Impact tips
In this page, you can find materials and tips to help you make sure that your research outputs are read and understood by policymakers, so that they can ultimately inform policy development.
Top tips for presenting research to a policy audience
The following list of tips was produced together with Scottish Government colleagues. It can be used for reports, presentations, blogs or other formats you use to present your research.
Our audience is time poor and not research specialists. It is important to keep reports, briefs and presentations short, inclusive and in plain language.
The reader should be able to read the executive summary and understand:
- what is the problem, issue or challenge
- why it matters
- what can be done.
Clear communications
Answer the policy questions. Set the research in context, explaining the possible implications of the findings. Be constructive and identify solutions. Highlight benefits of your work, quantifying them if you can.
Use appendices for technical detail and methodology. These should be available but are not of primary interest to the policy reader.
Include a line about the methodology you used in the executive summary.
Comply to the page limit. Reports over eight pages should have an executive summary of no more than two pages.
Make it visual if a graph/infographic can illustrate your report. You can find guidance in the Government Analysis Function Data visualisation: infographics page. If you have to compress an image in Word, please email the original file to us. This will enable us to provide it to others if required, with due credit and references.
Focus on lessons for policy action and recommendations, if requested in the specification. Future research needs must be specific and linked to achieving policy outcomes.
These tips are also relevant to increase the impact of your research. Study relevant Scottish Government policy documents and write two pages, with key points up front, about how your findings can help meet targets.
Accessibility
Keeping to our template will ensure your report is accessible and inclusive.
Headings: Use preset styles in Word instead of changing the font size by hand or using bold. Headings and titles should be sentence case; never use block capitals or capitalised words, except for proper nouns.
Tables should only be used for data and not layout purposes. Avoid using merged cells. You can use invisible text and borders instead. This would look like cells are merged but screen readers can read the text. The font size should be at least 11pt.
Don’t use text boxes. Instead, apply borders to paragraphs, using the border tool in Home.
Contrast between text and background colour should be as high as possible. Check on WebAIM if unsure.
Images of text are not accessible. If you need to use images that include text, describe the key points in the report text or ensure alt text is added by right clicking the image and going to ‘View Alt Text’. Do this as if you were on the phone to someone describing what the image communicates. Text such as the title, should be body text rather than part of the image. The font should be at least 11pt. Do not put text over pictures or graphics.
Highlighting messages: Don’t use italics or underlining. If you need needs to highlight text, bold is more accessible, but use it as little as possible.
Colour alone should not be used to convey information; provide a key/legend. The CXC report template provides you with the CXC colours; use them for graphics and tables where possible. You can use complimentary colours if necessary, keeping contrast in mind.
Links: Avoid using hyperlinks in the text. If you need to use them because they are not suitable as footnotes or for the References section, they should be descriptive; for instance: ‘visit the ClimateXChange Projects page’. URLs can only be used in the References section.
Align text to the left. Do not use text fully justified.
Blank pages should be deleted.
Plain English
Keep sentences short, maximum 15-20 words.
Use active verbs. For instance, ‘Government will review the plan next year’ reads better than ‘A review of the plan will be undertaken by government next year’.
Use ‘we’. Be personal when writing about the work you, the researchers, did.
Use clear wording. Define any terms that may be read differently by different audiences. Everyday language makes it more accessible for anyone who may want to read it.Proofread your text beyond relying on Word’s squiggly lines.
Best practice
Researchers who work on our projects have the opportunity to inform policy development. We work with several policy teams from the Scottish Government each year and their feedback on the impact of our research projects is very positive. For some examples of impact, please visit our Case studies page.