Skip to content
An official website of the OECD. Find out more
Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

How to validate authenticity

Validation that this is an official OECD website can be found on the Innovative Government page of the corporate OECD website.

Good relations – behavioural science trial to measure impact

General Information

Project description

The objective of the practice is to apply the behavioural lens (behavioural governance) on the Good Relations pilot-project.

During the spring 2023 Finnish Centre for Economic Development, Transport and Environment will be hosting about 20 decision maker events as a part of their Good Relations –project. These events are organized to bring together local decision makers (city councils and public officials) and different population and language groups to discuss good relations among local population.

Each of the events is based on preceding Timeout-dialogues with the population groups. The preceding dialogues were hosted by CEDTE, Advisory Board for Ethnic Relations and locally operating non-governmental organizations (not involving the decision makers).

High level objective is to evaluate the Good Relations decision maker event -model in Finland:

- How the events influence the participant experience in terms of the Good relations-model concepts: attitudes towards others, personal security and safety, interaction with others and participation/influence.
- To better understand the participatory processes in the decision maker events and key areas for further development:
- How to increase the experience of involvement of the population groups when discussing with the decision makers?
- How to engage the decision makers to the goals of reducing racism and promoting good relations amongst population groups?

Analysis Plan

Hypothesis

How the events influence the participant experience in terms of the Good relations-model concepts: attitudes towards others, personal security and safety, interaction with others and participation/influence? How to increase the experience of involvement of the population groups when discussing with the decision makers? How to engage the decision makers to the goals of reducing racism and promoting good relations amongst population groups?

How hypothesis will be tested

Through Timeout-dialogues (timeoutdialogue.fi/) with different population/language groups (spring-autumn 2022). We will ask the same questions (as in Timeout-dialogues) also from the decision makers before the events (Webropol questionnaire) in 50% of the events, to enable the comparative analysis. We will use the ‘More of this/less of that’ facilitation method (Cynefin) in all the decision maker events.

Analyses

We will evaluate the events with SenseMaker method (micronarratives, thecynefin.co/sensemaker/), pragmatic, ethnographic and digitalised approach to capture the things that are likely to gain social traction/shape collective understanding, and to capture the 'most significant' things.

Who is behind the project?

Institution: Prime Minister's Office - Finland
Team: Finnish Behavioural Policy Unit

Project status:

Pre-registration

Methods

Methodology: Mixed Methods, Pilot experiment
Could you self-grade the strength of the evidence generated by this study?: 1
Data collection: Have any data been collected for this project already?: Some or all of the data have been collected, and the research team has had access
Start date: 05/01/2022

What is the project about?

Policy area(s): Administration, Justice and Safety, Public governance
Topic(s): Equality and Social Justice
Behavioural tool(s): 一 Other

Date published:

2 March 2023

Comments are closed.