Behavioural science experts and policy makers can shape and influence the partners, stakeholders, and structures around them to produce a better enabling environment for behavioural public policy. The principles in this section call for behavioural science to be embedded into standard processes and guidelines, for behavioural science activities to be conducted responsibly and openly to build citizens’ trust, and for behavioural science experts to inform the development of data structures that enable more efficient and effective problem diagnosis and solution development.
LOGIC: Good Practice Principles for Mainstreaming Behavioural Public Policy
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7. Integration
Why this matters
Many respondents to the OECD’s surveys reported data-related difficulties, such as measuring the impact of interventions, getting access to broader outcome data, and conducting preliminary data gathering.
A second major cluster of challenges relates to how to inform and drive the policy process with behavioural science evidence. Many respondents reported struggles with finding the right partners, having their ideas implemented, having an impact at scale, and getting lessons to be adopted by others (see Principle 13 on knowledge brokerage).
A similar survey of behavioural science experts in the private sector reached similar conclusions: “the primary challenges that teams faced involved getting their interventions implemented in practice (42%) or measuring their impact (41%)” (Wendel, Newman and Khan, 2021[1]).
Table 7.1. Difficulties in implementing behavioural public policy
Survey respondents struggle with data, measurement, impact, and scaling
Age of team (years) |
10+ |
5 to 9 |
Under 5 |
Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
Measuring the impact of your interventions |
55% |
37% |
56% |
48% |
Getting those ideas or interventions implemented |
64% |
46% |
47% |
47% |
Having an impact and scale results |
55% |
49% |
36% |
43% |
Getting approval to run the intervention |
55% |
41% |
36% |
41% |
Finding the right partners |
55% |
41% |
36% |
40% |
Getting access to broader outcome data |
18% |
37% |
39% |
36% |
Disseminating the lessons from your work or getting the lessons adopted by others |
45% |
29% |
36% |
34% |
Conducting preliminary research / data gathering |
45% |
15% |
25% |
21% |
Designing ideas or intervention |
18% |
20% |
19% |
19% |
n= |
11 |
41 |
36 |
103 |
Note: Where does your team struggle to be successful? Age not known for all respondents’ teams.
The most established teams (those ten or more years old) were more likely than newer teams to report challenges with implementation, scaling, dissemination, and approvals. These respondents may have experienced more examples of their work not going as far as they had hoped, may be more critical of their own work, or may have higher expectations for what they want their work to achieve.
Few survey respondents were confident that citizens knew about their work. Only about a quarter said that most people in their target audience knew they were applying behavioural science techniques with them. Respondents may have answered this question as relating to research design: within a research activity it is often necessary to disguise, to some extent, the true nature of the research (such as the existence of different trial arms). These results may also suggest, however, a broader lack of understanding among citizens about their governments’ use of behavioural science. Relatedly, only one third of respondents’ teams publish their work externally (n=134; see Table 5.1).
Figure 7.1. Citizens’ awareness of behavioural public policy
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Note: Does your audience (the people among whom you are seeking to change behaviour) know that you are applying behavioural science techniques with them? n=60
Good practice principles
8. Managers integrate behavioural science into standard guidelines and procedures for policy development, implementation, and evaluation.
Governments often have official processes, templates, and rules that policy makers should follow. Incorporating prompts and encouragements to consider behavioural science evidence into these standards can make it easier for policy makers to adopt a behavioural lens as part of their routine, business-as-usual practices, and to recognise situations where they might benefit from accessing behavioural science expertise (Hallsworth, 2023[2]). This kind of “structural integration” may help prevent a turn to behavioural science “from being ‘washed out’ after an initial period of enthusiasm” (OECD, 2020[3]). It may not be necessary to explicitly reference behavioural science; requirements to assess a policy’s evidence base or its likely effects on stakeholders’ behaviour may be sufficient to trigger a policy maker to seek behavioural science evidence.
Options for integrating behavioural science evidence into standard procedures sit on a spectrum of formality. Optional reminders – which may be easier to implement earlier in a government’s journey of mainstreaming behavioural public policy – could include:
Suggestions in guidelines for policy making
Prompts in templates for policy proposals, briefings, or memoranda
Opportunities for behavioural science experts to comment on proposals or briefings before they go to decision-makers.
More formally, policy makers could be required to take certain steps to demonstrate their consideration of behavioural science evidence. In the context of broader evidence-informed policy making, the OECD has suggested that soft exhortations to policy makers may not be sufficient to fully embed an evidence‑informed approach (OECD, 2020[3]). Governments could consider formally legislating or regulating a requirement that policy makers design, implement, and evaluate policy on the basis of data and evidence (Shapsa Heiman and Israel, 2022[4]; OECD, 2020[3]; Keizer, Tiemeijer and Bovens, 2019[5]), as the OECD has suggested for regulatory impact assessment (OECD, 2020[6]). Such requirements – which may be more feasible once behavioural public policy is more established in the government or organisation – could include:
Registering whether they have gathered behavioural science evidence when designing their policy, what they have done, or why they have not done it.
Writing an assessment for decision‑makers’ consideration of how and why the proposed policy is expected to produce the desired behaviour change.
Embedding behavioural science into existing impact analyses and ex ante evaluations of policy proposals, such as cost‑benefit analyses and regulatory impact assessments (Gauri, 2018[7]). This integrated approach may be efficient, given that behavioural science evidence is often a corollary or complement to other forms of evidence; however, a more multi-faceted impact assessment is more complex and difficult to achieve in practice.
Adding behavioural performance indicators into policy objectives, including in conditions for continued funding and management accountability frameworks
Structural requirements to consider behavioural science are likely to be most effective when paired with more positively framed and inspirational activities that motivate policy makers to see behavioural public policy as a way to achieve things they genuinely care about, such as better outcomes for citizens. Managers should be wary of incentivising and rewarding policy makers for completing procedural steps, rather than achieving policy outcomes. Misplaced incentives risk inadvertently encouraging the minimum necessary effort, rather than the full scope that may be most helpful.
Finally, reminders and requirements could be valuable throughout the policy cycle, including in:
Policy design. Prompts could be effective at getting policy makers to consider a behavioural lens early in the design process – increasing the likelihood of the policy ultimately being implemented (and evaluated) effectively and efficiently. An early prompt could potentially enable behavioural science experts to produce rigorous evidence in time for it to inform decisions and at a stage where serious changes can still be considered (Jonkers and Tiemeijer, 2015[8]). Procedures could also encourage policy makers to build this required time into workplans and project cycles where possible (WHO, 2023[9]).
Policy assessment. Managers could also consider mechanisms that enable behavioural science evidence to meaningfully inform policy decisions. Policy making practices and processes could emphasise and highlight behavioural science evidence for policy decision‑makers, where this is relevant and appropriate.
Policy implementation. Implementing policies in an agile way, involving experimentation and tight feedback loops, creates opportunities for continuous learning, course corrections, and iteration (Feng, Kim and Soman, 2021[10]).
Monitoring and evaluation. Reviews and audits of policies offer another opportunity to incorporate a behavioural perspective (Feng, Kim and Soman, 2021[10]; Drummond, Shephard and Trnka, 2021[11]). Assessing the impact or effectiveness of a policy by focusing on the behaviours of the people involved can help to identify issues, explain outcomes, and generate ideas for program improvements.
Box 7.1. Examples of standard procedures
In the Netherlands, it is a mandatory quality requirement for policy makers to take into account citizens’ capacity to act as intended. This requirement encourages the consideration and generation of behavioural science evidence. The Netherlands’ regulatory impact assessment framework, known as the “Policy Compass”, includes this requirement (OECD, 2020[12]). The government committed to the requirement in response to a 2017 report from the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy that advised the government to take a realistic approach on people’s mental capacities when designing rules and institutions (Keizer, Tiemeijer and Bovens, 2019[5]). The “Policy Compass” includes a series of supporting questions to stimulate policy makers to consider a behavioural science approach, including questions about:
Process, such as: Have preliminary tests been carried out among the public, for example using test panels, simulations or experiments? Did they involve all the relevant target groups and user profiles? Have other sources been consulted?
Content, such as: What mental burdens does the scheme impose on people? Do small mistakes immediately have major consequences? Is an easy-to-access front office available for those who cannot manage?
At the European Commission, behavioural science has also been included in official guidelines “for preparing, implementing, and evaluating policies, measures, and financial programs” (Baggio et al., 2021[13]).
In Canada, a 2016 directive from the prime minister directed federal deputy heads to invest in experimentation, for example by apportioning a certain percentage of their program budgets to experimentation. This requirement leveraged existing platforms and reporting structures, and it was accompanied by support and training from central, in-house expert teams and an interdepartmental coordination mechanism for managers to discuss experimentation.
In Israel’s Ministry of Finance, behavioural science experts developed a work process aligned with the budget cycle. A ‘wish list’ of topics with potential for behavioural interventions was developed at the beginning of the cycle. Decision-makers then made “one comprehensive decision on which projects to pursue” based on cost-benefit analyses and the potential for implementation at scale (Shapsa Heiman and Israel, 2022[4]).
The United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office updated its internal rules, procedures and procurement processes – such as requests for proposal – to encourage the use of adaptive management and to build an organisational culture for learning and experimentation. This included providing support to upskill organisations without the necessary skills (Kumpf and Jhunjhunwala, 2023[14]).
Also in the United Kingdom, the central Government Communication Service (GCS) team has taken a number of steps to ensure the consistent use of behavioural science across major communications activities. The central GCS team is responsible for vetting all major campaigns as part of a centralised spending control process. Behavioural science experts within GCS are brought in to review all major behaviour change campaigns to provide advice to departments running the campaigns as well as to identify any development areas for behavioural science skills across government communications.
9. Managers ensure behavioural science is applied responsibly, openly, and with high integrity standards to build and maintain policy makers’ and citizens’ trust.
Behavioural science experts and policy makers need to produce and apply behavioural science evidence responsibly to ensure the safety, protection, and wellbeing of the public they serve (OECD, 2020[15]). Being sensitive, reflective, critical, and mindful of potential outcomes across societal groups at all stages of policy design can help behavioural science experts maintain high ethical standards. These standards help to build and maintain policy makers’ and citizens’ trust in applied behavioural science; and this trust is, in turn, a critical enabler of behavioural science work (Biddle, Gray and Hiscox, 2023[16]).
The OECD has established five main drivers of trust in government institutions: “the degree to which institutions are responsive and reliable in delivering policies and services, and act in line with the values of openness, integrity and fairness” (OECD, 2022[17]). For behavioural public policy, trust-building practices worth considering include acting transparently, operating with integrity, following ethics protocols, and adopting participatory research and design methods.
Transparency
Clear, broad, and inclusive communication, both within the government and outside it, can help ensure policy makers and citizens have an accurate understanding of how and why the government uses behavioural science insights and methods. For citizens, a broad understanding of how public and private organisations can use behavioural science to both facilitate and hinder people’s goals can help explain why the government needs this capability (Sanders et al., 2021[18]). Transparency has many additional benefits, including:
building trust that behavioural science is being done appropriately and in line with community expectations
discouraging the symbolic or strategic use of only some pieces of evidence to support existing positions (OECD, 2021[19])
enabling others to contest the evidence produced (OECD, 2020[20])
promoting the impact and value of behavioural science; adding to the body of knowledge on the topic (Lecouturier et al., 2024[21])
managing expectations of what behavioural science can achieve, thereby avoiding policy makers or citizens being frustrated by small effect sizes or null results
encouraging the development of an external ecosystem of behavioural public policy, which can support the work done inside government.
Behavioural science experts can consider making the evidence they generate publicly available, regardless of method, effectiveness, or political convenience. This could include academic papers or reports on government websites. Some behavioural science teams have opted to release annual reports or tother aggregated publications of results to streamline the publication process and frame results in a broader strategic narrative. In doing so, behavioural science experts can also consider making their work and findings accessible to a diverse public audience that differs along dimensions such as disability and culture.
Some behavioural science activities may need to stay confidential in the short-term. On certain topics and at certain points in policy development, operating confidentially may be appropriate and necessary within the government’s standard policy making conventions (Aayush Agarwal, 2023[22]; Lecouturier et al., 2024[21]). Furthermore, channels for informal advice and conversations with policy makers should be encouraged. But as a general principle, a government’s use of behavioural science is likely to be more resilient and sustainable if it is transparent about these methods, given the likely improvements in reputation and citizen trust ( (World Health Organisation, 2024[23])).
Beyond publication of research activities and findings, mechanisms of public communication about behavioural public policy more broadly could include references to behavioural science activities in standard government documents (such as white papers, consultation papers, or strategies), participation by in‑house experts in public events (such as conferences or panels), and contributions to public debates (through articles, blog posts, podcasts, and so on).
Integrity
The behavioural science contribution to a policy process should stay true to the evidence and not be distorted or abbreviated to support any particular stakeholder’s position (OECD, 2020[20]). Behavioural science advice should be robust, credible, and reliable, even though the ultimate policy decision will be made based on various inputs and types of evidence.
One way to safeguard the credibility of behavioural science and avoid “policy capture” is through “functional autonomy” (OECD, 2022[24]): separating the individuals providing behavioural science evidence from the policy makers. Such separation could have the downside, however, of reducing the direct interpersonal relationships that can facilitate knowledge brokerage (see Principle 13). As a result, “the right balance must be reached between the extremes of isolation and dependence” (OECD, 2020[20]).
Processes can help to achieve this balance: “both the processes used to select and analyse the evidence, but also the processes through which the advice is then provided to policy making” (OECD, 2020[20]). For example, behavioural science experts or knowledge brokers could be required to: record their advice and positions separately from other policy documents; use rubrics to convey the strengths and limitations of the evidence; or consider and declare conflicts of interest.
Ultimately, managers need to create a working environment that supports and encourages behavioural science experts to stay true to the data they collect and be honest brokers of the broader literature. Managers can do this by welcoming dissenting views, querying the evidence base behind a policy proposal, and being flexible with how the performance of in‑house experts and knowledge brokers is judged.
Ethics protocols
Behavioural science’s emphasis on environmental and non‑conscious factors demands a unique commitment from policy makers to using these insights and methods responsibly. Citizens may be unaware of how some factors influence their choices, and governments need to be cautious when leveraging these factors to ensure individuals’ long‑term interests are respected and promoted, alongside those of the broader community.
Early in a government or organisation’s adoption of behavioural science it can be convenient to rely on existing legislative, risk management, and ethical frameworks (OECD, 2017[25]). But the unique considerations prompted by behavioural science within the public sector may put staff in situations where they must intuitively determine when particular activities or applications are appropriate or not.
Over time, managers can enable experts and policy makers to develop tailored mechanisms and processes that guide staff through the particular ethical considerations of the behavioural science activities used within their organisation. Clear and transparent guidelines help maintain a consistent standard of ethical conduct. Promoting these guidelines externally can help build citizens’ and stakeholders’ trust in behavioural public policy. Tailored protocols could draw on the OECD’s Good Practice Principles for the Ethical Use of Behavioural Science in Public Policy (OECD, 2022[26]), which includes practical tools and steps to help experts and policy makers reflect on ethical considerations that commonly arise at each stage of the policy process.
Where possible, managers can consider enabling behavioural science experts to refer projects and research activities to independent ethics review boards that understand applied behavioural science. Independent ethics review helps to de-risk behavioural public policy by prompting experts to examine their work in a structured way and identify ethical issues that may not be immediately obvious, and giving them access to critical supports when making difficult ethical judgements.
Participatory methods
The OECD has noted that engaging citizens and stakeholders more richly and comprehensively in the policy making process can have both instrumental benefits (better results because policy makers make more informed decisions) and intrinsic benefits (strengthening representative democracy, building trust in government, and creating social cohesion) (OECD, 2016[27]). In its recommendation on open government, the OECD has called on member countries to “grant all stakeholders equal and fair opportunities to be informed and consulted and actively engage them in all phases of the policy-cycle and service design and delivery”, and to “promote innovative ways to effectively engage with stakeholders to source ideas and co‑create solutions” (OECD, 2017[28]).
In the context of behavioural public policy, “experts and policy makers need to engage with the community to explain the benefits, and to learn from community concerns” (Biddle, Gray and Hiscox, 2023[16]). Feedback loops between policy makers and the public on the implications of behavioural public policy could help the government ensure it is acting in line with community expectations. Being open and inclusive can include engaging transparently and honestly with citizens and stakeholders about: the use of behavioural science to understand problems; the design of policy interventions informed by behavioural science; the selection of evaluation criteria; and the use of behavioural science by government in general.
Behavioural science experts can consider adopting participatory methods to better understand the context they are designing for, help build trust in their work, and produce more sustainable outcomes. Many practitioners and observers of behavioural public policy have noted that “involving people as full participants, rather than test subjects, into the framing and design of solutions will result in … more contextually valid, transparent, and legitimate solutions” that are more likely to be impactful across contexts and over time (Schmidt and Stenger, 2021[29]). The WHO’s technical advisory group on behavioural and cultural insights has called on behavioural science experts to “use a participatory approach to co-design tailored strategies and interventions with communities who will be affected”, noting that engagement early in the design process can help build trust, especially among marginalised populations (WHO, 2021[30]). A full adoption of co‑design approaches may entail quite different ways of working for behavioural science experts in government (Einfeld and Blomkamp, 2021[31]). At a minimum, qualitative research could be used to better understand actors’ own understandings of their goals and constraints; at a maximum, behavioural science experts could approach their role in public policy less as central architects and more as “facilitators, brokers, and partnership builders” of a broader system of people seeking positive societal change (Hallsworth, 2023[2]).
Behavioural science experts can also consider testing policy interventions that engage citizens more actively in reflecting on and constructing their own choice environments. Example approaches include ‘nudge plus’, in which the existence of a behavioural intervention is brought to the citizen’s attention (John and Stoker, 2019[32]), and ‘self-nudging’, in which citizens are empowered to make their own changes to their context that might help them achieve their goals (Reijula and Hetwig, 2020[33]). These approaches have the potential to spark a conversation between “citizens, public officials, and experts” about behavioural public policy that “acknowledges the democratic foundation of public policies and the autonomy this should entail” (John and Stoker, 2019[32]).
Box 7.2. Examples of trust building
In the United States, the central dedicated team working on evaluation and behavioural science publishes all of its evaluation results. It has also committed to publishing all pre‑analysis plans (Linos, 2023[34]). More broadly, the 2021 presidential memorandum on “Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking” called on all agencies to appoint a government official as lead “Scientific Integrity Official” to implement and iteratively improve policies and processes to ensure integrity in the agency’s use of evidence (Office of the President of the United States, 2021[35]).
In the Netherlands, in-house behavioural scientists in the national government publish results of their behavioural diagnoses and ex ante policy evaluations on their network’s website. The network also submits reports to parliament every two years about behavioural public policy. When the ethical aspects of particular behavioural interventions call for special caution, these are discussed in parliament; for example, the Dutch parliament discussed the country’s change from an opt-in to opt-out system for organ donation. This transparent discussion probably influenced citizens’ behaviour in reaction to the change (Krijnen, Tannenbaum and Fox, 2017[36]).
At the Norwegian Tax Administration, all analysis and behavioural science projects must go through a legal process that assesses the goal of the study, how taxpayers’ rights might be affected, how data will be used, and how taxpayers’ privacy will be maintained.
In Australia’s central behavioural science team in the federal government, all research activities are assessed according to Australia’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. This usually entails seeking independent ethics review of each project from a human research ethics committee. This longstanding process has helped build credibility when parliament has scrutinised the use of behavioural science insights and methods.
The behavioural science team in the Slovak Republic’s Ministry of Health works openly to develop comprehensive policy solutions by gathering ideas and opinions from the target group, testing options, sharing results, and seeking feedback. The team begins projects with an extensive study of behavioural barriers and motivations, which they publish publicly. They then present each step of their projects on social media. This way of working gives stakeholders the chance to see how their input shapes how policies are designed and implemented.
10. Managers support processes and structures for data collection and analysis that make it easier to diagnose behavioural issues and evaluate policy options.
Behavioural science experts rely on data about people’s behaviour to identify the drivers of policy problems and measure the effectiveness of interventions. This work requires investments in data governance, including the skills, rules, and infrastructure for collecting and managing data about behaviours (and the drivers and barriers of those behaviours). This data collection and analysis would be most impactful if the broader public administration embraced a culture of experimenting, learning, and adapting.
The OECD has published comprehensive guidance on how governments can become more data-driven (OECD, 2019[37]) and make effective data governance policies (OECD, 2022[38]). This guidance calls for governments to recognise data as a key strategic asset that should be managed, shared, and re‑used openly to transform the design, delivery, and monitoring of public policies and services (OECD, 2019[37]), while recognising the tension between the benefits of open data and individuals’ and organisations’ rights to control their own data (OECD, 2022[38]). Data governance therefore requires a clear data strategy to be implemented coherently with the support of rules, guidelines, and standards, as well as the enabling architecture and infrastructure to readily generate, collect, store, process, share, and use data (OECD, 2019[37]).
Behavioural public policy, in common with broader approaches to evidence-informed policy making, relies on “the availability of high quality, timely, accessible, disaggregated, and re-usable results, performance, and administrative data” (OECD, 2022[24]), which in turn relies on basic infrastructure and systems for collecting and managing data about policy issues and programs (OECD, 2020[3]). For example, behavioural science experts may need data that enables a population of interest to be identified, put into meaningful subgroups, randomised, and contacted. Designing, implementing, and testing behavioural interventions is significantly more complex and costly without an existing data structure or measurement process, because it is time and resource-intensive for behavioural science experts to begin and manage their own bespoke data consolidation or collection activities (Aayush Agarwal, 2023[22]).
Governments can consider expanding on the administrative and statistical data they routinely collect to include measures of behaviour (and the drivers and barriers of that behaviour). Richer routine collection would facilitate problem diagnoses, evaluations grounded in actual behavioural outcomes, and adjustments to ongoing programs if behaviours are not changing as expected. There will remain a need, however, for additional in-depth data collection to understand specific issues or design tailored solutions. Specific data activities and infrastructure that could facilitate behavioural public policy include:
agreements with implementation partners to facilitate rapid data collection (WHO, 2023[9])
centralised data assets that link individuals or organisations across administrative datasets
regular surveys of representative samples of citizens
online experimental platforms
standing pools of research participants
partnerships between in‑house behavioural science and data science experts
standardized policies and practices that enable data collection
partnerships with statistical agencies to continuously monitor behaviours.
These and other mechanisms can speed up data collection and reduce the cost of experimentation (Feng, Kim and Soman, 2021[10]), making behavioural public policy easier.
Building and expanding data infrastructure is costly. The OECD has noted that “substantial investments are often required” to generate, collect, share, re-use, clean, and curate data, and in many cases “complementary investments are also needed in data-related skills and competencies, as well as in information communication technologies” (OECD, 2022[38]). Governments and organisations early in the journey of mainstreaming behavioural public policy could begin by auditing what data they have available, collecting bespoke datasets for particular projects, and partnering with external research providers.
Regardless of maturity and investment, behavioural science experts’ and policy makers’ use of data would be more effective and efficient within a learning culture: an organisation that values seeking, sharing, and attending to data to inform operations and decisions (Jakobsen et al., 2019[39]; Lowe et al., n.d.[40]). Leaders can help set a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and adaptation by recognising and rewarding policy makers who seek and attend to data. Managers can also build processes and mechanisms to promote a data-driven approach, such as “routines and practices to transfer knowledge internally” (Linos, 2023[34]).
Box 7.3. Examples of data structures
The Norwegian Tax Administration has built a platform that enables in-house behavioural science experts to implement nudges and digital prompts in real time while taxpayers are filing their tax declarations. This platform has made it easier to implement and evaluate behaviourally informed interventions. The behavioural science team in the Slovak Republic’s Ministry of Health is also seeking to establish a central platform or testing centre to conduct pilot projects.
The European Commission has also built “its own platform to run online experiments independently, without resorting to external providers”, thereby giving in-house behavioural science experts more flexibility and control over data collection (Baggio et al., 2021[13]).
Canada established a longitudinal survey of citizens’ attitudes, knowledge, and behaviours in the COVID‑19 context in April 2020. This standing data collection process facilitated additional studies, such as Canada’s collaboration with France and the OECD on effective interventions to reduce the spread of misinformation (OECD, 2022[41]). This data collection approach was then adapted to support behavioural science research in other policy areas, such as climate action and environmental protection, in late 2021.
In the Netherlands, a behavioural science unit at the Public Health Institute (RIVM) has focused on building data infrastructures to produce behavioural knowledge relevant to pandemic and crisis decision-making. The unit was established to support COVID-19 policy by developing, sharing and translating knowledge derived from behavioural science into advice and focal points for public health policy and communication. Different forms of research have been conducted, including surveys, interviews, literature reviews, scenarios, and intervention studies. Frequent data collection was established during the pandemic to monitor public perception of and adherence to the behavioural measures and recommendations, their impact on personal well-being and trust, as well as perceived justice and factors influencing vaccination uptake. The behavioural knowledge has been used to advise policy at the national, regional, and municipal level.
In Israel’s Ministry of Finance, the dedicated behavioural science team invested in setting up infrastructure for data collection and analysis within a particular policy topic, significantly increasing the understanding of behavioural biases at play. Although this high investment was prompted by one project, the framework that was created went on to be “used as a live database for several experiments” (Shapsa Heiman and Israel, 2022[4]).
Assessing Integration principles
Governments may be interested in how they, or an external reviewer, could assess their implementation of these principles. The table below outlines questions to ask to understand the extent to which a country or public organisation has integrated behavioural science into broader policy making practices.
Table 7.2. Questions to assess Integration principles
How is behavioural science incorporated into standard policy making procedures and guidelines? |
To what extent do standard policy making procedures and frameworks encourage policy makers to adopt a behavioural science lens? |
Are there formal standards or official requirements that make it obligatory for policy makers to consider behavioural science evidence? |
Is behavioural science embedded in relevant procedures at all stages of policy development, implementation, and evaluation? |
Do policy makers regularly cite behavioural science evidence when making formal arguments and proposals for policy options? |
What are the consequences for policy makers for not considering behavioural science evidence? |
Are managers or senior leaders required to communicate or report on their generation and use of behavioural science evidence? |
How is the government or organisation ensuring the responsible and open use of behavioural science? |
How well informed is the public discussion about the government's use of behavioural science? |
How transparent is the government about how it embeds behavioural science insights and methods into policy making? |
How much of the behavioural science work conducted to inform policy decisions is available to the public? |
What mechanisms are in place to ensure the integrity of the behavioural science evidence, methods, and experts that inform policy making? |
What guidelines and procedures are in place to ensure ethical conduct in the production and application of behavioural science evidence? |
How are stakeholders, citizens, and marginalised groups involved in the production and application of behavioural science evidence? |
How are data structures built and managed to enable behavioural diagnosis and testing? |
How easy is it for behavioural science experts to access the administrative and behavioural data they need to produce policy-relevant evidence? |
How do behavioural science experts leverage existing data structures to assist in their work? |
To what extent are behavioural science experts collaborating with the government’s broader efforts to build data architecture and infrastructure to drive evidence-informed policy? |
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