Research, Evidence, and Decision Making: Charting PAR's Role in Evidence‐Based Management

• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12932
• Published date: 01 March 2018

Research, Evidence, and Decision Making: Charting PAR’s Role in Evidence-Based Management 181

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 2, pp. 181–182. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12932.

E vidence -based” and “science-based” are now

forbidden terms, at least if you are drafting

the budget request for the Centers for

Disease Control. In mid-December 2017, the press

widely reported that President Donald Trump issued

a directive to the U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services that its constituent agencies cease

using those terms (Cohen 2018 ). This was shocking

to those of us who believe in professional public

management and support practices, policies, and

management approaches that are evidence-informed

or evidence-based. Much like the other objective

management strategies of the past—program

evaluation, strategic planning, and performance

management—scholars believe that more

information and evidence about the effectiveness of

particular heuristics or strategies are imperative to

ensuring accountability through effectiveness and

efficiency.

Public policy and management have entered—

nay, are well into—the evidence age. While these

practices have been slower to take root in the United

States than in the United Kingdom, Australia, or

New Zealand, we have witnessed their increasing

importance in decision making at the federal,

state, and local levels. Indeed, informed research

and practitioner communities are critical to the

complexities of navigating the modern world of public

policy and administration (Head 2016 ). However,

these communities are not immune to the political

process. Brian Head ( 2008 ) readily acknowledged

that systematic evidence (or scientific evidence)

must be weighed alongside practical evidence and

political evidence. The effectiveness of evidence-based

decisions may also be proportional to the inherent

risk of harm to citizens posed by public programs

(Hall and Jennings 2008 ). Jennings and Hall ( 2012 )

also undertook a considerable effort to comprehend

the forces that were influencing state agency use of

evidence in decision making. These studies and others

have investigated the factors that shape evidence,

while acknowledging the potential to politicize

evidence use to garner favor with citizens and

stakeholders.

Even as President Trump issued the aforementioned

directive, legislation had passed the U.S. House of

Representatives and was progressing through the U.S.

Senate to enhance federal agencies’ evidence-based

posture. H.R. 4174, “Foundations for Evidence-

Based Policymaking Act of 2017” would further

support the use of evidence in policy decisions. It is

currently assigned to the Committee on Homeland

Security and Government Affairs in the Senate.

Is the president’s directive at odds with legislative

and administrative preferences? Are we witnessing

an attempt to secure the separation of powers by

bolstering executive privilege?

What is perhaps most odd about the president’s

war on words is that the restriction is directed to an

agency where the work is almost completely science-

based. Jennings and Hall ( 2012 ) conceptualized four

different types of agencies based on the influence of

politics and the availability of evidence; the Centers

for Disease Control, to which the directive applies,

would be classified as an evidence-based agency

under their rubric—one with high scientific capacity

and low political conflict. The level of inherent risk

dictates that higher levels of evidence should be

required (Hall and Jennings 2008 ).

It seems that we have entered a new era—perhaps one

that none of us had considered. Hall ( 2017 ) recently

noted that evidence use is highly popular, warning

of the potential negative effects of using “evidence-

based” symbolically rather than substantively. Who

would suggest that policies based on evidence are a

bad thing? While the symbolic positive politicization

of evidence was widely anticipated, negative

politicization had hardly been considered. In the

current political arena, feathers are easily ruffled,

and much pomp and grandstanding accompanies

statements by elected officials on both sides of the

political aisle. Many have said that President Trump

Jeremy L. Hall

University of Central Florida

R. Paul Battaglio

The University of Texas at Dallas

Research, Evidence, and Decision Making:

Charting PAR ’s Role in Evidence-Based Management

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Editorial