Researchers across different disciplines increasingly recognize the importance of communicating their findings beyond academic audiences, especially to policymakers who can act on evidence to improve public health and societal well-being. Yet many researchers are unsure of how to engage with policymakers in meaningful, productive ways.

Through a recent microgrant project funded by Research!America, a non-profit research advocacy alliance, our team at the Research Translation Platform aimed to address this gap by developing and testing brief, online trainings to motivate researchers to meet with policymakers to share their research findings.

We created three short, self-directed online trainings designed to help researchers understand the limitations of traditional dissemination efforts and the value of building relationships through non-partisan approaches. Designed to take less than 10 minutes each to complete, the modules are accessible to graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from all disciplines.

Training 1: Why it’s important to have trusting relationships with policymakers
Training 2: How to create a compelling fact sheet
Training 3: Engaging with policymakers through SCOPE

We developed the training in partnership with TrestleLink, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving science communication with policymakers. The training introduces evidence-based insights into how researchers’ meetings with policymakers can lead to policymakers incorporating more science into their policymaking activities, and how the Science Communication Optimizer for Policy Engagement (SCOPE) model can serve as a practical mechanism for initiating these conversations.

The SCOPE model—developed at Penn State by the Research Translation Platform—helps researchers communicate their work in a nonpartisan and engaging manner. We expanded upon this work by developing training on how to effectively engage in science communication efforts and why previous efforts—for example, one-sided “pushes” of evidence without considering its relevance to policymakers—may not have been the most effective.

Evaluating engagement with the training modules

To understand whether explaining the “why” of policymaker engagement—i.e., why researchers should meet with policymakers—increases interest in learning “how” to do it, we conducted a randomized controlled trial with researchers in the Research Translation Platform’s Rapid Response Network, a group of researchers who respond to requests for research from policymakers. Half of the researchers received only the “how” training, while the other half of the network first received the “why” training, followed by the “how” training.

We tracked participants’ engagement with the modules over a two-week period after each training module was sent to participants to assess the impact of the motivational framing in the “why” training. This evaluation showed a promising trend: those who received the “why” email showed slightly higher rates of opening the email and engaging with the training materials, suggesting that highlighting the rationale for policy engagement may help increase interest.

Implications and future directions

This project offered early insights into how framing the why of why it is important for researchers to share their research with policymakers may influence researchers’ motivation to take action and engage with policymakers. By making the training widely accessible, we hope to increase the number of researchers who are prepared to build relationships with policymakers. Looking ahead, the findings from this project will inform future training and research efforts with the SCOPE model.

Patrick O’Neill, a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Family Studies and a research fellow at Penn State’s Research Translation Platform, led this project, which included funding acquisition, the development and evaluation of training materials, and the dissemination of research findings. Taylor Scott, director of the Research Translation Platform, assisted in the development and evaluation of training materials; Max Crowley, director of the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, assisted in funding acquisition; and Jessica Pugel, associate director of insights and analytics for the Research Translation Platform, assisted in the development of the training materials.