Photo: UBC-O

Assistant professor Carey Doberstein

Just how much credibility do government policy makers give to think-tanks or private advocacy groups?

Not much, according to a study published in Policy Studies Journal by UBC Okanagan assistant professor of political science Carey Doberstein.

Doberstein concluded public sector workers gave more credibility to reports or studies purported to be from universities than those from a think-tank or advocacy group.

For his controlled experiment, Doberstein asked B.C. public sector staff to read and assess the credibility of various policy studies. For half of the respondents, the authorship of the studies was randomly switched, while the content remained the same.

“There were systematic and at times extraordinarily large differences between the credibility assessments provided by these policy professionals on precisely the same policy studies, when the only part I changed was the label of who wrote it,” said Doberstein.

“Irrespective of the content and just by virtue of presenting it as written by an academic, the report suddenly becomes more credible in the eyes of bureaucrats.”

Doberstein said he was surprised by the magnitude of the differences he observed.

In one instance, he said a report originally authored by the Fraser Institute saw its credibility skyrocket when authorship was switched to that of a university academic.

The same happened in reverse, with a university study receiving low credibility marks when those grading the study believed it was written by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.