The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the costs of failing to access and use scientific research that informs governmental action and communication [1,2,3]. This has led to widespread calls to evaluate effective science communication and dissemination interventions [4, 5]. Government officials have played a particularly meaningful role in communicating about the pandemic via social media, which has been critical for disseminating accurate information but has, in some cases, contributed to the spread of misinformation [4]. Despite existing strategic models of science communication, much of the previous work in this area has been retrospective and relied on self-report of how policymakers access and use research. Few experimental studies have investigated effective strategies to support policymakers’ use of research evidence (URE). This study seeks to prospectively and experimentally evaluate an enhanced science communication intervention to support US legislators’ use of public health research—to our knowledge, the first of its kind [6]. Specifically, we investigate legislators’ URE via social media, given its role in both combatting and perpetuating misinformation during the pandemic.

In 2020, the world was gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, which not only disrupted the normal social order (e.g., “work from home”), but also altered the public’s degree of exposure to and engagement with scientific research. The intense need for supporting the rapid uptake of high-quality research evidence encouraged responses from the scientific community. Even before the pandemic, there were significant concerns among the scientific community that a “war on science” was politicizing and delegitimizing public perception of scientific credibility [7]. Despite this popular narrative [8, 9], US and international public opinion of science remained positive among the general public [10, 11] and the policy community [12], plausibly because the “war” was spurred by the beliefs of vocal individuals concerned about vaccines and other specific issues [10]. Immediately in the wake of the pandemic, public trust in science fluctuated [2] and declined over time, especially among Republicans [13]. Despite these recent trends, substantial research has shown that most policymakers across the aisle have reported that research is valuable to their work, and are eager to use research in their work even if approaching it in different ways [14,15,16,17]. Lawmakers also report difficulty accessing unbiased, nonpartisan, or agenda-neutral scientific evidence [18, 19] and view university-based research as more trustworthy than that from advocacy groups and think tanks [20]. This is evidenced in studies with state legislators, including one analysis indicating over half of state legislators as highly valuing research evidence, but less than a quarter reporting access to high-quality research evidence [12].

Mutual mistrust and a lack of scaffolded opportunities to facilitate interactions between academic researchers and policymakers are prominent barriers to URE [21, 22]. It is critical that public health practitioners recognize that trust in science is built through interpersonal relationships. Misunderstanding the need for relational approaches to research translation have inspired simplistic, one-way dissemination efforts that “push” information from research organizations without regard to policymakers’ current needs [23]. Such impersonal science communication approaches are ultimately inconsistent with best practice—which should involve collaborative and interactive approaches for tailoring responses to policymakers’ goals and evidence needs [21]. In particular, research that is timely and relevant is most likely to be used by policymakers [24].

A meaningful body of research has shed light on conditions that foster URE in the policymaking process [21, 25,26,27], yet few studies have experimentally investigated best practices for disseminating research evidence among policymakers, and virtually none have examined the impact of research dissemination on policymakers’ public discourse. Meaningful experimental work has been done recently to improve the way that research is communicated to policymakers. For instance, evoking emotion and threat-based language [28], state-tailored economic evidence [29], and cueing relevance to the state or legislator [24] have been shown to increase legislators’ access of research evidence via email. However, it is unclear what measurable impact such disseminations could have on policymaker URE.

Previous experimental studies with legislative subjects have investigated from whom policymakers learn and how access to information can influence their behavior [23]. For instance, a recent study found that participation in a bipartisan group wherein policymakers discussed their proposed bills with one another increased support for those bills [30]. A subsequent research dissemination study found that when provided with a non-partisan technical briefing on a bill, legislators were 60% more likely to support that bill [31]. Such studies provide evidence that communication can affect policymakers’ behavior [23, 30, 31]. We seek to build on this literature base by further shedding light on how disseminated research information may affect legislators’ URE in their public discourse, specifically in their social media posts.

This work draws upon multiple theoretical frameworks for understanding how, why, and when policymakers use research, as well as best practices for disseminating research evidence as revealed in extant literature. Foremost, corresponding with Brownson’s Model of Dissemination Research [32], the current study source involves researchers who send messages about research synthesis in fact sheets, using emails as the channel to deliver the message to an audience of US state legislators and their staff. Embedded in this investigation is investigators’ recognition of a widely used typology describing how policymakers use evidence [30, 31], which includes evidence that directly informs policy development (i.e., instrumental use) or how policymakers think about causes and consequences of problems (i.e., conceptual use). Policies may also leverage research or evaluation methods (i.e., process use) or research may be used to justify preconceived policy stances (i.e., tactical use [19, 20]).

John Kingdon’s Three Streams Model is fundamental to understanding when research evidence is deemed timely based on socio-political factors [35]. Timeliness and relevance of research correspond with these opportunity windows, which has been emphasized for policymakers’ URE [36, 37]. To do this, science dissemination efforts must focus on end-users’ needs, which is exemplified by an array of practices for bridging research and policy (e.g., Family Impact Seminars; Pew Results First, [14, 22]). In contrast to dissemination efforts involving a one-sided flow of information to policymakers, starting with policymakers’ interest areas allows the research translation effort to be targeted in responding with evidence related to current policy windows (i.e., discrete opportunities for policy change [33, 39].

An emerging field studying URE sheds light on why policymakers URE and emphasizes both access to relevant research and the building of trusting interpersonal connections with scientists [21]. Some have deemed dissemination efforts focused on access to be a “first-generation” approach, which, typically share research products not intentionally chosen for their policy relevance. In contrast, “second-generation” approaches involve facilitating researcher-policymaker relationships [21]; these more potent, interactive partnership approaches can be cost-prohibitive because of the staff time required to develop relationships. Fortunately, these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive; insights gleaned from interacting with policymakers (via second-generation approaches) may inform and strengthen the disseminations of relevant research evidence, extending the reach and impact of the interactive models. As conceptualized here, an enhanced dissemination (described below) addresses critical concerns about standard dissemination practice by providing relevant and timely research evidence, which is informed by researcher-policymaker interactions, and ultimately increases opportunities for further researcher-policymaker interactions, which then inform content development for future dissemination.

The SciComm Optimizer for Policy Engagement (SCOPE) is a replicable model for disseminating and improving the reach of research among policymakers. The following core principles of this enhanced dissemination model are intended to address common flaws critiqued in URE literature on dissemination methods [21, 23] by drawing upon theories and prior research on the best practices for bridging research and policy.

Timely and relevant: Policymakers’ perception of relevance may be improved by recognizing their needs and priorities, cueing individual or local relevance, responding with corresponding information, and messaging accordingly [24, 37, 40]. “Feedback loops” can be created by drawing on interactive forms of research dissemination (e.g., partnerships, conversations) to inform relevant content for broad-based dissemination efforts. In particular, this work builds from an experimentally tested model for supporting policymakers’ URE known as the Research-to-Policy Collaboration (RPC [15,16,17]) which facilitates nonpartisan responses to policymakers’ evidence needs by assessing their policy goals before matching them with corresponding researchers. When multiple policy staff have questions about a similar topic, that topic is determined to be politically timely and associated resources are apt for dissemination. We sought to supplement the impact of this interactive brokerage model by expanding the evidence syntheses resulting from researcher-policymaker collaborations. Researchers participating in the RPC rapid response network directly contributed to the written products that were disseminated; thus, SCOPE provided a platform for researchers to communicate directly with policymakers about issues deemed timely by partnering legislative staff. Legislative staff often identified priority areas that paralleled their pre-pandemic interests, but sought to further understand the implications of the pandemic (e.g., on overdose, violence, human trafficking, child abuse).

Researcher-policymaker interactions: SCOPE directly connects researchers and policymakers via email. Researchers develop fact sheets and email them to legislative officials on behalf of authors (i.e., sender is the researcher’s name and message body is a plain text, polite message). This allows the legislative officials to reply directly to the author, who was offered technical assistance (e.g., how to avoid partisan language) and logistic support (e.g., scheduling meetings). Each dissemination prompted, on average, two meaningful interactions (e.g., request to meet; answer questions; present or even testify at a hearing) between the author and a policymaker or staff. Researcher-policymaker interactions informed future disseminations in a feedback loop, which meant that the intervention was not merely a one-way “push” of information, and instead was both responsive to and facilitated interactions between researchers and policymakers.

Brief, skimmable formats: Policymakers have competing priorities and are constantly inundated with a barrage of information ranging across policy issue areas. This results in information overload [41]. In fact, most state policymakers have previously reported they are less likely to read “full reports” than skim information [42]. Moreover, content of research materials should be written in accessible, jargon-free, plain language [37, 43, 44]. Additionally, briefs should be succinct and focus on a singular key point that is immediately conveyed to the reader [32, 44]. Following these guidelines, research-based materials were provided in a brief format preferred by policymakers, such as 1–2 page fact sheets, briefs, or notes. These synthesized implications were based on a body of research instead of single studies and often provided examples of relevant practice.

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) involves cycles of planning, testing, and refining practice strategies to improve practices over time [45]. SCOPE uses a rapid-cycle evaluation method that deploys A/B field experiments to learn what approach to science communication increased the reach and visibility of disseminated fact sheets (e.g., [15, 30]). These CQI efforts serve to improve the reach of disseminations over time by informing an evolution in science communication practice.

To experimentally evaluate the SCOPE intervention, a randomized controlled trial was undertaken with legislative offices (Fig. 1). This experiment sought to evaluate the effect of researcher-policymaker engagement on state legislators’ research use in social media posts during the pandemic. We hypothesized that legislators randomly assigned to receive the SCOPE intervention would be more likely to use evidence language in their public discourse related to the pandemic. Investigators felt that a study investigating ways to increase public officials’ use of scientific information in their constituent-facing communications was particularly timely in light of rampant misinformation that became prevalent in public discourse during the pandemic.

Science Communication Optimizer for Policy Engagement (SCOPE) model steps. The SCOPE model builds off of interactive models of research translation to ensure the content disseminated is relevant and timely for officials. Legislative officials who sit on relevant committees receive research syntheses directly from researchers. The content is disseminated through a platform that allows for continuous quality improvement (CQI) via field experiments that inform how to increase the reach of content over time. Thus, legislative recipients are randomized for message testing prior to dissemination and findings from those analyses inform future dissemination efforts. Direct contact between researchers and legislators fosters additional interactions that create a feedback loop in this process, leading to the development of additional content relevant to current policy priority areas