While few would advocate that policy decisions be based solely on interest group influence or political pandering, few would also agree that decisions be based solely on evidence from randomized trials devoid of context or attention to stakeholder concerns. Yet, this is the implicit tension that has emerged between scholars, who privilege rigorously established research evidence as the primary legitimate basis for policy decision-making, and their critics, who advocate for a broader evidence boundary. However, the policy literature has hitherto failed to suggest an appropriate means of processing various forms of evidence to inform the policy decision-making process. This challenge is especially apparent in public hearings, a frequently used participatory medium where a great variety of evidence is presented. In this paper, we aim to reevaluate the value of public hearings as a means of collecting evidence by exploring 189 testimonies across six public hearings on single-payer healthcare in New York State. At the same time, we evaluate and categorize the types of evidence invoked in public hearings and compare this against what might “count” as evidence from an EBP perspective. Results highlight nine types of “evidence”, along two dimensions: observation span and form of knowledge. We find that applying a narrow boundary of research evidence, only one of nine types of evidence fit that classification: problem-based research. We conclude by suggesting that policy scholars expand their consideration of what types of evidence claims are useful to policymakers.

虽然很少有人会主张政策决策完全基于利益集团的影响或政治迎合，但很少有人会同意决策完全基于随机试验的证据，而没有背景或关注利益相关者的担忧。然而，这就是学者之间隐含的紧张关系，他们将严格确立的研究证据视为政策决策的主要合法基础，而批评者则主张更广泛的证据边界。然而，迄今为止，政策文献未能提出适当的方法来处理各种形式的证据，从而为政策决策过程提供信息。这一挑战在公开听证会中尤为明显，公开听证会是一种经常使用的参与式媒体，可以提供各种各样的证据。在本文中，我们的目标是重新评估公开听证会作为一种收集证据的手段的价值，方法是探索纽约州六次单一付款人医疗保健公开听证会的 189 份证词。同时，我们对公开听证会中援引的证据类型进行评估和分类，并将其与从 EBP 角度可能“算作”证据的内容进行比较。结果突出了九种“证据”，包括两个维度：观察范围和知识形式。我们发现，应用狭窄的研究证据边界，九种证据中只有一种符合该分类：基于问题的研究。最后，我们建议政策学者扩大他们对哪些类型的证据主张对政策制定者有用的考虑。