Incentives, Opportunities, and Success? AAAS Members' Experiences Communicating with Policymakers

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest among scientists in engaging with policymakers. To accommodate and encourage this interest, various organizations have stepped in to offer training and assist scientists in spanning the academic-policymaker divide. While these trends are encouraging, there is, unfortunately, a dearth of systematic data describing scientists' efforts and experiences communicating with policymakers.

In this talk, we discuss data from an original survey conducted with AAAS members (N = approx. 700) regarding their communications with U.S. policymakers. We asked them about their experiences (or lack thereof) communicating with policymakers, including: their perceptions of what practices "worked" and what didn't; their knowledge of, and access to, training opportunities; and, finally, what incentives and disincentives to communicate with policymakers they perceived in their professional milieus.

Synthesizing these data with those from a parallel study of policymakers, we offer recommendations to individual scientists and scientific organizations (broadly understood) regarding how to increase the occurrence and productivity of scientific communication with policymakers.