Replication Data for: The Impact of Professional Training in Public and Policy Engagement

Engaging with audiences and communities beyond academia is now a common practice for political scientists. Yet political scientists are rarely trained in how to conduct public or policy engagement, and we know little about the impact that training programs can have on their preparedness to communicate with the public or policy makers. In this study, we evaluate whether professional training can equip scholars with the skills needed to perform public and policy outreach. We find that a four-day training program generates remarkably large increases in the shares of participants reporting that they possess high levels of knowledge, preparation, and confidence for public and policy engagement. This finding suggests that investments in public engagement training by universities and the discipline of political science have the potential to boost public outreach by faculty considerably.