Variation in evidence use across policy sectors: the case of Brazil

Abstract

Evidence use across policy sectors is widely believed to vary as each sector espouses a specific and dominant pattern in how it sources evidence. This view privileges the idea that a “culture of evidence” serves as a norm that guides behavior in the entire sector. In this article, we seek to nuance the policy sectoral approach to understanding evidence use by analyzing the results of a large-N survey of federal employees in Brazil (n = 2,177). Our findings show a diverse set of cultures of evidence with a few sectors like Science and Technology demonstrating a strong likelihood for using scientific evidence with most sectors showing a mixed pattern of sourcing evidence. However, a majority of the surveyed civil servants show an “indistinct” pattern of evidence use who are likely to not use any sources of evidence.