Answer Policy Content Plan

Slide 1: Hello, everyone. Now that you've had a chance to identify policies regarding the topics that we cover, it's time for you to create your policy brief. This lecture will serve as a tutorial and will help guide you through the process of creating your policy brief.

Slide 2: So what is a policy brief? As you can probably tell by the title, the brief is a short document that presents findings based on research regarding a specific problem and then provides recommendations to help solve that problem. The document must also be a stand-alone document, and this means that the reader or the audience should not need any additional outside information to fully understand your policy brief. You must provide all of the necessary context to understand your topic.

The policy brief should present information in an attractive and persuasive manner. Not only do you present just factual information, but it must be presented in a manner that will attract the attention of the reader. The information must also stay focused, focused on a single topic. The topics are given to you for this course, but make sure you stay laser-focused on your aim of the policy brief.

The goal for the policy brief is to explore an issue, account for lessons learned through research, and use this information to present relevant policy advice and recommendations.

Slide 3: The first step is to plan your policy brief, and perhaps one of the most important concepts in planning for your brief is to know your audience. So think of who your audience is and who you're writing the brief for, how knowledgeable are they about the topic that you will be discussing, and how open will they be to your message.

Consider three areas that you must apply to your audience specifically. The first is the information or the content that you include. This content must be complete, as we mentioned on the previous slide, and you need to make sure that your audience can understand and comprehend the information that you include in your brief. So when writing and planning your brief, be sure to use language that can be understood at the seventh or eighth grade reading level.

You also must cater your communication to your audience specifically. You need to present the information and your side of the topic in a manner that will persuade the reader without turning them away. For example, don't use overly dramatic language or photos that may deter specific members of your audience. Along the same lines, consider your argument. You will be taking a specific side on this topic and you must present your argument or your position in a respectful yet effective manner. Remember, if you offend your audience, they won't be interested in anything else you have to say.

Slide 4: Another important concept in understanding your audience is to consider how you can reach the reader. Your audience may not come to you so it is imperative that you understand how you can reach out to them. In order to figure this out, consider the following questions. What questions need to be answered from the audience perspective or the reader's perspective? For example, if you're reaching out to parents about the importance of mandatory childhood vaccination, it's important that you understand that many parents will have questions regarding the safety of vaccination. What interests or concerns does the audience have regarding the topic? Given all of these topics are fairly controversial in nature, the level of interest or concern will most likely be extremely high. So be sure you do not discount the importance of the topic to your reader. What will it take to reach influential readers? The media, decision makers, and other influential readers are very important to successful communication. Consider how your policy brief will be viewed and accepted by them.

Slide 5: Now we are going to look over the key components of your policy brief. This includes the title, the summary or introduction, a hook element, data, policy options, and of course the recommendation.

Slide 6: The purpose of the title is to serve as an effective description of the content that will follow in a manner that grabs the attention of the audience. The title needs to be both informative and catchy. Your title must be original. Of course you can include components and ideas from other sources, but be sure not to plagiarize the title from another source. As I mentioned, your title needs to be creative and catchy to the reader. Again, in order to be successful, you must consider your audience.

And just as a helpful hint, it's often helpful to write the title last. This way, you will have all of the information and the content in mind when developing the title, and this may result in the best possible heading for your brief.

I use this example of a title here, Grabbing Opportunity By the Mane: Africa's Future Potential for Economic Development. It's a very catchy title and a nice play on words with the use of mane. And it leaves you thinking that possibly has something to do with lions or some sort of animal, but you don't know. So what are you going to do? You're going to continue to read.

Slide 7: Next is your summary or your introduction. The purpose of this section is to provide a concise overview of the content that will follow. The summary should contain any and all necessary background information. You should include all relevant information but no unnecessary information. Again, include all necessary background information. Remember, this should be a stand-alone document, meaning the reader should not have to look for any outside information or sources to understand your brief completely. Understand the significance and answer the question why is this issue significant, why is it important, and why is it urgent. Give a brief overview of the conclusion. And much like your title, the summary should further intrigue the reader and persuade them to continue. So it should further create curiosity for the reader.

I use this example of an introduction because it gives you all of the necessary background information, even provides a source, and it even touches a little bit on policy options.

Slide 8: The hook element is an extremely important component in your policy brief. The reason is the purpose of the hook element is to provide a message that will be the most motivating and engaging for your audience, resulting in a call to action. Again, an issue that we will repeat throughout this lecture is to know your audience. The hook element is likely to change from one audience to another and even from one topic to another, so make sure you understand who will be reading your policy brief.

The hook element should be short, perhaps one to two sentences, but it can also be an image like the example displayed or even a grouping of words or statistics like displayed here. But be sure that the hook element is also sufficiently descriptive. And your hook element should be crafted in a manner that will stimulate the reader to call them to action. So that's the entire purpose of the hook element is to be something else that draws the reader to motivate them to do something.

I use this example here because it actually has two hook elements. Here you have the icons saying, "Drive sober or get pulled over," but you also have the sidebar there that has disturbing facts. So you can see here that more than 181 children were killed due to drivers who were drunk. This is a startling statistic and it's something that may stick in someone's mind to really motivate them to, "Hey, I want to make a change and I want to do something about this problem." That's the purpose of your hook element.

Slide 9: Research and data must be a priority in the planning and the creation of your policy brief. This is because it serves as the basis for your entire brief. Without sufficient research and data, your content would be nothing more than an opinion. Research results in greater knowledge and data provides the evidence to support and back up your stance. So again, research and data will serve to provide facts, factual information to support and back up your position. This will in turn provide legitimacy to your entire brief as a whole, but especially to the recommendations that you'll be making. And as many other components of the policy brief, research and data will continue to persuade the reader on the issue at hand.

I use this example here because often it's helpful to express data visually or visually in addition to the use of text to get your point across in the most effective manner. So you can see here you have text and a visual graph displaying specific data.

Slide 10: Next are your policy options. Your policy options provide an opportunity to discuss ideas in a where to go from here type approach. The policy options may also discuss implications of particular options and also lead to your recommendation of what you feel is the best option. So consider what the current options are and cater to your position but also consider the other side of the argument as well. Also consider policy options that have been successful or perhaps failed in the past.

I used this example here. Obviously, yours will not need to be this long, but I like that it includes option one is do nothing. Perhaps some of the issues that we'll be discussing, maybe things could just stay the same. So even doing nothing oftentimes in regard to policy is just keeping things the same, not making a chance, and then discussing implications based on that.

Slide 11: Finally, you must provide recommendations. Your recommendation serves as a call to action. You want to tell the reader what they need to do next. To assist in the development of these recommendations, consider the following questions. What actions are you recommending and what effects do you anticipate based on those actions? It's not only important to consider what you need to do but the potential reactions of your decision. Your recommendation should clearly and easily flow from your argument. It should be backed by evidence as we mentioned in discussing research and data. You recommendations should be very specific and they must be appropriate and relevant to your audience.

Slide 12: Now let's look at some important design elements. They should help guide you in the planning and the design of your policy brief. They are persuasion, aim, language, and visuals.

Slide 13: Persuasion is extremely important in this policy brief. You're trying to persuade someone that you are right and that your position is the right position or your recommendation or your option is the best option. You may be even trying to change someone's mind about a topic. Maybe they're on one side of the argument and you want to convince them and persuade them to your side and why your side is the best. So keep this in mind throughout the entire process of creating your policy brief, because persuasive can be successfully implemented verbally and visually. So it can be through the content and the words that you use or it can be through data graphs or images. So don't think of it as one-sided. Persuasion can be evident in almost every part of your policy brief.

A couple of things to consider. What value does this issue have for you? Also, what value does or should this issue have for the reader and why? Promote a sense of urgency and importance throughout the policy brief. Persuasive elements include the hook element that we discussed a few moments ago, but all of the elements should work to persuade, from the title to the summary to the hook element, photos, data, as I mentioned previously.

A recommendation should be the next natural step given a successful policy brief. So if you have persuaded your reader and your audience correctly, accepting your recommendation should be a natural step.

Slide 14: To be successful, your aim must be very clear. It must be evident throughout the policy brief and you must stay laser-focused throughout. Your argument should flow. It should flow clearly from the beginning to the end. Additionally, your conclusion should be clear from the beginning as well. For example, if you were discussing mandatory vaccination, you can state your conclusion of, "Vaccinations should be mandatory." This still leaves plenty to cover throughout the brief, plenty of content, but your conclusion and the end position that you are going to take is evident from the beginning.

Your recommendation should be clear and specific and they should flow logically from the evidence presented in the brief as well as your arguments. All information used should be necessary for the development of your argument. Be sure that you only use necessary information and you include all necessary information but that you eliminate unnecessary information.

Slide 15: Consider the language that you will use in your policy brief. Noted below are a couple of areas that you should focus on to make sure your information and your content is understood by your audience. First, make sure your policy brief is jargon-free. This means the use of acronym, topic-specific terms, or things like that should be eliminated so that it doesn't cause additional confusion, all right? Maybe you understand it or maybe they're terms or acronyms that you understand, perhaps because you're in the field or just because you've done the research on the topic. But think, "Does my audience understand all of this information? Does my audience understand what this acronym means, what this term means?" Perhaps not. You want to make sure you use terminology that your reader can understand, the common reader can understand. So eliminate jargon.

Also make sure the language that you use is fairly simple. Do not use unnecessarily complex verbiage. So using that as an example, instead of saying unnecessarily complex verbiage, I could have just said don't use large or fancy words when simpler words will do. So that's an example of how perhaps you need to use just simpler ways of saying the same thing to make sure it's easily understood.

Be sure that you do not clutter sentences with unnecessary words or clutter the page with unnecessary content or design. This could be through the use of proper sentence structure or a good use of white space and spacing around the entire page. Make sure your brief is not cluttered.

Also use active voice. We have a couple of examples here. So using this first example here, saying your bicycle has been damaged would be a passive type language, whereas saying I damaged your bicycle is using active voice. All right?

Slide 16: The policy brief is informational, but it's also a very visual document and it relies heavily on its appearance, especially in the following areas. The appearance of your policy brief should act to persuade the reader. This could be through, as we mentioned, images or data and graphs. These can be used to persuade to a particular side, and your design could also convince the reader to continue reading about the topic.

Your policy brief should also attract the eye of the audience. So what will cause the members of the general audience you're trying to attract? What will cause members of that audience to become a reader of the entire document? Why do I want to read your policy brief? You should also use visual cues that aid in promoting a move to action and a call to action. Again, we want to attract, we want to persuade to continue, persuade to our side, but we also want to motivate call to action.

Your policy brief should also be easy on the eyes and allow an effortless scan over the information. If visually your policy brief is too difficult to figure out where the information is and the flow and where it's going, it's probably not going to get a lot of attention from the reader and the end goal may not happen at all, which the end goal is to again promote a call to action. So be sure that visually as well as content-wise your policy brief flows very well and seamlessly.

Slide 17: In summary, we've got a pretty good understanding now of what a policy brief is and also what the end result should be. Remember, the final version of your policy brief should attract, persuade, and motivate a call to action. We've also discussed the importance of knowing your audience. Cater the entire brief to your audience. Make sure that you don't turn them off, that you don't speak over their head from a knowledge perspective, and that you don't give too much information. Again, key components are the title, the summary, the hook element, the use of research and data, policy options, and of course your recommendations, also the important design elements of persuasion, the aim or focus, language, and the use of visuals.

I encourage you of course to review your syllabus to go over the specific description of the assignments. And as always, if you have additional questions about the assignment specifically or policy briefs in general, be sure to reach out to your instructor and they would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Slide 18: The following are a few links that you may find helpful throughout this process.