A taxonomy of policy questions: Examining style of policy inquires

To help advance exchanges between science and policy, a useful first step is to examine the questions that policy professionals pose to scientists. The structure of a question provides valuable indicators of what one is motivated to know, and what that knowledge might be used for. Therefore, understanding the pattern of inquiries typically made can helps scientists anticipate what types of knowledge policy audiences want from them. A data set (n = 2972 questions) of questions from policy professionals collected over 10 years (2011 – 2021) was classified into one of 7 classes of questions. In the main, policy professionals (public sector, private sector) invite answers that typically increase their causal understanding of a policy issue, and that included suggested plans of action they can consider implementing. Moreover, these seem to be general aspects of the nature of inquiry of policy professionals, given that the preserve regardless of policy issue (e.g., Artificial intelligence, Economy, Health). Thus, to maximize the utility of their knowledge in science-policy exchanges involves an applied approach of communicating mechanisms to inform the actions that could be taken.