Though cited less often than university research, advocacy-oriented think tank studies have better odds of making the news, research concludes
Contact: Holly Yettick - (303) 803-2061; rachel.yettick@colorado.edu
Kevin Welner - (303) 492-8370; kevin.welner@colorado.edu
BOULDER, Colo., and TEMPE, Ariz. (July 27, 2009) -- University and government research gets the most play in two of the nation's most prominent newspapers and its leading education newsweekly. But it is reports produced by advocacy-oriented think tanks that have the best chance of being cited, after taking into account how much research is actually produced in a year.
These findings appear in a new policy brief jointly published by the Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University. The report, which examined articles in Education Week, The New York Times and The Washington Post, is The Research that Reaches the Public: Who Produces the Educational Research Mentioned in the News Media? It is authored by Holly Yettick, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a former education reporter.
While some education scholars have long suspected that independent, peer-reviewed research tends to be completely overshadowed in public discourse by the work of think tanks with an advocacy agenda, Yettick's study paints a more complex picture. Think tanks were the third most common source of articles about education research. The most common sources of research were universities and government agencies -- Education Week most often cited university-based research in its articles, while the Times and the Post most often cited research produced by government entities.
Yet while those two sources accounted for more articles in the respective publications, the references to think-tank-sourced articles were strikingly disproportionate when Yettick accounted for how much research they actually produced. Her careful estimates suggest that the number of university-based studies conducted in 2007 was 14 to 16 times the number of think-tank based studies. Yet Education Week, The New York Times and The Washington Post cited university-based studies just twice as often as think tank studies.
Given that substantial difference, Yettick says that her study suggests "that think tank research is over-represented in media coverage." This result is likely due, at least in part, to the skill and resources think tanks devote to publicity for their reports, using sophisticated marketing campaigns targeting journalists, policy makers, and the public. "Unlike think tank employees, university professors generally lack the incentives and resources to conduct public relations campaigns involving outreach to journalists."
Moreover, Yettick reports, other research has found that "unlike their colleagues who cover the hard sciences, reporters who write about education rarely use peer-refereed academic journals as sources of information." Other research has also found that press reports often fail to cite the advocacy orientations of the think tanks that produced cited studies.
In short, Yettick says, "For those who believe that such advocacy organizations are often more attentive to ideology than to methodology, there is both good news and bad to be found here. On the one hand, the diet of educational research being fed to the reader of these three major news outlets is probably more wholesome than some have feared. On the other hand, it is perhaps less sustentative than it should and could become."
University of Colorado professor Kevin Welner, the director of EPIC, praises the new study as offering a solid basis for designing future research and for engaging in current discussions. "Given the undeniable importance of these media outlets in helping to inform the public and policymakers, the report is asking key questions. And the results suggest a disproportionate reliance on the most convenient -- but not the most accomplished -- sources."
For her study Yettick analyzed 864 articles reporting on education-related research and published in The New York Times and Washington Post in 2007 and in Education Week during the first half of 2008. The research articles were categorized according to their original sources (including government agencies; university-based researchers; and think tanks).
Yettick concludes with three recommendations directed at journalists. Reporters and editors should expand their source lists, cultivating university researchers and paying more attention to peer-reviewed education journals for leads to news about the field. Additionally, she says, accounts of think tank reports should be more carefully vetted to ensure that they meet the sorts of standards for research that academically based researchers are required to meet through the peer-review process. Finally, articles should direct readers (especially online) to the full reports being cited, and research that hasn't been peer-reviewed should be so identified in news reports.
Find Yettick's report, The Research that Reaches the Public: Who Produces the Educational Research Mentioned in the News Media? on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/research-that-reaches
CONTACT:
Holly Yettick
(303) 803-2061
rachel.yettick@colorado.edu
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@colorado.edu
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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses. This policy brief was made possible in part by the generous support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/
EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org)
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