How do policymakers update?
Event details
ACDE Seminar
Date & time
Venue
Speaker
Contacts
Evidence-based policy-making requires not only evidence, but also for policymakers to update appropriately based on that evidence. We examine how policymakers, researchers, and others update in response to results from multiple studies, using a unique opportunity to run an experiment on policymakers. We find evidence of ‘variance neglect’, a bias similar to extension neglect in which confidence intervals are ignored. We also find evidence of increased updating on positive results. This means that policymakers might be biased towards those interventions with a greater dispersion of results. We test ways to mitigate the observed biases.
Updated: 26 April 2024/Responsible Officer: Crawford Engagement/Page Contact: CAP Web Team