How Sure Is Sure? Certainty and Ambiguity in Science-Based Policymaking

• In Event: Public Policy Innovation, Implementation, and Processes

Brief Overview

We use congressional hearing transcripts to evaluate messaging tendencies with respect to science-based policy to determine how expressions of probability and levels of certainty are used by different actors over time and across administrations.

Authors

• Sara Guenther, Montana State University

• Deserai Crow, University of Colorado Denver