about what it is you want them to do, which direction are you pointing them in, and they will not, on the whole, take the time to do it themselves, because they're busy—things we were talking about before. Um, any practical ideas you have on core recommendations and how they could be made to work are also important. So, for instance, if you've been working within the policy community or within certain, you know, key groups of beneficiaries, include that—this is how they can benefit, this is what you do, this is how they will benefit—and if you want to—I mean, some people like to do illustrations, just because a picture is worth a thousand words. I think you've been doing that in here quite a lot. Okay. So we'll go back to—so remembering our key question, what's in it for me? What's in it for a policy maker? And again, I know I said it before, and I, I will say it again and again and again, is this is absolutely key, and in the questionnaires that many of you asked really how you could translate your research into something that will interest policy makers, that is absolutely the key. If you walk away with one thing, that is the thing you want to walk away with today: answer that question—policy brief. If you answer that question very top of it, they're going to read on, and that's what your policy brief is about, right? Every single paragraph, you want them to read more, answer that at the beginning, they will read it; stick it at the end, they might not get there. So what's in it for them? Okay. Now, for the next part, I think what we're going to do is we're going to take five minutes to work through and identify and formulate the policy implications of your specific research. Can I just check and see, has everybody come in today with research that they want to focus on, that they want to develop a policy brief out of? Has anybody not got that? Okay. No, no. Is there somebody that you can work with here, somebody from either from your department or somebody say beside you, somebody who you like, you know, who you can basically—well, you can't work—you? Yeah, great. So work together with somebody else to help you. I mean, it—we'll come through, we will talk about your ideas, and we will brainstorm a little bit later, but what I'd like you to do now is to take that form that I handed out earlier, one that is, uh, policy briefs, policy implications of your research, and see—thinking about your research, thinking about the things that we talked about before, and particularly that—what should we call it?—just the multi-million pound question—consider these things here and take about five minutes, which we'll probably take a little bit less because we're running a little bit behind, having started late, take about four minutes, and then I'm going to come back, and we're going to talk through some of these, and I'll ask some of you to, to, to share your thoughts. Yeah. Anybody have any particular problems with regards to any of the, the things you asked to do here? Everybody was able to identify a real-life policy issue? Anybody have any trouble with that? They'll come back to bite you. No, absolutely. Early-stage research can be very, very difficult, um, and in that case, there—I'm, I suppose I'm wondering really if in ear—if you're at the early stage of your research and you're wondering what it is that you can do, what it is that might benefit, how, how might you find that out? How, how might you find that out if you're at the early stage of your research and you're looking for a direction? I mean, one of, of the things that we would suggest is a public engagement. So if you're actually talking to the policy community that would be affected already, you can have an idea from them what their needs are, you can get them onside early so that they will help you shape your research—may, may or may not be helpful depending on what you're doing—but it will certainly give you a direction if you're looking for a direction, and it can be a very valuable thing to do at an early stage of your research because you're setting up, you're getting yourself ready, you're already thinking about your policy maker and how you going to make that impact later on, and you can actually get the kind of research, get the sort of work done that you need to, to put in a policy brief or something else to create your impact. Yeah. Anybody else have any comments or any issues or any problems? No findings yet. No findings yet. Yeah, well, you do need the findings unfortunately, you know, and like I said, same thing—the sooner you start thinking about where you might go—if you know, again depends a little bit your areas—I'm just thinking it's education, is that correct? Yeah. I mean, it's, um, I mean obviously again, if you're talking to key groups of beneficiaries or public that your work might impact on, you might get some indication from them of where it's going, but yeah, no, you're right, is a gap, you need to know later. Anybody? I sort of feel a little bit caught between two stools, so I, so the project I'm looking at is working with people like public health and D, mhm, and they write their own policies for their own things, but then they obviously link in with other policy makers, so I'm wondering how and where to target. So I'm at that stage. Well, we will, we will come to that about who to target, yeah, we will talk about who to target and how later. I mean, for at this point here, if you've got them both identified, right, I mean, the way you would—somebody, I'm trying to remember was somebody in their questionnaire asked a specific question about whether or not you structure things differently for different groups, a PO brief different for different groups, and the answer to that, I'm slightly—I mean, I was going to tell you this at the end, but the answer to that is yes and no. I mean, the presentation might vary a little bit, but the content and what you actually have in there, there is a, there is a structure, and there is, uh, you know, a cake can look many different ways, it's still going to have flour and eggs usually, or some kind of, you know, it's got key ingredients, and it's the same thing with a policy brief; a good policy brief contains certain things which we'll be coming to, whether or not you're doing it to whoever. Yes, yes. One of—think I have no idea, so I'm thinking—shed some—but you know, the rhetoric, what they see as a wicked or policy problem that they put out there as a policy issue that you might respond to about how you establish how committed to the rhetoric do it. So when you say why you think my particular case, they talk a lot about why the police do not reflect community about actually last people already. Yeah, yeah. How do you, when you say why do you think it's not happened? I suspect that they're not as committed as perhaps the, the rhetoric is. So if that is right, is it worth, uh, gosh, well, it kind of mammoth in many respects, that's very particular case, and I think to try—well, I mean, the thing is, of course, we're always only dealing with humans, right? Humans have different priorities, and when I say yes, they want to know, I mean it still comes down to this, what's in it for me, right? And somewhere, even when you're dealing with the police, and I've had dealings with police—that sounds awful, doesn't it?—my in my dealings with the police in the past, what I have found is that, um, there are often one or two game changers, right? There are people who want to make the changes, who are committed to making changes, and there are a lot of people who push back. Your goal and your, your mission is to find those game changers, find those people who want to do it, and that's unfortunately what it comes down to, and sometimes you will hit brick walls, because although the rhetoric, as you say, is very—yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah—the reality is no, no, no, no, no. And if that's why it hasn't happened yet, kind of better you know it from early on that the reason why it's not happening is because actually there's no real will, which might have to do with budgets, might have to do with, you know, employment practice, might have to do with all sorts, um, but you know, it's worthwhile knowing because then you know what you're in for as much as anything else. Okay. Does somebody want to read theirs? Sorry. Yeah, I had a, a question. Okay, go on. So, um, I can read like part of mine where I had my question in the sense that you asked here, why would you advise policy makers to do on the basis of your findings? So many times, like my, my research is dealing with the forestation, and many times we're facing very complex problems that are caused by just many different things, so I think, um, a challenge in this type of policy briefs is which advice, how would you rank that advice, and what would you include or not to policy makers, because you can have several recommendations on what they can do because problems are so complex, I can think right now just a list of maybe 10 things. Okay, I know they won't do all those things, they won't have budget either to pursue all those, so how do you do that? Okay. Now, this is a—well, okay, what is the overall impact then? What, what is the change, the overall change that you want to make? What will your research make better? So, well, basically, it's just aiming to reduce the forestation. Sorry, aiming to reduce the forestation. You'll have to forgive me, I'm not hearing you well at all, but aiming to—sorry, I'm sick actually—so am I—S am—me to reduce—I can—deforestation. Oh, deforestation. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yes, aiming to reduce deforestation. Why? Yeah, why? Well, for many reasons, it's like linked to driving climate change globally, reducing valuable resources like water for the entire world is. Okay. Okay. So your challenge here, right? So your overall impact that you want to achieve is aiming to reduce deforestation, right? Ways or paths to this—fighting climate change, you know, if you, you know, basically, or, or saving water resources—it's about environmental benefit, right? So in some respects, your aim is to, um, okay, I'm forgiving my pedestrian because this is really, but you're aiming to, um, benefit the environment, um, either globally or, or you know, and, and through reducing deforestation, right? Now, deforestation, um, so if you're looking at that form, then you're saying, okay, so what would you advise policy makers to do? Well, in your executive summary, you can say there are two main inroads to doing this: they are—we can achieve this by fighting climate change and saving water resources, or by—or the other way around—we can do this and do this by doing this. So you're structuring your argument, right? This will lead to this, your overall impact, right? And then, with regards to recommendations or what you would advise policy makers to do, you want a couple of quick, short recommendations, right? So I don't know what it would be, um, what is it? Tax something maybe, or what, what would you recommend? What do you think policy makers should do? What do they need to change? Are they going to, um, I don't know, um, put quotas, you know, sort of—that's what you need to, to, to come up with. Like I said before, you need to know what you're asking them for as much as anything else. So if you want a quota, you can say, well, you know, we're going to suggest you do these things by introducing a quota or putting on a tax or, um, I don't know, um, tree planting or, you know, or anything, or, or whatever it is that you're recommending or creating, uh, you know, whatever. This is one of the way areas where if you are working with a policy group, they can tell you, you know, they can help you, they can help push you in a direction so that you can make a very firm, clear recommendation. Is that clear to people? Am I making sense, or am I just getting feverish? Yeah, yeah. Anybody, anybody else? I want you to hold on—oop—I can see your hand. Well, just thinking about the issue of timeliness and sort of saying the right thing at the right time. Yeah, if you're in the US at the moment, for example, trying to influence US policy, another challenge in front of you. Yeah, and that again comes very much down to identifying allies and, you know, so who your change makers are and who, who it is, you know, a good policy brief will make you friends and will make you allies, right? And that's really ultimately how changes get made is by finding somebody who will, will commit to it. You, you provide them with the—you'll forgive the very—it's just because you said US—you provide them with the ammo, they hit the target, right? And yeah, there's absolutely, you know, timing is absolutely crucial. I mean, at the moment, I suspect that if you, you know…

If you had research on, uh, you know, sort of, um, well, you know, Donald Trump, I'm sure is very interested in research on migrants and terrorism at the moment. So you've got that, and you can prove his, you know, he'll be he'll be lapping it up because he's not finding it elsewhere. Um, but I digress. Um, okay, so hold on to those forms because we're going to be moving um and using them again later.

Um, so you remember we already discussed some of the key attributes that you need for your policy brief a little bit earlier, given who policy makers are. So they need to be brief, well-structured, written in accessible, non-academic language, front-loaded—remember, at the very top you tell them what it is you want to do—and it needs to include your recommendations. Really important: if you can't tell them what to do, they're not going to know; they will not work it out for themselves. You need to work it out for them, I'm afraid. Um, it's a bit like having children.

Show them how your proposal differs from current policy. If you're just recommending something they're already doing, you know, great, thank you, thank you for the the handshake and the the vote of confidence, but you know, you won't have made any impact. Include practical ideas on how to make it work. So if you're already working in some instances with, you know, the policy community, with groups of beneficiaries, with the public, you know, include that and use illustrations where useful.

Now what I'm going to do is, at this point here, is I am going to ask you to look at those two policy briefs that I handed over earlier—the breastfeeding policy brief and the second one, which was—where's my notes? I had three originally; I'm only giving you two though—which is, oh yes, the effect of metering on water consumption. Now these both came from the University here. I'm sorry, I didn't actually print the last page of the breastfeeding one; there's a lovely blue page, but my printer ink was running low, so you don't get the last blue page. Have a look at those briefs, and given these things here, I'd like you to evaluate them. How effective do you think these policy briefs are? You don't need to take very long, just about 5 minutes. By all means, discuss it amongst yourselves if you want. Again, just have a look: what works about them, what doesn't work about them, how do they measure up? If you were a policy maker, would you keep reading the um, with the breastfeeding, with Beyond Breast is Best policy brief? What did you think of it? How, how effective was it? How, what do you think? Go on. Sorry. Good. Did, did anybody think it wasn't good? Why don't we start there? Said it was a good first—oh, interesting. Don't forget she actually, she's thinking of introducing a module. Don't forget. So anyway, but anyways, uh, so first, okay. Anybody else, actually, before we go on, why just good as a first draft? What was it lacking?

Well, I quite—um, there's quite a lot of text. The key findings, I mean, that's research speak rather than policy speak. Sentences in—yeah, because I, I, yeah, just was quite a lot of words. Yeah. Know what jargon. Interesting. Now what's very interesting about that is I showed these both to some of my colleagues, and I, I think it's pretty good actually, in many respects; it's really very strong. Um, interestingly enough, I wonder if I should say this or not. I understand from one of my colleagues, Christina, that the two academics who contributed to this actually attended one of these workshops. Hooray! Look at that work. I did think this is very good and a lovely example, but I guess you've invited us to critique it. I have most definitely invited you to critique it, and, and that said, when I showed, I showed it to various people um that I work with in various different areas, some people in the media, um, some people in who work in health, um, as well as uh my, the chair of the charity where I work, um, who's in the House of Lords, and they all said they actually thought maybe it was a bit wordy. I mean, you know, again, being concise is to be aimed for, I thought. Um, they space better and cut out one page. Yes, possibly, possibly. Yeah, yeah. Particularly, I think, um, again, this depends a little bit; again, we're talking about style and and strategy here. Um, if it is the first time you're approaching somebody, there's a real benefit into only giving them one page to look at because, as we said before, people are busy; they don't have very much time. What you do need to to make sure is that you follow up on it right, and that you and if that they are interested, you can provide them with more information, which I realize means that I'm asking to do two policy briefs rather than one, but sometimes, in fact, that is in fact what you want to do: you want to have something quite short and sharp to get them hooked, and then you can kind of, you know, overwhelm them with your fantastic research and your findings and your brilliance and your insights on your second approach. We feel that they've actually showed how the proposal differed from current policy; you kind of really dug down into it. Was the "what's in it for me" seemed to come a bit late, really. We thought perhaps it should be restructured so that the recommendations rather than findings came later. Yeah. More punch. What's in it? Yeah, I mean, quite possibly. I mean, again, yeah, it depends; there is an element of, uh, you know, sort of knowing who your audience is, and I don't know who this policy brief was directed at. Um, certainly it would fit people who are already working in maternal services, pediatric, rather than it would, for instance, be a good policy briefing for a journalist, because, as you said, there's lots of stuff in there. You go, oh, Waller, it's reasoning, duty, distinction. You wait, what? You know. Um, but yeah, is there—now there's something else that I thought was missing, or it's there but it's just really hard to see. Did anybody else notice that the date is very tiny on that second page? Now if you're getting 20 or 30 of these every week, and you know, let's face it, some people just go and you don't know quickly, you know, you if you know that it's recent, oh, you know, it's, it's how long is a piece of string? There are very many ways, but I'd be very tempted to make the date more prominent as well. Um, I think the picture is quite good, and again, you know, this when I spoke to various people that I work with, the picture had both very positive and less positive—some people say, oh, you don't need a picture; it just makes it kind of, you know—but I think it actually does stick in your memory; people will remember it in a way, and if you, it's kind of a branding if you want, if you used it on your second follow-up, you know, it could be, could be effective. But again, there are many different ways to do things. In terms of the other stuff, I mean, it's just reasonably brief; it's reasonably well-structured in that it has good clear headings, so at least you know where it's going. Language—I, I'm telling you, I've read a lot worse language—quite good, and it is with that executive summary at the top, front-loaded, to agree as well. Research. Yeah, that's true, too. Yeah, and I think particularly if, um, you know, sort of you're already working in this, you know, for policy makers working in this area for, yeah, for policy groups, they will recognize not only the "breast is best," but you know, it will, it, it has meaning; there is a semantic to this already. Okay. How about the other one? How about um the effect of metering on water consumption? What did you make of that one? That's an old—I have to tell you that's an older one, some time ago, quite some time ago, even. Oh, oh, and [Laughter] uh, um, so, uh, what did you think of the second one then, the uh the effect of metering on water consumption? Anything good or bad? How, how does it work, do you guys think? Any comments?

Yes, I think it's a good summary, but it's not written with a view to policy makers. Summ—it's a summary—I'm sorry, it's a summary of research. It's kind of interesting if you're interested in that, but if you're not, you know, I mean, it doesn't really do the the things, the recommendations; you—it doesn't tell you—I've erased our 100 million pound question, but it doesn't answer that question: what's in it? Why, why is anybody—what are they suggesting? Are they suggesting that there should everybody should have a water meter? Why exactly? I mean, I think that, you know, I'm sorry to say, you know, there are a number of issues. I mean, the good things about this: it's quite brief; you know, it fits onto two, you know, two sides of A4; that's, that's manageable if you're skimming or you're looking through. Um, but otherwise, there's an awful lot here about methodology, which, to be perfectly blunt, your busy policy maker is less interested in. It is for, for, for aficionados, for your your fellow researchers, for other academics; it is really—that's the meaty stuff; that's what you want to know. Policy makers aren't really interested in how you got there; they don't care which number of buses you took, whether or not you had to get a taxi, whether or not it was raining, whether or not there was, you know, who else was at the bus stop; they just want to know that you got to the destination right, and that is, I think, probably the biggest problem with this brief here is that it's about the present; it is not about the future, and your policy briefs are always about the future: what could be, what are we aiming for, what's going to happen next? Right. Yeah. So, um, so that, I think, probably—does anybody else have any comments about that or any questions? If not, we're going to move along. Okay, so model structures, and if you look at the breastfeeding um uh policy brief, it's basically laid up like this, right? Title, um, executive summary. It follows a certain pattern. Now these are all the bits that I would suggest or we would suggest that you want to have in your policy brief; these are all the elements, right? You can dress them however you want; you can put a picture, you can put illustrations, you can, you know, you can use crazy fonts if you want, you know, it's up to you. Um, I'd only urge you to be consistent, and I suspect that there is already a house style. There is indeed. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, but these are the the things that I think that you really need to have in there. Now, okay, bearing those in mind, I'm going to hand out some more—another exercise—little bit of—now I honestly, this is not the worst executive summary I've ever ever read, um, but it's pretty close. I mean, it's not, it's not too difficult to do better. Um, John Eager and Susan Newbie, um, what I want you to do is read their little executive summary there and ask yourself what's wrong with it, you know, what could be done better, what's missing, what's wrong with this summary, or what's right about it.

I think too much jargon. Yeah. Dets. I don't think—y—okay, it's a missing question. Anybody else? What could you—read out the last sentence. "Research has clear indications for the structure of doctors, nurses, that—" Yeah, but, but, but what's the implication? I mean, that's the, that's the key thing that's missing, isn't it? It has clear implications. Great. And then which would answer that question, wouldn't it? Was it, so what? Great. You know, do I just trust you? Do I just believe you? Would—yeah. Anything else? Anybody else uh got anything that they, they feel they want to share about this? To DET, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. In your executive summary, you do not need methodology at all; you really don't; it does not belong there. They are exactly, absolutely, and you're absolutely right; there is written for the wrong person. Like I said, they're not interested in how you got to your destination; they just want to know that you got there and where you are, right. Um, anything else about—yeah. Yep. Yeah, there's a lot of—I mean, it's, it's just—um, yeah, it's, it's just a little bit—esoteric in some respects, isn't it? Um, anything else missing? What about the language? Well, the sentences are far too long. Very long sentences. Yeah, absolutely. Um, we talked about the jargon, but also, yeah, very long sentences. Um, if you are skimming—you might be familiar with this when you skim yourself—people skim quickly; there's a reason why Twitter works quite well for sending a message is because you have to be short and sharp, and I'm not saying that you should limit your executive summary to 140 characters, but short and sharp will stick. If somebody has to read a sentence twice, they may, they may not, right. Um, yeah, so we did say this was more of a research summary than an executive summary for a policy brief. I mean, it's, it's vague with regards to the recommendations; there's a hint of it; there's way too much detail on research; there's no context either: why does this matter? I mean, we talked a little bit about that last sentence, the implications, but you know, why does that matter? You know, so what? So, so there are imp—well, what are they? But also, so what if there are implications? Know. Um, now what about the title? Can I ask you to consider that policy brief: "Colin Public Sector Pay"? What do you think? Do you know, from reading that title, what this brief is about? Ideally, your title should give a strong indication of what it is that you are suggesting, what your recommendation is. "Beyond Breast is Best," it's really the, the sub—there is promoting and supporting breastfeeding while protecting formula feeders from guilt and shame; that's what this policy brief is about. You can, you can read right away; you have a very clear indication of who the beneficiaries are, what the benefits are, and what the implications of this research are, right? It's all there. I mean, you know, writing a good title is, is, is an art, but you know, a good title—they say a picture is worth a thousand words—a good title is probably 2,000 words even worth more. Um, yep, we're missing the context, clarity on recommendations; there's some cryptic detail in there, and I think we've more or less got it all there. Now this is the fun part. If you would like, you could either, at this point, take your policy brief that you worked on before, your policy implications, and I will ask you to write an executive summary for your own research; or if you would like to, you can stay with John Eager and Susan Newbie, and if you just flip open that package there, you will see that there's some information about what it is, in fact, that they do—much more information that you have in that executive summary. So you can either—I'm going to ask you now to take five—say, how much time do we have? Let's take five; let's take about 10 minutes actually, 10 to 15 minutes, I think we can do that, to write your own executive summary for your own policy or to rewrite John and Susan's for them, using the information that you have there. What I'm going to do is we will—I have that here. Yeah. Um, yeah, remember what we said about language. I did rather—I'm going to just put us back to this page here, so remember—these key bits: brief, well-structured, written in accessible language. Yeah, that's probably your best one. And take about—um, 10 to 15 minutes; we'll come back at about 20 past the hour, and then we will review what you have done. How did you, how did, how did you get on? How did, how did people feel that—when—I have to say it's a big ask in a short workshop—but how, how did it feel? Are you feeling like you're getting an idea of what direction—everybody, everybody reasonably okay? If so, that would be good, because I'm going to ask somebody to read those out loud, please—a brave volunteer—you know, remembering that this is a big ask in a short workshop and that um there are many different ways to do it. Would anybody like to put themselves forward to read their executive summary, either the John and Susan's research or of their own? This is actually also a really valuable time to find out from a group of very mixed colleagues whether or not what you're writing is making sense to Joe Average, or to, in this case, you can all be the policy makers. Will it work? Will the brief work? Who wants to have a go? Hooray! Come on. Great. Fantastic. Please.

Okay. So, title: "Effective Psychological Services." The sum—the number of homeless people to rise; people sleeping on the streets of England; last untreated mental health problems is significantly implicated cause the maintenance of sleeping people who are homeless do not access health—mental health services in the way that they are provided, and current government policy does not make provision for the issues, focusing the main on housing provision. Research case: special psychological can effectively treat proper behaviors which lead to ten—these may be in the form of individual therapeutic intervention, providing the context of psychologically informed environments essential to practice. What do you think, people? Any comments? I want them to change policy; they start resources, building support; that's the recommendation. Yeah. Well, the risk of getting it wrong, and do forgive me if I do get it wrong, um, you know, I think it was—I have to say I think it was really good, um, really good, and but you know, if you wanted to—lots of different ways to skin a cat—I mean, you could say if, if policy was changed so that we introduced this into this, this is what would happen; just as clear and as straightforward and as blunt as that, you know, do this, this will happen—one short, sharp sentence; it will make them sit up and look. Possibly the research bit was a tiny little bit long for what you had there; it was two sentences, kind of, you know, possibly have to look at it; it's hard, it's hard doing it verbally. Um, would you remind me what was your title again? "Psychological Services." Yeah. I think that maybe—see what your title doesn't do; I mean, it's very clear, effect, but creating effective, you know, just even by putting that active verb in your title is a clear indication of what the action needs to be done, right? So it's creating, you know, and, and that active verb could work. Anybody else have any other comments? I did think it was really, really strong; I think it was great. You can go home now. Great. Anybody else? Come on, wait. Let's get a really bad one. No, no, no. Come on. U—somebody, somebody—come on, somebody, somebody should be brave and put themselves forward. We should do a few of them; it's—we're all friends; it's all—all feedback will be constructive. Let's go. Oh. "Self-regulated learning for a better academic life and beyond." Recently, research findings indicate the benefits of implementing self-regulated learning strategies before starting academic measures in higher education. Currently, okay, promotion of self-learning strategies are taken for granted in the foundation programs in colleges of applied sciences. However, percentage of students failing academic studies or dropping out of college indicates otherwise. Implementing, implementing self-regulated learning in foundation programs is likely to prepare students for academic studies and save teachers time and students' disappointment. Again, not, not bad at all. Anybody have any comments? Okay. Remind us of your title again. Um, "Self-regulated learning for a better academic life and beyond." I quite like the title myself because it is a, it's a pointer as to what this policy brief will change, which is quite effective in that respect, I suppose. I wonder a little bit um whether or not you started with your research findings, right? Research find—not, or the findings? Oh, I see. I would avoid using "research findings" to begin with, um, just, or "research has found," um, just because you're the researcher, right? It's a little bit kind of—I found it a little bit confusing—maybe, maybe other people wouldn't, but I found it a little bit confusing, hearing—I thought, oh, so your research is doing that—state the situation; you don't need to say "research has found" or you know, you can just say whatever. Take out the "research found" and just state it as a fact; be bold. Rather than saying "I talked to 10 people" or you know, "Surveys have found that people like chocolate cake better than vanilla cake"—people like chocolate cake more than vanilla cake—just be blunt; go straight to the point; it'll help you keep your word count down; it will help you keep your sentences shorter; you don't need to to apologize or set it up; that comes later. Anybody else? Yeah, and that would also allow you, I think, to get kind of straight to the point of spelling out what the problem is: the problem is this—people like chocolate cake more; people should eat vanilla cake, or vanilla cake makers are going out of business, you know, whatever—make it short and sweet. Okay. Can we have another example from somebody, or what do you think? Are you—I can see you think—what do you think? Yes, works or not—doesn't work; those criticisms—do you think that works or is that making sense? Yes, it does, but I, I started with that because I don't have findings. Oh, I see. Of course, of course, of course. I forgot, I forgot about your lack of findings. Okay. Anybody else? I like you providing—yeah, yeah, you actually—and I'm sorry I didn't say you did—again, you did very well—the "what's in it for me," the key question. Okay. Come on, we should do at least one more, hopefully two—well, please. Um, the title is "Placing the Focus on Equality Through Establishing Conducive Team Environment." The findings of the research—the findings of this research—up with international research findings which indicate that teams function effectively as their tenures get longer. Outsourcing recruitment—sorry, the longer team members spend together, the better relations are established, which eases team leadership and establishing phases for enhanced performance. Outsourcing recruitment through one-year contracts reverses that effect in the English language departments, which calls for stabilizing the English language department teams through stopping recruitment and providing better orientation for staff. Okay. Comments? Remind us again of your title. Um, "Placing the focus on equality through establishing conducive team environment." What do you think? I'm wondering if it's a little long, and I'm also wondering if it's a little bit daunting for, for the non-academic skim reader. It sounds heavy, deep; sounds—I'm, I'm not really sure exactly what it's about; that might be because I don't know your research area, granted, but it's, it's, it's a bit—I'm finding it hard to, to get my head around, to wrap my head around. If I spend too long thinking about your title, I probably won't go any further, do you know what I mean? Um, anybody got any comments? What, what I mean—how could we shorten that, do you think, having heard what she said? Is there any way that we could shorten that because it was—I think it could have started with the teams work best when they—yeah, there were two sentences in the beginning that maybe didn't have—yeah, I would slightly be—the sentence that you had at the end about outsourcing, etc.—if you move that to the top, right away—right, this is what we're proposing, or this is what we think—if you outsource or do this, this will happen; X will lead to Y, will lead to Zed. Right. So, again, right at the very top, and then do your other bits, but you know, sort of—yeah. So, shorter title—that that one sentence or that, you know, outsourcing will do, or whatever, at the end; you might even want to try and integrate it into your title. If you can integrate it into your title, then you, you half—you know, part of your job is done, you know, because your title leads you clearly to exactly the impact or the, the change or the policy that you want to change. Um, that's something that we found slightly differently when we were actually writing the impact case studies during the last REF. One of the things that we found was very useful is that if we had a really good title—because I don't know how many of you were involved in the last REF—it was very strict with regards to the word counts in every single section, and they were incredibly inhibiting and quite difficult even for, you know, for, for seasoned writers, you know, people who do this professionally, but if you had a title that more or less summed up what your first sentence—

Might I say you saved yourself that word count that time, because your title already pointed the reader, in absolutely, in this case, you know, the people who were doing the assessments, in the direction of what it was that your research did; what was the impact that it created? Same thing with this; if you look at a newspaper, headlines often point you at exactly what's going to be in there, you know.

Okay, shall we do one more quickly, a quick one? See, this is a really quick one, so we'll just… okay, let's go. Uh, title is: Quality assurance practices in universities offering distance learning in Zambia. There are serious concerns over the low quality of programs which universities are offering through open and distance learning. Exam is also not—it’s also not clear what quality system Place deliver their programs for a long time. Universities were mandated to self-regulate themselves; however, the current policy compels all higher education providers to institutionalize National policies at local level. There is need to monitor and regulate the actual quality insurance provisions iners quality audits. There’s also need to strengthen the quality assurance framework that specifically addresses the unique points which or distance learning presents. Additionally, design a model quality assurance which is country-specific.

What do people think? Any comments? Again, I don’t think there was a bad, bad effort at all. I think, um, one of the things that occurs to me, um, is uh, you, you spent a lot of time getting to where you wanted to get. I mean, um, if your first sentence was: Universities regulating themselves has resulted in this problem, and then lay your problem X, Y, Z, right? I think, I think that was probably about three sentences in, you know, but you get there right away in a very quick, sharp thing. If people recognize that problem, they go, yeah, you know what you’re right, that is a problem, you know, and then they keep reading. If you only get there by the third sentence, oh, you know, it’s yeah, you don’t need to give so much context. You have to, again, you know, you’re aiming probably 15-200 words; it’s really not very much at all, you know, um, but sure, sweet and sharp will be will make an impact; no pun intended.

Um, yeah, so I would be tempted to do that again. Also with your title, I think it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s really hard because you want to make it—you want to put all that information in, like we’re talking before, but you also want to make it grabby. So if it’s too long, it’s it, you know, again, if you have to read the title a few times, it’s not working. You know, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”—I have no idea what’s in that book. Has anybody ever read that book? Everybody knows the title though, because it’s so sharp and sweet. Right? Absolutely. If you want to win friends and influence people, and you actually believe that the author might be able to help you, then you would read it. But you know, it, it, it’s grabby; it is an art, learning to write a title, learning to write a headline, but with practice, you know, it, it will come. Get people to help you. I mean, that, that title writing particularly is a really good way where you can get colleagues and friends, or family even, to, to give you a hand. Would you know what do you think sounds catchy or not? You know, if they’re like my family, they’ll be particularly blunt.

Okay, any questions there? We’re going to start moving quite quickly at this point because we are, we are getting, getting on; we’re supposed to wrap up on the hour, um, so just—so once you have your policy brief, what do you do with it? Well, you are quite lucky here because, um, the university actually has—I was gonna say Christina found photos of you—um, but you have a team here who can help you direct your PO, your policy brief to the right people. Now they’re obviously very useful and very dedicated and really good at what they do, but you are also very good at what you do, and very often, because of your research, because your research, depending on what it is, brings you into contact with key stakeholders, whether they be members of the community that are affected or, uh, you know, other people who might benefit, you know, pressure groups or charities, the things that we were talking about before, because you will know who they are, right? You can also play a key role in getting those policy briefs to the right people. If it’s new and fresh, you know, there’s nothing wrong with carrying it around with you and just handing it over when you meet people, either at conferences—I don’t know how often you guys get to go to conferences—but you know, think conferences, other kind of professional, you know, hand it out, spread it around, around, right.

Um, okay, so you have that, and we’re going to just whiz through this bit here. So also, you can always take it to your MP surgery. Now this obviously depends on who your MP is and what your research is and whether or not they’re even remotely interested. We talked about SpAD, special advisers before. We talked—there are obviously you all work in quite different areas; there will be ministers in particular who might be interested in what you’re doing specifically. Find out who they are; send it to them. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you because it’s all very individual; it’s like matchmaking, so you know, but we can—ah, so to stakeholder analysis in particular, have a at contact us, start to draw particular ministers or press groups and other organizations and take some of the stra—it’s quite—I have to say this is quite rare—not, not—oh yeah, oh yeah, there are, there are lots of universities now who have, um, you know, areas that deal with impact particularly, but not in such a specialized way as this, so, um, you’re very lucky there, um, but you know, again, it really depends, you know, it might be a local counselor who’s going to be more you depending on what your area is or not. There are obviously various established routes by which to get your research into Parliament or what have you, um, any of these different committees or, um, all-party parliamentary groups. Again, some of you—that’s more relevant to some of you than others—is thinking about it; forest, actually deforestation would be quite a good one, but, um, yeah, there are, there are various areas; they’re all hungry for information. You send them your material; it’s well-presented; they, they will pay attention; they need you; they really seriously do need you, in the same way that the, the media needs you. Journalists, pressure journalists are always looking for, for a good story. If there’s—like we talked about Trump earlier, right—if there’s something current that’s happening that’s been in the press that is linked to or runs parallel to or that your research can provide a different insight or, or something on—I mean, Turkey—well, you know, you could go forever, couldn’t you? But you know, again, journalists—make friends with a journalist, send them a policy brief, ask them if they want to know more, volunteer—I don’t if you already do media engagement, do some more; volunteer to do more. Um, you can—ideally, if you can hand over your policy brief in person, that’s the best way to do it; people tend to remember it. If you’re going to send it by email, do put it in the body of the email as well as an attachment; people often don’t open attachments, I’m sorry to say; that’s part about being busy and skimming and also having the right software.

Yeah, and don’t just send an email with the policy brief attached to it; you’d be amazed at how many people do that, and you know, those are the ones that get ignored very quickly.

Ah, now this is key. So you’ve met, you’ve pressed the flesh, you’ve handed over your policy brief and all the rest of it; how are you going to make sure that your contribution, the research you’ve done, the impact you’ve made is acknowledged? Anybody? How are you going to make sure? The answer is on the board: just ask. I—it’s incred—again, we talked about how people are busy; people will often be so busy that they will forget to say thank you; they don’t only forget to say thank you, they forget to give you credit. So from the outset, if you can, at some point, just say, look, you know, if there’s a white paper, if there’s a green paper, if you use this research, would you mind, could you please credit us? Ideally, if it’s a white paper or green paper, there’s a whole area for sources, right? If we—you’ve got an MP, and this has happened so many times, this—a so annoying part of the research we do on broadcasting has been read out in the House of Lords, blasted Bishops, never credited us at all, you know, and it’s really—you can go through, handed, and you can read literally things that I’ve written, and they haven’t credited us. So what do you do in that instance? You send them a very nice letter; you say, thank you so, so much; it’s really—I’m really glad to see that it was useful for you, and I hope that you know, you know, we have more; we will send you more. Um, would you mind, for our own records, because being a charity we need to prove impact as well, uh, to the Charity Commission, would you mind writing a letter, you know, citing how many times we met, and I’ll even draft it for them sometimes. We met on these occasions; this is the research was that was presented, and this is how we used it. Even just a letter, email, email is fine, right? Email is fine too. Once you get it, what you really need to remember is not to lose it, because again, you’d be amazed at how many people, during the last ref, there was, um, lovely man, not from this University, I hasten to add, um, but uh, who had—I mean, up in Scotland, had done these incredible things in the run-up to the referendum, really interesting, really interesting research that really impacted on how, you know, sort of the, the SMP kind of, you know, put together their campaign and the rest of it. Lots of great letters, letters from Alex Salmond; he lost them; he had them all in a sort of remote storage e something or another that, you know, got destroyed in some kind of—it was a flood or something like that, and it was gone. Once you get the information, keep it safe, because when it comes to doing your ref, and do it right away too; there—the other thing, do it as soon as you can, because when it comes to doing your impact case study later or your REF or what have you, even when it comes to looking back on your own records and who you’ve already spoken to, because if you talk to a lot of people, it’s very easy to talk to them again and forget what you’ve told them. Keep a record; it’s laborious to a degree, but that kind of housekeeping from the beginning will save you a lot of headaches later on; it’s like doing your taxes early.

Okay, now once you’ve done that, so you’ve reached your policymaker, they love you, they’re—you’re having regular chats; they call you up and they ask about your kids and your pets—after that—really, we did this bit here already—what you want to do is you want to capitalize on that success, right? So what can you do? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Heck, talk to an opposition MP; talk to somebody else who’s also in—talk to the policymakers; don’t just use one route; the more routes you use to get into a door or so into a room, the more doors that you have, the more the likelihood that you will find one open and ready. And also the other thing is is that this—there’s this thing that happens in—I, I do a lot of uh, radio production, and we are incredibly, incredibly parasitic; we basically feed off each other. There is a reason why you hear the same people on Radio 4 all the time, and that’s because we all listen to what each other is saying, right? And we all pick up, oh, they were pretty good; that was quite interesting; I’m doing a different Pro—I’m going to get that person too. The same thing happens among policymakers, right? If policymakers are using your research, they are pulling that stuff in, and they hear that, oh, they—that other person made a really good point, and they’ve mentioned that they will—it’s an awful thing—they take you more seriously; you were—you are more likely to be invited back by more and more people; is that kind of, um, exponential growth of your reach.

Okay, so now are there any other questions? Because really this is over to you now; we’ve kind, kind of—I had—I erased them—the things that you wanted to get into today’s session.