Are the Important Policy Questions That Research Could Inform? What Are the Research Questions for Which Policymakers Want Answers? What Are the Best Ways to Encourage That the Research Supported Be Policy-Relevant and Effectively Disseminated to
Policymakers?
Our main suggestion for this question is that PopPov needs to carefully consider whether future research aims to be directly and immediately policy-relevant or whether priority is given to continue building up the field (or some combination). For the first approach, we would suggest an expert meeting with policymakers and researchers to develop a list of researchable questions that policymakers want to see answered and that could form the basis for calls for proposals. If field-building continues to have the highest priority, continued support for the doctoral fellowship program and for researcher-initiated proposals is likely the (continued) best way forward, and we recommend the addition of support for postdoctoral fellows. As mentioned earlier, a mixed approach, with two separate calls for proposals (one research-oriented, the other policy-oriented), is also a possibility to consider. PopPov should decide what its compara- tive advantage is, given that there are other sources of funding for some of the types of research and training that PopPov has supported.
Much of the research that has been conducted for PopPov seems only weakly related to the questions that initially motivated the formation of PopPov (i.e., to investigate the eco- nomic impacts of demographic factors). The initial call for proposals focused on economic research, but the final (joint) call emphasized interdisciplinary research. We recommend that the foundation think about the types of policy-relevant research questions that can be its com- parative advantage and then design training and capacity-building activities that complement those. There are other sources of funding (e.g., NIH and NSF) for sophisticated, cutting-edge research; we do not see this per se as the Hewlett Foundation’s comparative advantage.
In terms of research on the specific topics PopPov has sought to address, we feel that the DD has taken on a life of its own, and the parts of the research on this supported by PopPov deserve some credit for the concept’s growing acceptance. However, the concept is now widely embraced, and the World Bank is conducting a major study of the prospects for a DD in SSA. We see no need to continue PopPov support for research on this issue. And although the research on the two health-related questions (RQ.3 and RQ.4) and those viewed as out of scope here has yielded a number of publications in high-profile journals and research with implica- tions for policy, it has led to a lot of research by non-economists (and hence has not necessar- ily contributed to the goal of building the field of economic demography), and there are other sources of funding for such research.
As for possible future topics, one African informant expressed the opinion that we know what the problems are and know what kinds of things are needed to address them but that what is needed now is experimental research on intervention design and cost-effective interven- tions. Other research needs mentioned by informants who are policymakers or have worked closely with policymakers included research on whether FP is a public good and on equity
issues. Regarding contraceptive use, a senior economist said that he thought that the main issue was not access but instead was discontinuation (due to side effects) and that the latter deserves more attention. These are questions to which policymakers want answers and that research could inform.
Sara Seims and Tamara Fox (who were with the Hewlett Foundation when PopPov began and during the early years of the program) said that reaching policymakers was not really Pop- Pov’s goal; the goal was to build the evidence base and the research community. However, now that progress has been made toward these goals, more attention should be given to disseminat- ing the policy-relevant findings of the research. Although it is possible to do research that is both rigorous and policy-relevant, the best way to communicate this research to other research- ers differs from the best way to communicate it to policymakers. As noted earlier, some key informants felt that PopPov’s biggest weakness has been in communication with policymakers. They commented that there needs to be more analysis of stakeholder information needs. One key informant, a senior-economist grantee, thought that CGD has been more successful than PopPov in engaging policymakers; it brings in policymakers to talk about their interests. If PopPov wants to be more policy-relevant, it should probably do something like this to frame questions for future research it commissions. The stakeholders meetings that were instituted as part of the solicitation for research proposals in 2012 are an important step in making the research more policy-relevant. It is also encouraging that the review panel for proposals in 2012 included people who are knowledgeable about policy and policy research; that undoubtedly helped to give more emphasis to policy relevance and policy dissemination in the selection pro- cess. We recommend that this be continued.
Although PopPov has funded a number of well-done research projects and other activi- ties, it is not clear that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Careful syntheses of what has been learned from technically sound existing research (both that funded by PopPov and that not done for PopPov), with particular attention to findings with policy implications and written in a way to be accessible to policymakers, would be a useful contribution that PopPov could support. (The SOPP report [Lee and Belohlav, 2013] is a step in this direction.) If appro- priately created and authored, such pieces would have the potential to reach audiences that are not swayed by materials from advocacy groups that are associated with a particular point of view. (One possible credible author might be a National Academy of Sciences panel.) Related to this, PopPov might benefit from bringing in someone who specializes in strategic communi- cation to identify audiences and outreach opportunities and to develop written materials and briefings appropriate for these. Rachel Nugent, the former program director for PopPov at PRB and then at CGD, commented that PRB is good at reaching some audiences but not neces- sarily all of the audiences that could benefit from information about PopPov. However, these additional activities would not be able to address a potentially more fundamental problem with the current approach to collecting PopPov evidence: At the moment, the research questions are chosen largely by the researchers, with relatively broad guidance from PopPov. This has led to a situation in which projects are selected largely based on academic criteria (e.g., data availability, statistical identification of clear effects rather than necessarily important effects) rather than on policy interest. To address this situation, the research questions to be addressed would have to be developed from the outset with policymakers, which might reduce their attractiveness to researchers. Although this trade-off is inevitable, it could likely be addressed with creative approaches, such as mixing open calls with calls that are based on very specific guidelines or
by requiring answering certain questions in exchange for academic freedom to do research on the researcher’s preferred topic in the rest of the grant.
V.A.2. What Improvements in Methodology or Data Collection and Use Are Needed to