Dr. Jeff Sheldon discusses various topics from a LSE public policy analysis course: effective policy briefs

Introduction

After a brief hiatus from this series during which I wrote two pieces about developing evaluation capacity on-line, I’ve returned with my 10th offering. To catch you up, between 31 January and 16 April 2024 I took a ten week, 80+ hour graded course from the London School of Economics and Political science (LSE) in public policy analysis. In this series, presented in the order of the ten LSE course modules, I offer up selections of my writings from across the course that include topics in economics, institutions, policy, statistics, policy evaluation, and politics, etc. Most are an answer to a prompt or question (provided if applicable), and vary between 250 and 800 words in length, short but hopefully insightful. You might not agree or agree only in part with my answers or assessments so feel free to engage me in dialogue, it will be most welcome. Likewise, if you’d like context, don’t hesitate to ask. Enjoy!

Assessing the effectiveness of a policy brief

In this unit we learnt about writing an effective policy brief and in this discussion I apply this knowledge to real-world policy briefs focused on food security. By way of background provided by LSE, rapid population growth, climate change, and urbanization have led to concerns about existing food-production techniques and whether they will be able to meet future demand for food. At the same time, The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals list “zero hunger ” as one of the major priorities for international cooperation. Food security has therefore become a major policy issue in addressing poverty and in supporting growing urban populations. This short introduction to food security ?by the World Economic Forum was the starting point for my own research necessary to complete the following two steps:

• Step 1: Do some research, and identify an example of a policy brief related to food security. The brief may be focused on any element of food security that you find interesting, including, but not limited to, agricultural practices, global trade, social or political trends, and food waste. Please note that the link to the policy brief I analyzed is included in answer 1 and is a necessary read to contextualize my response, otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

• Step 2: Use your chosen policy brief example to answer the following questions:

Question 1: Do you think your chosen policy brief is effective in communicating a key policy recommendation? Focus particularly on the structure of the argument, the writing style, and the strength of the recommendations.

Answer 1: As a lapsed Catholic but Papal proponent I chose a 2022 policy brief from Catholic Relief Services entitled The Challenge of Compounding Crises on Hunger (https://www.crs.org/get-involved/advocate-poor/public-policy/policy-brief-compounding-crises-hunger ) which offered recommendations in two groupings: near term (i.e., rapid response) and long term (i.e., addressing root causes and sustainability). To me, this was a thoughtful approach given that food security is a concern both proximately and distally. My issue with both is that they were based “on our experiences responding to acute food insecurity needs” and not on any concrete evidence. Second, it was unclear to me for which stakeholders the policy brief was meant. While it indicated that the recommendations are to all relevant stakeholders they primarily address them to “the administration” (vague) while mentioning, once each, the President, Secretary of Defense, and other multinational organizations. As Vanessa Rubio-Marquez noted in her videos, policy communication generally and policy briefs specifically need to be written for different stakeholders to meet their specific informational needs (I paraphrase). The writing style was clear, concise, to the point and didn’t leave much room for ambiguity, save for the target audience. In addition, each recommendation was written with a strong supporting argument, not evidence based and without benefit of a full SWOT analysis, but to me the rationale, on its face, was sound and made sense. I also thought that when appropriate the argument included what would likely happen if that recommendation wasn’t met. For example, the second near term sub-recommendation was to “include buffers for programming costs given the potential volatility in food and energy prices” indicating that if buffers for programming costs are not included food programs would likely not be sufficient to meet demand under constraining conditions.????

Question 2: Has the author used design elements, such as font, colour, and headings successfully? Are there any changes you would make to increase the design’s accessibility and appeal?

Answer 2: Yes, somewhat. The near and longer term recommendation headings were italicized such that it focused the eye and attention on the big picture regarding what’s to be done to meet food security needs. Key points within each sub-recommendation were written in a bold font for emphasis with contrasting regular font used for the rationalizing argument. This was clever and effective.? However, I thought that bold font was over-used; the more it’s used the less effective it is because every point is emphasized making it difficult to distinguish between what’s important to attend to and what is not, plus it is very distracting. For the most part, there really were no other design elements, no font colour other than black, and a lot of text to follow punctuated sporadically by, as noted, bold font text. I also found it a bit odd that they embedded a number of links in the recommendations when it would have been better to extract the important information for inclusion in the recommendation itself rather than pulling attention away from the web site and redirecting it elsewhere; people have short attention spans so why give them the opportunity to go away and not come back. If it’s that important, why not just surface it and make it part of the recommendation either as a point of emphasis or to bolster the argument? For the sake of improvement I suggest putting more space between the main recommendation and sub-recommendation, and between each sub-recommendation given so much text. In that regard, less text and more bullet points would have worked really well. Last, I also suggest using less bold text for emphasis, perhaps using a different color or underlining would have the desired effect.?????????

Question 3: If the author has used visualisations, are there any suggestions you would make to improve these visualisations? If the author has not used visualisations, are there any that you think would be an effective way to convey the data in the brief?

Answer 3: As noted, the brief was short yet way too word-centric. I think that had graphs or charts been included with actual supporting evidence for the recommendations they would have gone a very long way to emphasize the information they were trying to convey. As we know, visualisations convey information in an efficient and easily digestible format so having to read through a lot of verbiage distracted from and obfuscated the key points being made. Where the visualisations would have been most useful was in the two paragraphs leading up to the recommendations which offered an overview of the food security context emphasising the war in Ukraine as a leading cause of food insecurity in developing African countries specifically. For example, a line graph showing soaring food prices and lower purchasing power along with commensurate increases in household food insecurity would have worked really well. A choropleth showing some of the world’s poorest countries where people tend to be more dependent on food imports, and households must devote up to half of their total expenditures on food would have likewise been appropriate. Last, a bar chart showing energy, transportation, and food costs compared to household purchasing power and food security outcomes would have been appreciated.????

Thanks for reading. Please feel to ask questions or offer comments below. Next up: agenda setting in public policy.