The Role of Advisory Boards in the Policy Process: An Analysis of the Attitudes of HEW Board Members

¹ No doubt this deficiency stems at least in part from the fact that prior to 1972 the available data on advisory boards were extremely limited. This situation has been greatly improved as a result of the passage of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (1972), which requires that the president annually report to Congress on the activities, status, and composition of all advisory boards and provide extensive data on them.

² The response rate is within the norm for mail questionnaires. Furthermore, the respondents are fairly evenly distributed among the HEW advisory boards included in the study. We sent questionnaires to members of 40 boards and received responses from members of 38. For most of these boards, the response rate was between 30 and 50 percent. The respondents also are fairly evenly distributed among the agencies of HEW. We received responses from members of boards under the jurisdiction of 10 of the 11 agencies included in the sample; for these 10 agencies the response rate varied from 25 percent for the Health Services Administration to 42 percent for the Food and Drug Administration. (The agency from which we received no responses was the Center for Disease Control (CDC)-none of the seven members of CDC's Tuberculosis Control Advisory Committee returned the questionnaire.)

³ Analysis of the characteristics of HEW advisory board members revealed that the average member is a 50-year-old white male who has a doctorate or a professional degree, works in higher education or in the medical field, and has an annual income of $45,000. In addition, board members overwhelmingly believe they were chosen for board membership because of their expertise, professional accomplishments, and reputations in their fields (Spohn, 1980).

⁴ The respondent was asked to assess his board's policy influence at the initiation ("bringing problems and issues to the attention of government officials and the public"), formulation ("proposing legislation and administrative rules and regulations"), adoption ("approving or rejecting proposed solutions to public problems"), implementation ("implementing or enforcing laws or regulations"), and evaluation ("assessing or evaluating existing policies to determine impact, effect, merit") stages in the policy process. For a discussion of the policy process as a sequential pattern of activity, see Anderson (1979) and Jones (1977).

Anderson, James E. Public Policy-Making, 2nd ed. New York: Praeger, 1979.

Cronin, Thomas E. and Norman C. Thomas . "Federal Advisory Processes: Advice and Discontent." Science 171 (February 1971): 771-779.

HEW Advisory Committees: Annual Report, Calendar Year 1976. Washington, D.C.: Office of Committee Management, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1977.

Jones, Charles O. An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy, 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1977.

Seidman, Harold . Politics, Position, and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Spohn, Cassia . "The Representativeness of National Advisory Boards: The Case of HEW." Midwest Review of Public Administration 14 (September 1980): 177-190.

Sulzner, George T. "The Policy Process and Uses of National Government Study Commissions." Western Political Quarterly 24 (September 1971): 438-448.

Wolanin, Thomas R. Presidential Advisory Commissions: Truman to Nixon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.