At least in terms of perception,
there seems to be disconnect between public policy and academic research.
Research is something sound, yet it has little application more often than not
in terms of policy prescriptions. What might work as good policy measure might
actually turn out to be bad research from a methodological point of view. There
are occasion when there is some interesting research findings have emerged, yet
when implemented in policy have turned out to be very bad choices. There is an
interesting discussion on the same on Freakonomics.
The talk highlights the gap between the research objectives and the policy
instruments and objectives.
Research, in academic parlance is
all about methodology. The journals would go at length to enquire on the methodological
approaches. Their interest in findings are an outcome of methodology adopted rather
than the outcomes themselves. The absence of rigor in research is a
disqualification. For instance, if a firm has experienced profits through
adoption of certain measure, it might be said that the cause effect can be
established. Yet in academics, it is not the outcome which is examined but the
methodology through which it was examined that would become critical to the acceptance
of the piece. Correlation might not be causality. Moreover, the academic language
would be obtuse and has little relevance from the policy point of view. The objective
of the academic researcher is to gain a tenure and hence the signals would be
towards the audience that would enable the academic researcher achieve their
objectives. They might love their findings to be adopted by the policy makers,
yet to the policy makers, it is the outcomes that are derived from the
application that matters rather than the methodology or the findings per se.
Similarly, in business, it is the profits that finally matter rather than
resort to means of research per se.
In this context, it might be
instructive to decode the disconnect between the different streams. For instance,
one might take business. Business seminars and symposia would focus on the
latest innovations in processes and services. The study would be robust and
company experiences would be presented. Yet there would be significant
differences between the presenters at the business conference and the ones at
the academic conference. To the businesspersons, what would finally matter is
the sustenance and prosperity of the company. The ends matter not necessarily
the means. In this context, their focus would be on the results. They would
identify the problem. They would indicate the solution they adopted for
redressing the problem. The solution being presented obviously would have
enhanced the revenues for the firm or helped them in cutting down the costs. Given
the firm objectives are intertwined with these two, their emphasis is on how
adopting this solution helped them. Yet in an academic conference, the focus
would be on the study mechanism. It would be on the literature survey, the gaps
identified and how usage of qualitative or quantitative models enabled them to
identify the cause-effect mechanism.
The gap between policy and research
emerges from the lack of understanding of policy objectives. To a policymaker
it is not about the cause effect in the lab that matters but how it received on
the ground. There is an interesting anecdote presented in the episode on
Freakonomics cited above. In the US, they created a Parent Academy wherein
parents were being given instructions on how to increase the cognitive skills
of their kids. In fact, the program became quite a success in the US. They sought
to replicate the same in the UK. Yet it was complete failure because the
parents did not sign up for it. It might have to do with the inability to understanding
the locational differences. While in the US, it might have been a success, it was
difficult to replicate in UK. It is possible that there were significant
cultural differences or locational differences. What might be appealing to a
parent in the US, might be very different to some in Britain. Hence, there was
little interest in the latter country. If one had tried to apply in India for instance,
it might have had very different and perhaps unintended effects.
The academic research even in real
world context would have its limitations. To the policy makers it is the cost
benefit analysis on the ground that matters. The project has to be scalable. It
cannot have a limited context. For an academician, as long as the cause effect
relationship is established, it is the vindication of his or her research. The academic
side who are involved in public policy research adopt randomized control trials
for examining the applicability of the intervention. The interventions are
measured through a placebo controlled trials. They do yield useful insights and
no doubt are done with the right intentions. Yet the population across the
world is not uniform. It is heterogeneous with conflicting behavior across
societies. The trials do indicate the applicability or lack of it in a
particular geographic, demographic or cultural context. Yet it fails in
answering the scalability of the same or the replicability in other contexts. The
cost benefit analysis is usually prohibitive to undertake these trials in every
possible context. Therefore, the research design and the execution itself
becomes a barrier in generalizing the findings thus the foundations for macro
level policy interventions. To researchers it becomes pertinent to dissect why
experiments which report good progress in the lab setting fail in the real
world. There seemingly exists a fissure between the laboratory and the ground
realities. The expectations that peak in the experimental settings seemingly hit
a trough of disillusionment in the real world.
There is a belief that the solution for
the same lies in the fact of rewarding the replicablity of the programs. If interventions
work in some context, there must be rewards for researchers who seek to
replicate the same in other geographic or cultural contexts. Furthermore, there
needs to be an increased robustness in research. There needs to be fidelity in
research. Fidelity according to those studying implementations is all about
integrity of the original research when scaled up. The context of bridging the
divide between academic research and the policy or business social requirements
is quite important. It needs to move away from a narrower context into a
broader set of objectives.
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