Disseminating evidence to policymakers: Accounting for audience heterogeneity

Dissemination strategies defined here as the targeted distribution of research evidence to policymakers can improve evidence-informed policymaking when activities are informed by theory, data, and when the right messenger delivers the right message to the right policymaker at the right time. This chapter presents evidence from surveys of state legislators, city mayors, and agency administrators in the United States to illustrate heterogeneity among policymakers in terms of the sources they turn to for evidence, the sources they perceive as reliable, and the attributes of evidence they perceive as most important. The chapter also reviews three broad types of dissemination strategies that can help account for audience heterogeneity and enhance the effectiveness of dissemination efforts: audience segmentation analysis, message tailoring, and framing.