welcome to parliament for researchers how to write for a parliamentary audience my name is naomi i am part of the knowledge exchange unit here at the uk parliament we support and strengthen the exchange of information and expertise between parliament and the research community and we do that in lots of different ways so we provide training for researchers about how to work with parliament as you know we have lots of online resources to support you to know how to work with parliament we promote any opportunities we can find for researchers to work with parliament we run an academic fellowship scheme and really importantly we are a point of contact for anyone from the research community who would like to engage with parliament or connect with someone at parliament so i'm joined on the session this morning by my colleague laura webb from the knowledge exchange unit and our colleague from the parliamentary office of science and technology christiana vagnoni who will be talking you through how to write for a parliamentary audience in a little bit this is what we are going to be covering today we're going to just have a very quick uh reminder of the difference between parliament and government and then i'm going to pass you over to christiana to talk us through what is a parliamentary audience and what makes a good briefing and then we'll stop and answer some questions and then i'm just going to give you a few tips about how you target that briefing you've written at parliament where should you target it to have the most impact and what resources and support we've got available for you as well i just wanted to reiterate that parliament and government are not the same thing as you'll know from your prior knowledge parliament is made up of all mps all members of the house of lords and the monarch as well and government down the road in whitehall rather than in westminster is just some mps some members of the house of lords who've been chosen by the prime minister to be ministers they run government departments they run public services they introduce a lot of the new laws which come in to force they decide on the policy and the spending in government departments and that government are accountable back to parliament who conducts scrutiny of the government's work and who must approve laws before they can be passed as well as approving budget and spending proposals so you'll have remembered that i'm sure i just wanted to reiterate it because it's really useful to know if you're going to write a briefing and then send it in to someone at parliament or someone at government you know you could use it for either but it's in it's useful to know who you're talking to is it about the development of a policy is it a government department working up a policy or a new law or is it parliament challenging and scrutinizing something the government is doing so i'm sure you can kind of see that you might use your briefing that you've written in a different way depending if you're working with parliament or government so now i've refreshed your knowledge about that i'm really pleased to introduce to you to christiana vanyoni who is an advisor in the parliamentary office of science and technology christiana is an absolute expert in writing for a parliamentary audience and she's going to share some of her expertise with us today so christiana it's over to you here i am thanks naomi and welcome everybody so let's start with the parliamentary audience i think as many of you know already the first rule of good writing and good communication is the know who you're writing for and parliamentarians and policy makers are very busy people and that is the main thing you need to remember members do not necessarily have the scientific or technical background on a specific topic although they're really good at picking up information quickly because it's their main job and another thing too important to remember is that research is only one type of information that gets considered when making policy decisions first of all think about i don't know the impact on people that a decision could make rather than only the science about it and another important point when you write for a parliamentary audience is the fact that mps are elected to represent a particular constituency so when you write about a subject you can think about whether there is any local area the original area that could be somehow affected by your science topic so that you can think about you know how do we make that that topic relevant for that area so an mp represented for that area would care about it uh here we are what makes a good briefing so first of all i have a little disclaimer everything here comes from my experience at post uh where we write specific briefings that are called post not post brief and also more recently uh rapid responses uncovered so whatever i'm telling you today is gonna be 100 sure true for post and then there are like slightly variations of the topic small variations on the topic that i'm gonna go uh go over with you so you will have a clear idea what is what we write the post and what is what you can write for an mps or peers so there are four key elements that make a good policy briefing first the content is the briefing a good summary of evidence does it cover what is expected youtube second the structure do the section make sense in the order they are are represented in the right order is it well structured third really important accessibility is the briefing easy to read is it concise remember parliamentarians do not have time they are very busy people so what you need to write is something that could be read quickly over a cup of coffee that is the ideal briefing and finally fourth impartiality is the breathing politically and scientifically impartial are all the statements balanced and objective and this is really important for as a post so also for people that are writing a briefing in the staff of the libraries or in committee meetings uh however for you as an academic is it okay if you move forward your own opinions as an expert on the topic because when you're writing a parliamentary briefing you will write most likely something you're an expert about in terms of content here we are again we can borrow some rules from good writing and good communication and i i'm sure many of you already heard this one is the 5ws 1h rule so if a briefing is well written it should cover what is the key issue why is it of interest who are the main stakeholders when are the major impact going to happen where is this happening and how the stakeholders will be affected so remember over a cup of coffee your mpm peers should be able to quickly answer to all of these questions and this is something you need to take to keep in mind another thing to keep in mind is that these five ws1h rules also apply to single studies you're going to present right so when you are writing about the general you know research on your field before talking about something more specific you can say for each studies where the study took place when did it take place who took part in the study how the measurement were taken and what were the results and also why you know the study was done to demonstrate xyz for instance so here again we have an example uh as you can see here i'm going to read it for you if you cannot see a 2019 survey of 2000 women aged 25 to 40 in the uk found a sixty percent use social media at least once a day and as you can see here we have when 2019 survey how the the data was collected who 2000 women aged 25 to 40 and where in the uk what was it found 60 used social media and it's really important to be clear about the evidence you're using because of course a survey of 20 women rather than 2 2 000 women could give you a really different kind of information same if the survey was in 20 i don't know 2010 versus 2019 2018 sorry um so next let's talk about structure that is very very important and unfortunately there's not really a protocol or the perfect formula if you want for a good structure and depends a lot on the topic you're working on however this structure presented here the past present future worse for let's say 90 of the topics so past background and cons context what is the issue how did we get here present what is the current situation and future what are the challenges and opportunities what is coming next so these are pretty good structure they're worse as i said 90 of the times there are of course some variation another really important part on structure is to make sure your document is really easy to read and have headings and subheadings and break down blocks of text into small sections and that is really really useful for parliamentarians another important point is to have an overview at the beginning of the briefing so essentially just reading the overviews they should have an idea of what it's about and hopefully be like you know be turn their attention towards a specific section for instance instead of reading it all and another really important part is uh using figures charts or diagrams to make your breathing more eye-catching but also give more information and as you know given at your academics like a good figure can be more than a thousand words right so use the same principle of like think about making a good figures in terms of summaries i wanted to give you two different examples from two different products at post of how to write summaries so on the left you have a post note that is a briefing is only four pages long and then on the right instead you have a rapid response that is a new type of format that we have that is html only so we use different formats and there's very different but the main principle of both these briefings are the same and the main principle of the summary is the same if you read the summary you shouldn't be i mean you shouldn't need to read the rest because remember parliamentarians are really busy they want to quick read something and figure out okay this is all of this is about so let's start with the post note these are the two overviews uh if we zoom in at the overview of a post note you can see this is about food fraud so it can tell you what is food fraud why is important who is responsible for it how can we change things and what's likely or unlikely to happen next so only in five bullet points they are able to to answer the past present future structure that we talked about before uh similarly for these covid rapid responses this is an update i wrote in november so it's not anymore up to date unfortunately we'll covet but the principle is exactly the same the structure of the summary is slightly different because the different subject that is rapidly evolving however again five boolean points here that are able to highlight where is research at in terms of covid vaccine uh why uh like you know what is important for the uk and what is important around the world so essentially just looking at these parliamentarians now should i read this briefing yes no and go farther and start scanning the the text afterwards again in terms of structure there is a really good tip that we use at posts and also in the libraries pretty often that is the use of boxes so boxes are for those things that quite don't fit always in the text but they should be there uh for instance if you have a lot of definitions that are kind of like nicely tied up all together in a corner or if you have for instance legislations that are relevant or if you have some case studies remember you need to make uh your topic relevant for at a regional level local level a nice case study about why an mpmp should care about fishing because there are fisheries around it his constituency for instance and sometimes we also use them for more technical and complex concepts the idea behind the box is essentially that you should be able to read the brief without having the box so the bots add that extra information that is not 100 necessary to have your breathing flow i think what useful the third pillar about how to write a good briefing as i said is accessibility and that is probably the hardest one especially if you guys are used to write for academics and write papers that are pretty dense and definitely not accessible sometimes because they are written for a specialist audience right and you just take like a thousand steps back from that way of writing and essentially i think that when you write for a preliminary audience anyone with your briefing should be able to read it over a cup of coffee and then be able to tell you the five w's one age right after reading it it is really really tough it's probably the hardest part of writing a briefing but luckily for you we have some tips so as opposed we follow these seven tips that are the main ones so first of all if you have to say something and of course you have to something say it with fewer words with less complex language use objective precise language use the active voice rather than the passive voice when of course is possible and try to be consistent with language punctuation and definition if you give one definition stick with it throughout the piece because if you add the synonyms of the same concept it just make it confusing because remember they are not experts at least not all mps are experts some of them have a science background but you need to be read by everyone right and then jargon and acronyms we know that science is full of jargon and acronyms i would say select only the key ones the ones that really you need to explain the concept and just explain them really clearly at the beginning and then keep using them and don't add anyone else just you know the few key ones and finally again think about your audience can use figures and facts that parliamentary can use make use of um so we have like some example of how to say something in a fewer words as you can see it is a really really long sentence about the speed of development of your dna sequencing analytical technologies bringing now the press tag over genome sequencing advertising space as you can see impossible to read how do we make it fast quicker and easier to understand pretty simple if my presentation works here it is dna sequencing is getting faster and cheaper another tip to think about your audience right these are parliamentarians if you cannot say the bacterium is microscopic 10 microns wide because they don't have any you know 99 of them like 90 of them that don't have a science background don't know what a micron is so you can say in a different way such as that each bacterium is roughly a fifth of the thickness of a sheet of paper some cannot be seen by the human eye and this is really easy to understand for a parliamentarian finally the last pillar for post is impartiality and it's important is really important for us at posts but also for people writing in the comments libraries and the lord's libraries so we cannot take any we we are not politically or scientifically partial we need to present all the different racial perspectives and we cannot give any opinions about something and this is really important for us but it's not necessarily again true for you guys because you are writing from an expert perspective so it's fine that you have your own opinion um but another important thing that you need to do is attribute a reference so everything you say you need to add a reference for it so that they can expand and if they want to know more information they have it and it's there a just a little tip make sure to use references that are open access so that mps can actually read it and finally that is super super important is be clear about uncertainty i mean we all know how scientists that science cannot give you always the simple one-line answer unfortunately right that would be amazing and you have to explain what's the context about it why we are uncertain about something is it because of research is it because of the measurements or how it's done or is because there is not enough research so again to make it slightly clearer added here a couple of examples about how we can present uncertainty so for instance if you know there is not a single number but there is a range of a certain measurement you need to use that range and explain why instead of a single number we have a range for a measurement for instance c level could write 0.26 0.77 meters blah blah blah because modeling cloud cover is a major sort of incentive so you need to be clear and open about what we know and what is this the source of uncertainty and what are the limitation if there is you know not enough evidence about something just say it and they say there is sufficient evidence to show xyz similarly if there is some disagreement or limitation of the research again be honest about it and say the majority of the studies shows x while other research indicates why and maybe you know the limitations are a big part like the majority of the studies from the 70s in which they use these super old techniques that shows x but actually now we have better research and it seems that there is a new you know new avenue for these research and we know more stuff that before we didn't know and final tip for you not to forget is to make sure your briefing is dated and to provide the contact details so that people that want to get in touch with you can do it quickly and easily and this is all from me i am just looking forward to the questions so kristiana some questions for you now the first one is uh what is the most challenging aspect of creating a post note i think the most challenging part is the four page limit so a note is only four pages and to be honest i think four pages is the perfect length for a briefing because remember it needs to be read over a cup of coffee so four pages is what you can actually do in a coffee break however it's really hard to figure out what is extra and what needs to be there so the way the way i do it is essentially start working on a four page document already while i write out and then when i see that it's becoming easily seven pages step back read again and start taking away part and say okay this is nice to know but is it actually relevant for npm peers do they would they make a difference if they know this extra detail and it's important to kind of like think about the bigger picture all the time brilliant uh another question we've had in here is uh if there is any uh any tips you can give about how to practically balance writing concisely whilst also being precise which i think is uh is a challenging thing to do do you have any thoughts on how you approach doing that when you're writing for a parliamentary audience again really really good question um i think that the key you know 5w 1h rule always apply when you write about the single study and about everything right so if you know that you can write the same thing and say you know what when how why etc etc you know that is exactly the information you need not more than that and then you know like sometimes we get lost in details i feel that if you come from a science background that you get lost into the nitty-gritty details and like oh who said that what no these other person is little you need to say no step away from it and kind of like try to make like you know make sense of the noise around it and say okay what are the key points here and how can i answer to the 5w one nih question and uh we'll do one more question just for now so do you have any tips on how you can conclude a good research briefing so should you summarize your main points or is there another approach that it's that it's good to take what would you recommend that's again a really really good question the way in which we conclude our briefings is always about challenging not always but like 99 of the time challenges and opportunities for the future because essentially when you write a briefing you figure out that there are a series of open questions right and it's something that npm peers can think about like when at the end of it like kind of like the take-home message is like this is what all we know about now what is the situation this is what we can do next for the future and that is definitely a good way to end but definitely once you write i think the last things to do when you write all of these like all of your briefing is again take a step back and write your summary as well so that you know that is probably your the conclusion of your work is writing a good summary christiana thank you so much for taking us through such an in-depth look into how you translate research evidence into something which is useful for mps and members of the house of lords i thought it would be really useful to spend five minutes talking you through what you do with this briefing so you've spent a fantastic amount of time doing your 5ws 1h doing your summaries making sure you've put your date and contact details on there and you've got a fantastic briefing what are you going to do with it how do you target it at parliament to make sure it's the most effective so in order to start taking you through that i'll just give you a tiny overview of the different parts of parliament who use research the teams at parliament using research we've got house of commons and house of lords select committees who use research we actually have an entire different training session which is 45 minutes all about how to work with select committees as a researcher so i'm not going to tell you too much about select committees today parts of the legislative process use research again i'm not going to focus on that today i want to talk to you about the house of commons and house of lords libraries and post the parliamentary office of science and technology that is where christiana is based and they post our huge users and uh producers of research briefings we've also got a more informal or more political side of parliament that uses research of course mps and members of the house of lords and their researchers confusingly called researchers uh these are members of staff who work for those mps and lords helping them to carry out their parliamentary duties and appg's all-party parliamentary groups the the bits that i want to pick out and talk to you about this morning are those libraries posts and the appg's because i think those are the places that you might want to target a research briefing so to start with the research and information teams in the pa in parliament we've got post where christiana's based you know loads about how post notes are produced now posts are probably the closest bridge between research and policy one of the biggest aims of post is to make sure that research evidence is coming into parliament it's being used by committees it's being used in the legislative process it's being used by mps and peers one of the main ways that post does this is to produce post notes so kind of horizon scanning briefings also post briefs which are more reactive advice and rapid response uh briefings which are um extremely quickly turned around summaries of research evidence the commons and the lord's libraries are a little bit more reactive than horizon scanning so if post is looking ahead to the next big issues coming across the parliamentary agenda and producing research briefings on those issues the libraries are looking at what is happening in parliament right now what's happening in the house of commons chamber what's happening in the house of lords chamber what is happening in select committees what pieces of legislation are going through parliament right now and they are producing briefings on these pieces of business and they are also answering questions which are being put to them by mps and lords so an mp can get in touch with the house of commons library and ask for a briefing on a particular topic which the library will produce and the briefings produced by post in the libraries are always impartial and they are always written specifically for a parliamentary audience the libraries and posts are always looking for research and evidence and findings and information to base what they are telling parliamentarians on so they are big consumers of research and the more accessible and concise and targeted you can produce present your research to these teams the more likely it is that they will be using it when writing research briefings for members and the other side of what i wanted to talk to you about was the all party parliamentary groups so you remember this is the kind of more political side of research use at parliament appg's are informal groups of mps and members of the house of lords there's one for nearly every country in the world there are many different subject groups from asthma to veterans the point of these groups is for members to develop their knowledge about a particular subject meet other mps and lords who are interested raise awareness about a subject the groups are all different so some of them meet up really regularly and hold events and run inquiries and some of them work on a bit more of an informal basis but you can have a look at the full list of groups on the parliament website and you might find one or two that are of relevance to your research area so the ways to use these little parts of parliament i've just given you a skim over the commons library the lord's library post and all party parliamentary groups these are the things practically that i suggest you could do you've got your well-written briefing send it in to the commons library or the lord's library you can contact them on papers at parliament.uk or send it in to post and it will be given to the relevant subject specialist in either the libraries or post and send that briefing in with an offer to contribute as they need that means that the staff working in those research and information teams at parliament are aware of your work they've seen that you can write well they may well get in touch with you or they might just use your briefing and they will cite you if they've used that briefing you could also identify an appg or maybe an mp or lord who's a member of an appg so you know they're interested in a particular topic and send them your well-written briefing and offer to support any work they're doing in that area and that just means that you are targeting your research towards a group of members a group of mps or lords who are potentially interested in that particular topic area don't send in a paper with no context at all don't send a briefing to all mps and all members of the house of lords it's a real waste of your time and everyone's energy don't send a paper to a select committee unless you've written it to submit as written evidence in response to an inquiry and remember we've got a whole session about select committees if you want to explore that a bit further okay so that's some top tips about sending your research into parliament what i'm going to do is just go back over to laura and see if there are any more questions that my sis or christiana can answer so we'll start off uh with a question to you naomi if that's all right so we um we've mentioned today in the session to make sure that the information that we're writing about is of interest to policy makers could you say a little bit more about what um well how researchers can find out what policy makers and people at parliament are interested in is there anywhere that people can go to find out more about that so lots of ways to find out what parliament's interested in at the moment and actually we've got a whole page on our web hub for researchers which is just what is a parliament interested in some top tips though have a look at what is going on in the house of commons and house of lords chambers at the moment so what debates are scheduled at the moment what laws are being passed at the moment you can easily find that information on the front page of the parliament website there's a calendar and a section called what's on so it's a pretty good bet that if there is a debate scheduled at parliament on a topic or if there is a law going through on a particular subject there will be a lot of people at parliament interested in that at the moment you can also have a look at what research briefings are being published so you can search all the research briefings that are published from parliament whether they've come from the house of commons library the house of lords library or post so you can have a look at what topics are being covered if the commons and lords libraries are publishing briefings on a particular topic that means there are people at parliament who want to know about that topic and the final thing the final tip i'd give you is have a look at what parliamentary questions are being asked so mps and lords can submit written questions to the government there will be loads on many many different topics you can just have a scan through them see if there are any of relevance to your research area and the good thing about that is that you can also see who's asked that question and then you'll know that exact mp or the exact member of the house of lords is potentially interested in your research and you can contact them directly so christiana and got a question around if there's a specific referencing style that is expected of people writing for parliament and i think in particular uh kind of what referencing style you use might be interesting to hear and and how you find using that thanks laura and this is a almost a tricky question if you want because as i mentioned before we have different references we have different products now not only post note and post brief but also uh rapid responses and we use totally different ways to deal with references in rapid responses we use links but in post brief and post no and i would say keep it like you know the classic almost academic reference one with like you know all the authors the doi and also put the hyper link to the to the specific paper in a classic references style you know that you would use so use hyperlinks but only in the reference list not in the main text because i think it's getting that's a bit confusing we've thrown loads of information at you we've taken you through um the difference between parliament and government we've taken you through loads of information about how to write a good briefing for a parliamentary audience and i've thrown some information at you as well about what you do with that briefing once you've written it so i'm aware that is a lot i just wanted to leave you with a reassurance that although we've thrown a lot of information at you there is plenty of support available for you to work with parliament we have a lot of online resources and how-to guides on our web hub for researchers that's parliament.uk
forward slash research hyphen impact if you're on twitter follow us on at uk pal underscore research we share on there any opportunity we find for you to work with parliament as well as any advice and information we think will be useful for you as a researcher and you've got a dedicated knowledge exchange unit to help you that's myself it's laura who you've met on asking the questions and it's our colleague sarah as well and you can reach us on keu at parliament.uk keu knowledge exchange unit at parliament.uk but behind that email address are some friendly faces of myself and laura and sarah i hope you found the session useful and good luck with writing for parliament
2021-02-14