Ever wondered how and why policy briefs made a difference?
There are many guides that will tell you how to write an effective policy brief, but is it the wording and design that make a difference? Well, partly.
This blog is not about writing policy briefs as such, because if you want to make an impact, you will need more than that. Writing the brief is just a small part of the work. A policy brief is only worth what you do with it. This blog will help guide you through the process of both writing and using a policy brief to make a real impact.
The plan looks like this:
- Design and planning
- Writing and feedback loops
- Distribution
- Engagement and impact
1. Design and planning
You should always start your policy impact journey by putting yourself in your policy colleagues’ shoes. To do this, ask yourself:
- Who am I? This is important because it determines the policy brief’s target audience. Are you targeting people within specific Government agencies who are likely to have a relatively focused interest in the topic, with a relatively high degree of technical competence? In this case, you will need to include some of the technical details so that these specialists can make up their own minds about the credibility of your work. Or are you briefing policy analysts within Government departments who advise Ministers? In this case, your policy brief should be much shorter, with far less technical detail and much simpler language.
- When am I likely to read a policy brief? This might determine when and how to distribute the brief (e.g., electronically, in paper form), and in what format (e.g., as an email with the brief attached, or as a link to a file). It might also determine when to schedule the email (e.g., an evening, even a weekend), or whether it should be read over breakfast or on a train/flight.
- How much time do I have to brief myself on research issues? This is crucial to decide on the length of the ‘brief’. If you are aiming for a high-ranking politician, the brief should be as short as possible, perhaps just one page. Others might spend up to 30-60 mins to get a more detailed picture of the science side of things. One approach is to do a ‘breakfast test’: a policy brief should be read and understood in the time it takes to drink a coffee over breakfast.
- What do I want to know? What are the most pressing, wider policy issues? Can you link to important and current policy questions and issues? If your work is only one small contribution to a wider issue, can you collaborate with other researchers working in the same area to create a policy brief that includes your research, but that is likely to be perceived as having greater political significance? What heading (perhaps expanded with a strapline/sub-title or short teaser paragraph) is relevant enough to their interests to grab their attention?
- Is this compatible with my overarching goals and ideology as a policymaker? Many policy actors are seeking research that furthers their own agenda and legitimises their views and ideologies. They are unlikely to change these fundamental values and beliefs on the basis of one policy brief, so make sure you phrase your recommendations carefully, so that they do not instantly provoke a negative reaction based on a presumption of ideological incompatibility. This doesn’t mean you need to make political recommendations or change your findings to fit the views of politicians – far from it. It is surprising, however, how far you can adapt the way in which you frame and communicate your findings to make them accessible to different policy actors without altering the research in any way.
- Why has the researcher contacted me? Do the people you have targeted have the power to actually implement your recommendations? You don’t always need to target your policy brief to senior decision-makers, if you can identify a specific person or team responsible for amending regulations, introducing guidelines or making other specific changes that could achieve your goal without having to engage any further than that person or team. The person reading your brief should instantly know why they are relevant, because you will have hopefully targeted the specific mechanisms they are responsible for. Rather than just seeing this as limiting your audience by specifying your brief narrowly in this way, you should see this as legitimate targeting. After all, you may just have to convince one person, if they are the person with the ability to act on your research
- Who is this researcher anyway? What indicators can quickly reassure a policy-maker with limited time that you are knowledgeable and credible enough to deliver the message? If you do not have a high profile yourself, what indicators of esteem might make them trust you by proxy, such as your institutional affiliation, the logo of your research funder or more senior academic mentors and supervisors who help you write the brief? Perhaps you should first build a trusting relationship with them to gain credibility (see the last section on engagement and impact below).
2. Writing and feedback loops
After asking these questions from the perspective of your policy colleagues, start thinking about what you want to achieve, and ask yourself:
- What would you like to get across yourself?
- What’s your own aim for the policy brief?
- Does that match the needs of policy colleagues?
If your answer to the last question is “no”, you should stop right there, as you are unlikely to achieve your own goals if they are not in any way aligned with the needs of those you seek to help.
If, however, you have been able to align your aims with the needs of policy colleagues, it is now time to write the brief. With the help of the questions above, you will have already decided on length, style and language. You should be using plain language, and the only jargon that’s allowed is policy jargon that helps policy colleagues connect your work to their agendas. Now you need to tell a convincing story about why change is needed.
How to set up the brief itself?
On the front page, you’ll need:
- Title – keep it short and powerful – would you personally pick up a policy brief with such a title? You can consider adding a subtitle or strapline, if it further explains your main message (again, keep it short)
- Teaser – start with a summary of the brief’s content and recommendations in 2-3 sentences (max 5 lines)
- Photograph or infographic – something attractive and positive that describes the research topic well. Make your picture bigger and have less text if possible!
On the next pages, consider:
- Overview – give a brief overview and state the problem or objective. Embed your research in an important, current issue and explain how the policy brief contributes to those issues and provides useful answers.
- Introduction – summarise the issue, explain the context (including the political) to explain why the topic is so important and how your research can help to solve/improve the situation. Pinpoint gaps in current policy, link to crisis points that may be windows of opportunity in which new policies may be sought. Outline a brief history or background, but only if it is relevant to the theme.
- Research findings – these are the answers from your research that help to solve the problem (other findings may be of interest to researchers and might look pretty on a graph, but if they don’t help address the policy issue, cut them out). If possible, present your findings in a clearer, more visual style so people can grasp the idea instantly. Include research evidence from the literature and other sources to support your own findings in plain language. Use subheadings to break up blocks of text (keep sections and paragraphs as short as possible). Any graphs or other figures should be simple and labelled with a short description
- Sidebars and boxes – highlight most important evidence in sidebars or boxes, so people can easily skim through the key points if they are in a hurry (remember these are for highlighting important things, not for unimportant things (to policy-makers at least) like definitions)
- White space and photographs or infographics – try to break up your text with plenty of white space and photographs to avoid intimidating readers and make your work more engaging. If you can, engage a professional designer to help with this. If there’s not enough room to fit everything in that you want, don’t make the font size smaller or cut white space and images – cut down your material (the next stage in the process, the feedback loop, is useful to help with this if you’re struggling to work out what you can cut)
Last page:
- Policy recommendations – full and clear recommendations aimed at specific policy sector(s) and specific live policy issues, in bullet points, stating why these options are recommended
- More information – including author(s) contact details, their current position(s), associated institute and funder (remember the credibility issue), websites, etc. If not using citations (see below), include further reading, including peer-reviewed sources from you and your team (again, credibility)
- Acknowledgements
- Citations – cite in footnotes, if needed
Revise, improve your brief - feedback loops
It is worth asking the more creative people on your team to help with visual design, photo selection, and wording. Also, give the brief to a non-academic friend. If he/she cannot understand your message, you should consider rewriting it. If you aim for EU policy-makers (most of whom are non-native English speakers), try to give your draft to non-native English-speaking friends for feedback. Alternatively, as generative AI to evaluate your text to identify jargon or try Up Goer Six, a text editor that colour codes all words according to how common they are. Furthermore, if you want to get your message across, avoid being overly directive, e.g., telling policymakers they ‘must’ and “have to” change policy. This can be tough, but psychologically, this all makes a lot of sense. Or are you happy being told what to do?
4. Engagement and impact
Follow up on your email to your target audience via phone if this is listed publicly. Ask if any further information is needed. Propose a lunchtime meeting or seminar to discuss your research further. Make sure the brief remains in the memory of your target group beyond the mere picking up and reading of the brief. You can also invite them to related conferences and workshops, and take a copy of the brief with you at any of these events. Remember that a mere one-way information exchange will not get anyone to act on your recommendations.
If you are not likely to meet them in person anytime soon, you might start following them on social media or subscribing to LinkedIn groups or email lists to learn what they are up to and where your work fits in and contributes to their agenda. Take the time to find out what they think, what sort of language they use, what is on their agenda and see what they believe can help them with their daily tasks. And once you have the chance to meet them in person, your social media connection will make it easier to build trust. As Onora O’Neill said it so beautifully in her TED talk about how to trust intelligently: “If you make yourself vulnerable to the other party, then that is very good evidence that you are trustworthy …” Yes, this is about credibility, but you also need to be down-to-earth and create a connection. With luck, you will find forming trusting relationships so fruitful that you decide to co-produce the policy briefs in collaboration with the people who will use them. This is a particularly effective way to develop the policy brief according to their needs and will ensure that it is used and results in impact.
To achieve impact, the best-case scenario is that you already have a long-lasting, trusting relationship with relevant policymakers. But if you don’t have these relationships yet, you can start by joining their social media networks or attending events they attend. If you find it difficult to start small talk on your own, ask colleagues to introduce you. If they are already trusted, they may be able to introduce you via email or LinkedIn.
Conclusion
A policy brief does not create impact because it exists. It creates impact when it is built around the needs, incentives, and constraints of the people expected to use it, and then placed in the right conversations at the right moment. Good design and clear writing matter, but they are only part of the task. The harder and more important work is choosing the right audience, framing the issue in ways that are useful to them, distributing the brief with purpose and following through with sustained engagement.
That is why effective policy briefs are rarely stand-alone documents. They are part of a broader process of relationship-building, timing, credibility and careful judgement. In practice, the most successful briefs tend to be those that help busy people make sense of a live issue, see a practical route forward and trust the person bringing the evidence to them.
So, if you want your policy brief to have a real impact, do not stop at producing a polished document. Treat it as one tool within a wider effort to inform decisions, support change and build lasting connections between research and policy. That is where the real work begins, and where the real impact usually lies.
