A One-day Workshop

Training Researchers to Inform Policy is a one-day workshop from the Scholars Strategy Network that gives scholars a hands-on introduction to effective principles of policy engagement. Designed for accomplished senior professors and advanced graduate students alike, scholars leave Training Researchers to Inform Policy workshops with tools to become powerful players in policy and build relationships with policymakers, civic leaders, and journalists.

A Unique Training

Training Researchers to Inform Policy is focused on one thing: giving researchers evidence-based, practical steps they take to ensure that research findings and researchers’ perspectives inform policy. The workshop gives scholars tools to map the policy landscape, identify decision makers and powerful players who work on the issues they study, and build relationships. These relationships can make research matter to policy, spur evidence-based policy reform and innovation, and lead to rich new research directions and partnerships.

Evidence-based Best Practices for Public Engagement

Training Researchers to Inform Policy is based on research about when policymakers use research — and when they don’t. The curriculum draws on an in-depth literature review and dozens of interviews with researchers and practitioners. It also draws on six years of organizational learning by the Scholars Strategy Network, a nationwide interdisciplinary community of over 1,000 researchers dedicated to using research to improve public policy and strengthen democracy.

Participants learn to:

• Become a trusted resource to policymakers and civic leaders
• Identify opportunities when your research can have the greatest impact on policy
• Choose policy-relevant research questions
• Combine rigor and impact
• Be an effective public scholar in a politicized era