Jay Dominy is a Public Affairs Manager at CLOSER, which is the partnership of the UK’s leading social and biomedical longitudinal studies, based at the UCL Social Research Institute.
Longitudinal population studies follow the same people and households over time, collecting a wide array of data and information from their participants. CLOSER’s mission is to ensure that longitudinal research is used to address the health, social, economic and environmental challenges facing the UK.
With a background in public affairs and policy engagement, Jay focuses on increasing the use of longitudinal data and research to inform policymaking, bringing together the findings of CLOSER’s 19 partner studies to feed into policy discussions, often in the UK Parliament. Here he tells us about how he uses Hansard in his work.
Keeping a finger on the pulse
Hansard is a priceless tool that I use almost daily, and it is key to various aspects of my role. The first of these is to keep across the policy issues relevant to longitudinal population studies—studies that produce data and research on a range of topics, encompassing physical health, mental health, life chances, education and personal finance, to name a few. Every week there are several items of parliamentary business that are relevant to longitudinal research.
For a team such as ours, with finite resources and competing priorities, it is unlikely we will be able to watch these parliamentary sessions live, and any media coverage might miss a seemingly niche exchange of particular importance to our community. As such, we see it as incredibly useful that Hansard provides an edited verbatim record of all parliamentary proceedings, in one place.
Writing tailored briefings
Beyond its role in keeping our finger on the pulse of policy debates, Hansard helps CLOSER to identify which parliamentarians would benefit from our research evidence. For example, recognising a policy focus on active travel, we produced an Active Travel briefing note that brought together longitudinal research on the topic. From Hansard searches on keywords related to active travel, we were able to tailor the briefing with policy recommendations linked to recent parliamentary exchanges, ensuring their relevance and usefulness to policymakers.
Identifying interested MPs
Hansard also made it far easier for CLOSER to create a list of parliamentarians who have shown an interest in active travel, with whom we shared the briefing note directly. We received positive feedback from both peers and MPs, who thanked us particularly for the actionable policy recommendations. I’m confident that our bespoke approach, with context taken from Hansard illustrating why we chose to contact certain individuals, was far more successful in getting our research in front of parliamentarians than a bulk email would have been.
Accessible and efficient research
Hansard is a remarkable resource, not only recording parliamentary proceedings for posterity, but providing tools to make exploring these proceedings more accessible and efficient. I would encourage any researcher looking to understand what parliamentarians are interested in, and which ones are concerned about their areas of expertise, to take the time to explore Hansard.