Conceptualizing policy advocacy effectiveness in NPO research: A scoping review of criteria and indicators

The aim of this scoping literature review is to conceptualize Policy Advocacy Effectiveness (PAE) within the sphere of nonprofit advocacy, responding to recent calls for research on NPO advocacy outcomes. We focus our analysis on the criteria and indicators used in empirical studies to measure NPO-driven PAE. Our findings identify five main categories of outcome criteria: policy cycle outcomes, organizational capacity outcomes, constituent outcomes, public salience outcomes and societal outcomes. Each operationalized with a diverse set of indicators that are seldom replicated across our sample. Despite this apparent multi-dimensional conceptualization of PAE throughout the studies, our review reveals a dominant trend toward unidimensional assessments, a focus on policy cycle outcome criteria and a methodological preference for perceptual methods in evaluating PAE. Moreover, our analysis exposes a significant lack of theoretical grounding in the reviewed studies, with minimal integration of political or policy process theories. In light of these findings, this paper advocates for a future research trajectory that could deepen the understanding of PAE. We recommend fully embracing the complexity of PAE, encouraging researchers to adopt a multi-dimensional perspective and to diversify their methodological approaches to enhance the robustness and relevance of PAE-related findings.