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Epi Wit & Wisdom Articles
Transcending the Rational Model:
How to Turn Research Data Into Policy
Scientists are trained to
believe that rational decision-making is the best model to follow, but
the rational model doesn’t always apply in the legislative community,
said Bill Sederburg, PhD, former chair of the health policy committee
in the Michigan state legislature, speaking at the 7th National
Conference on Chronic Disease Prevention and Control in Salt Lake City
recently.
The rational model is
ineffective for politicians because they operate in a different
environment than does the scientist, said Sederburg, who is currently
the director of Public Opinion Research for Public Sector Consultants.
Instead, politicians depend on an “intuitive” model for
decision-making: they scan the political horizon for problems or
problems are presented to them; they evaluate their options based on
previous experience, and then they assess the political reaction to
the decisions that could be made.
Sederburg said scientists should
be aware of the impediments to rational decision-making. For example:
• When there is no consensus on
the problem, there can be no consensus on the solutions
• The outcome of the political
process is compromise, not maximization
• Legislators are generalists,
not experts. “It isn’t what’s true, it’s what the public thinks is
true,” says Sederburg.
• Evaluation standards are
different; politicians are evaluated strictly on image.
• Politicians look to health
issues for political payoffs rather than rational solutions.
But these differences can be
transcended, according to Sederburg, who offered the following
suggestions for bridging the gap between the rational or medical model
and the intuitive or political model:
• Make data understandable.
Present information with as much visual material as possible, such as
with slides and charts.
• Use outside expertise to
validate your opinion. While trying to get seat belt legislation
passed in Michigan, for example, Sederburg depended on data from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which showed every
dollar spent on promoting the use of seat belts would save $105 in
health care costs. “The CDC is the nation’s number one validating
institution when it comes to health issues,” he said. “People hear
(the CDC’s data) and they say, ‘it must be true’.”
• Drop the medical jargon. Words
such as “correlations,” “regression analysis” and “paradigms” only
confuse your issue. “A paradigm is what you need to buy a cup of
coffee,” the chairman of his appropriations committee once told him,
said Sederburg.
• Use the press to influence
public opinion. “If you can affect public opinion, you can affect what
goes on within the institution of the legislature,” Sederburg said.
One last piece of advice was to
try to understand that change is incremental.
• You don’t maximize change, you
make small steps along the way, he said.
Published January 1993 v
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