Blending the two communities: concurrent evidence use in state-level policy processes

Abstract

The evidence-based paradigm is one way to ensure public resources are put to effective use. But the uptake of scientific evidence has been limited. We analyse US state reports on autonomous vehicles and the opioid crisis response to explore how evidence is used in state-level processes. We find evidence of three knowledge types -scientific, practice, and political - visible in the reports and extend existing work on knowledge types in use to illustrate not just that they are used, but that they are used in conjunction with each other. These findings require a re-examination of the way ‘evidence’ is discussed in the literature.