International Youth Researcher Meeting, Vienna, 22 September 2009

(Session Evidence Based Youth Policy and Youth Research, late afternoon
session)
Evidence-based youth policy: tensions and contradictions
Lynne Chisholm
Evidence is clean and policy is dirty; evidence-based policymaking is a fool’s
game and real intellectuals disdain to approach the nether regions of the
seemingly uncritical policy mind. The stuff of politics is opinions and power runs
to those who command the discourse, no matter what the facts may be. Evidence
plays but a minor role and largely legitimises that which has already been
decided. Effective policy action is not a question of securing the evidence, which
is abundantly, if chaotically, available. The problems lie elsewhere – in warring
interests, competing priorities, pressured budgets and voters’ entrenched
worldviews. Is there more to say? After all, there is little agreement on what
evidence genuinely comprises, there is no guarantee that research delivers
evidence and, unfortunately, evidence does not necessarily tell us what we
should do. Yet what would it mean to formulate policy non-evidentially? Such a
stance would be met with public outcry were it to be applied in the courts. Why
do people expect less of policymaking? Why do we demand rational deliberation
and evidence when it comes to atomic power stations, but assume that
formulating good-quality and effective youth policy demands less? How can we
demand more?