Tampering with the Evidence: A Critical Appraisal of Evidence-based Policy Making – paper by Greg Marston and Rob Watts

This paper critically appraises the emergence of evidence-based policy discourse in Australia, defining and exploring the origins of evidence based policy in the field of social policy and questioning evidence, arguments and assumptions in a case study on juvenile crime.

Recent enthusiasm for evidence-based policy-making in Australia has many sources. So-called ‘managerialist’ reforms to public administration have been significant, as has the diffusion of particular bio-medical models of research.

However, the meaning and practice of ‘evidence-based policy’ are contested. This paper, was published in The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs Vol. 3, No.3, March 2003.

It offers an account of the design of arguments to identify and critically assess the value of evidence-based claims and their relationship to evidence-based policy.

The critique indicates the very wide range of what can — properly — count as evidence, based on a premise about the irreducible richness and complexity of social reality.

The authors highlight the importance of being thoughtful about the assumptions that shape policy research questions and ‘warrant’ the conceptual connections that constitute knowledge claims.

They illustrate their arguments with a policy research case study on juvenile crime.

For further information

Contact	:	Greg Marston
Email	:	greg.marston@rmit.edu.au

WWW

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http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard