How To Write A Policy Recommendation Template

What this handout is about

This handout will offer tips for writing effective policy briefs. Be sure to check with your instructor about his/her specific expectations for your assignment.

What are policy briefs?

Imagine that you're an elected official serving on a committee that sets the standards cars must meet to pass a state inspection. Y'all know that this is a complex effect, and you'd like to learn more than about existing policies, the furnishings of emissions on the surroundings and on public health, the economic consequences of unlike possible approaches, and more–you want to brand an informed determination. Just you lot don't have fourth dimension to research all of these bug! Yous need a policy brief.

A policy cursory presents a concise summary of information that can assist readers understand, and likely make decisions nearly, government policies. Policy briefs may give objective summaries of relevant research, advise possible policy options, or go fifty-fifty farther and contend for particular courses of action.

How do policy briefs differ from other kinds of writing assignments?

Y'all may encounter policy brief assignments in many different academic disciplines, from public health and environmental science to teaching and social piece of work. If yous're reading this handout because yous're having your start encounter with such an assignment, don't worry–many of your existing skills and strategies, similar using evidence, being concise, and organizing your information finer, will assistance yous succeed at this form of writing. Nevertheless, policy briefs are distinctive in several means.

Audience

In some of your college writing, you've addressed your peers, your professors, or other members of your bookish field. Policy briefs are unremarkably created for a more than general reader or policy maker who has a pale in the issue that you're discussing.

Tone and terminology

Many academic disciplines discourage using unnecessary jargon, but clear language is particularly important in policy briefs. If you find yourself using jargon, effort to supplant it with more direct language that a non-specialist reader would be more probable to empathize. When specialized terminology is necessary, explicate it quickly and conspicuously to ensure that your reader doesn't get confused.

Purpose

Policy briefs are distinctive in their focus on communicating the practical implications of research to a specific audience. Suppose that y'all and your roommate both write enquiry-based papers nigh global warming. Your roommate is writing a research paper for an ecology scientific discipline class, and yous are writing a policy brief for a course on public policy. You might both use the exact same sources in writing your papers. So, how might those papers differ?

Your roommate'south research newspaper is likely to present the findings of previous studies and synthesize them in guild to present an argument about what we know. It might also hash out the methods and processes used in the research.

Your policy brief might synthesize the aforementioned scientific findings, but it volition deploy them for a very specific purpose: to help readers decide what they should exercise. Information technology will relate the findings to current policy debates, with an accent on applying the enquiry outcomes rather than assessing the enquiry procedures. A inquiry newspaper might also suggest applied actions, but a policy brief is probable to emphasize them more strongly and develop them more fully.

Format

To support these changes in audience, tone, and purpose, policy briefs have a distinctive format. You should consult your assignment prompt and/or your professor for instructions almost the specific requirements of your assignment, simply virtually policy briefs have several features in common. They tend to use lots of headings and have relatively short sections. This construction differs from many curt papers in the humanities that may have a title but no further headings, and from reports in the sciences that may follow the "IMRAD" structure of introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Your brief might include graphs, charts, or other visual aids that make it easier to digest the most important information within sections.Policy briefs ofttimes include some of these sections:

Championship: A good title quickly communicates the contents of the cursory in a memorable way.
Executive Summary: This section is often 1 to two paragraphs long; information technology includes an overview of the problem and the proposed policy action.
Context or Scope of Problem: This section communicates the importance of the problem and aims to convince the reader of the necessity of policy action.
Policy Alternatives: This section discusses the current policy arroyo and explains proposed options. It should be fair and authentic while disarming the reader why the policy action proposed in the cursory is the nigh desirable.
Policy Recommendations: This section contains the most detailed explanation of the concrete steps to be taken to address the policy issue.
Appendices: If some readers might need further support in club to take your argument but doing so in the brief itself might derail the conversation for other readers, you might include the extra information in an appendix.
Consulted or Recommended Sources: These should be reliable sources that you take used throughout your brief to guide your policy discussion and recommendations.

Depending on your specific topic and assignment, you might combine sections or suspension them downwardly into several more specific ones.

How exercise I identify a problem for my policy cursory?

An constructive policy brief must propose a solution to a well-divers problem that can exist addressed at the level of policy. This may sound easy, but it can take a lot of piece of work to recall of a problem in a way that is open to policy activity.

For instance, "bad spending habits in young adults" might be a problem that yous feel strongly about, but you can't simply implement a policy to "make better financial decisions." In order to make it the subject of a policy brief, you'll demand to look for research on the topic and narrow it down. Is the trouble a lack of financial instruction, predatory lending practices, quack advert, or something else? Narrowing to one of these (and perhaps further) would allow you to write a brief that tin can propose concrete policy action.

For another example, permit's say that you wanted to accost children'due south health. This is a large consequence, and too broad to serve every bit the focus of a policy cursory, merely it could serve as a starting betoken for research. As yous begin to research studies on children's wellness, you might decide to zoom in on the more specific issue of babyhood obesity. Yous'll need to consult the research further to decide what factors contribute to it in gild to advise policy changes. Is it lack of exercise, nutritional deficiencies, a combination of these, or something else? Choosing one or another of these issues, your brief would zoom in even further to specific proposals that might include exercise initiatives, nutritional guidelines, or schoolhouse lunch programs.

The key is that you define the problem and its contributing factors as specifically as possible so that some sort of physical policy action (at the local, country, or national level) is feasible.

Framing the issue

Once you've identified the problem for yourself, you demand to decide how you will nowadays it to your reader. Your ain procedure of identifying the problem likely had some stops, starts, and dead-ends, just your goal in framing the issue for your reader is to provide the about straight path to understanding the problem and the proposed policy change. It can be helpful to think of some of the most pressing questions your audience will accept and attempt to preemptively answer those questions. Hither are some questions yous might want to consider:

What is the problem?

Understanding what the problem is, in the clearest terms possible, volition requite your reader a reference point. Later, when you're discussing circuitous data, your reader tin can refer back to the initial problem. This volition help to 'anchor' them throughout the grade of your statement. Every piece of information in the brief should be clearly and easily connected to the problem.

What is the scope of the trouble?

Knowing the extent of the problem helps to frame the policy issue for your reader. Is the problem statewide, national, or international? How many people does this outcome affect? Daily? Annually? This is a not bad place for any statistical information yous may accept gathered through your research.

Who are the stakeholders?

Who does this issue bear on? Adult women? College-educated men? Children from bilingual homes? The primary group existence affected is important, and knowing who this group is allows the reader to assign a face to the policy issue.

Policy issues tin can include a complex network of stakeholders. Double check whether you take inadvertently excluded whatsoever of them from your analysis. For example, a policy about children'due south nutrition obviously involves the children, simply it might also include food producers, distributors, parents, and nutritionists (and other experts). Some stakeholders might be reluctant to take your policy change or even acknowledge the existence of the problem, which is why your brief must be disarming in its utilize of evidence and clear in its communication.

Effective policy-writing

This handout has emphasized that good policy briefs are articulate, concise, and focused on applying credible inquiry to policy bug. Permit's have a await at two versions of the introduction to a policy cursory to come across how someone might write and revise to reach these qualities:

A "not-then-proficient" policy brief

Adolescents' Dermatologic Health in Outlandia: A Call to Action

The Report on Adolescents' Dermatologic Health in Outlandia (2010), issued by Secretarial assistant of Wellness Dr. Polly Galver, served as a platform to increase public sensation on the importance of dermatologic health for adolescents. Among the major themes of the study are that dermatologic wellness is essential to general health and well-beingness and that profound and consequential dermatologic wellness disparities exist in the state of Outlandia. Dr. Galver stated that what amounts to a silent epidemic of acne is affecting some population groups–restricting activities as schools, piece of work, and home–and ofttimes significantly diminishing the quality of life. Dr. Galver issued the Study on Adolescents' Dermatologic Health as a wake-up call to policymakers and health professionals on issues regarding the state'southward dermatologic health. ("Not so good policy brief," Reproduced with permission of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.)

This paragraph introduces a relevant and credible source, only it fails to use that source to explain a problem and propose policy action. The reader is likely to be dislocated because the word "acne" does not appear until the middle of the paragraph, and the brief never states what action should be taken to address it. In add-on to this lack of focus, the paragraph likewise includes unnecessary phrases like "amid the major themes" that could exist removed to make it more concise.

A better policy brief

Seeing Spots: Addressing the Silent Epidemic of Acne in Outlandia's Youth

Acne is the most common chronic illness amidst adolescents in Outlandia (Outlandia Section of Health, 2010). Long considered a benign rite of passage, acne really has far-reaching effects on the health and well existence of adolescents, significantly affecting success in school, social relationships, and general quality of life. However large portions of the land's population are unable to access treatment for acne. The Secretary of Wellness'southward Written report on Adolescents' Dermatologic Health in Outlandia (2010) is a call to action for policymakers and health professionals to improve the health and wellbeing of Outlandia'south youth by increasing access to dermatologic care ("A Meliorate Policy Cursory", Reproduced with permission of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Physician.)

This paragraph is far more focused and concise than the get-go version. The opening sentence is straightforward; instead of focusing on the source, it makes a articulate and memorable point that is supported by the source. Additionally, though the first version was titled "a call to action," information technology did not actually say what that action might be. In this version, it is clear that the call is for increased access to dermatologic care.

Keep in heed that clarity, conciseness, and consequent focus are rarely easy to achieve in a start draft. Careful editing and revision are key parts of writing policy briefs.

Works consulted

Nosotros consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resource on the handout'southward topic, and we encourage yous to practise your own inquiry to find additional publications. Delight practise non use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, equally it may not match the citation style you lot are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Smith, Catherine F. 2016. Writing Public Policy, fourth ed. New York: Oxford Academy Printing.

Immature, Eoin, and Lisa Quinn. northward.d. "The Policy Brief." University of Delaware. Accessed June 24, 2019. https://cpb-u.s.-e1.wpmucdn.com/blog.lrei.org/dist/c/104/files/2009/11/PolicyBrief-described.pdf.

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