Positioning Universities as Honest Knowledge Brokers: Best Practices for Communicating Research to Policymakers

Abstract

Universities are one of few institutions positioned to address a critical challenge facing the United States—the drift toward hyperpartisan and interest‐driven politics. To build better public policymaking, many policymakers have called for the rigorous research and dispassionate analysis that universities are well positioned to supply. To improve communication between knowledge producers and policy consumers, a framework is applied that specifies the types of conceptual and logistical knowledge that honest knowledge brokers need: know‐why (action is required), know‐about (barriers to research utilization in policymaking), know‐what (policy issue is timely and research is relevant), know‐who (to target), and know‐how (to effectively communicate research to policymakers). The experiences learned from the long‐standing Wisconsin Family Impact Seminars are used to describe the potential payoff when universities communicate high‐quality, nonpartisan research to policymakers. The article elaborates on best practices to leverage the deliberately dispassionate and disproportionately powerful contributions that universities can make to policymaking.