The use of Science to Support Decision Making: Knowledge Absorptive Capacity Perspective

Even today, we notice that scientific research remains little consulted and used by policy decision-makers when supporting decisional processes linked to public policies. Indeed, considerable research shows that the integration of evidence faces major well-known and well-documented barriers. Significant research identified several factors to facilitate the evidence-based decision-making process. Isolated, they only paint a partial portrait of the reality of conditions that research designates as essential to Evidence-Informed Decision Making (EIDM). The purpose of our study is to document the skills of policy decision-making that facilitates the use of research to develop and design policies. This study includes a systematic review of literature on evidence-based decision making among policy decision-makers. Based on the absorptive capacity theory (Cohen and Levinthal 1990), this research aims to shed light on two aspects of the EIDM condition that have been less explored so far: 1) identify the skills that public health decision-makers must have to use scientific research in the decision process and the formulation of public health policies and 2) explain their role and tasks in the process leading to the use of science.