Evidence Translation in Community-Level Public Policy Decisions

Sarah Mitchell

Evidence Translation in Community-Level Public Policy Decisions

Author(s)	Dr. Sarah Mitchell
Country	United States
Abstract	Community-level public policy decisions are frequently made under conditions of limited time, fragmented information, political pressure, uneven administrative capacity, and competing community priorities. Although research evidence has become increasingly accessible, its availability does not automatically ensure its meaningful use in local policy processes. Evidence translation provides an intermediate function through which scientific findings, administrative data, professional experience, and community knowledge are interpreted and converted into forms that decision-makers can understand and apply. This study develops a community-oriented evidence-translation framework and examines, through a transparent simulation, how structured translation practices may improve the readiness of evidence for local policy use. The framework emphasizes five dimensions: contextual relevance, accessibility, stakeholder engagement, timeliness, and implementation readiness. A simulation-based comparative design was applied to illustrative community policy scenarios rather than real participants or completed governmental interventions. Scores representing a conventional evidence pathway were compared with scores under a structured translation pathway incorporating evidence synthesis, contextual adaptation, knowledge brokering, community participation, and implementation-oriented communication. The simulated results indicate an increase in overall policy-readiness scores from 50.4 to 80.8 on a 100-point scale, with the largest improvement observed in stakeholder engagement. These results should be interpreted as model-generated illustrations rather than empirical estimates. The study argues that evidence translation should be institutionalized as an interactive governance process rather than treated as the final dissemination stage of research. Community-level policy systems are likely to benefit when credible evidence is combined with local knowledge, transparent interpretation, citizen participation, and practical implementation considerations.
Keywords	: evidence translation; evidence-informed policymaking; community governance; knowledge translation; local government; public policy; citizen engagement; knowledge brokering
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 2, Issue 4, July-August 2021
Published On	2021-07-19

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Evidence Translation in Community-Level Public Policy Decisions

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