This good-practice guidance is intended to improve the inclusion of qualitative social science insights within decision-making.
The guidance is developed for non-statutory expert consultation processes and presented as a series of prompts, for those conducting an expert consultation, to consider at each stage (e.g., planning, meetings, outputs). The guidance is the output from academic research (Hope & Vaughan, available as a pre-print).
Why was the guidance developed?
Insights from the social sciences and humanities are underrepresented in some areas of national UK government decision-making (e.g., see Markusson et al., 2020). One such area is carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Qualitative evidence and theoretical insights can be challenging to synthesise with quantitative decision tools and policy. This can lead to real-world complexities being absent from feasibility assessments and decision-making in areas such as carbon dioxide removal, with consequent risks to the implementation of specific projects, and ultimately the delivery of net zero.
Our research focuses on identifying specific points within informal evidence gathering procedures where insights from the social sciences and humanities (especially the more social, qualitative and theoretical) may be vulnerable to being excluded or marginalised.
We argue that the risks are greater for more informal or ad hoc consultations, than for formal statutory consultations. This is because informal consultations have more fluid procedures leaving greater scope for the quality of evidence gathering processes to be impacted by a variety of human and institutional factors (Stirling, 2008).
Our research compliments the work undertaken by others looking to increase the contribution of the social sciences and humanities in addressing issues such as climate change. For example, the ACCESS network focuses on equipping environmental social scientists to engage with policymakers. In this work, however, we look at things from the ‘other side’ – that is the processes by which experts are selected to give evidence, what kinds of evidence gets heard, and what evidence is likely to make it into policy outputs.
Read the research below or download the paper (PDF)
Good practice guidance for expert consultation processes WP 202501
