Identifying the key factors affecting the using of futures studies in policy making

Policymakers should make policies for vague and uncertain futures. Considering that futurist have an important role in the policy-making process, but future- oriented research is not considered a part of policy-making. The purpose of this article is to identify the factors that improve the futures field and policy-making relationship. The identification of these factors has been done with the method of library studies and focus groups. eight factors improving the communication between the two fields of future studies and policy-making were identified, of which eight factors specifically improve the relationship between policy analysis and futures studies, which have the weak relationship; These factors include: the level of uncertainty, the type of subjective judgment towards the future, the type of policy analysis, the conditions of the policy environment towards the future, the approach of the agents towards the future, the understanding of the system in facing futures issues, the institutional conditions of openness to alternatives and time horizonis about the future. After that, the alternatives of each of these factors have been extracted to expand the vision towards the future, which can be the basis of different scenarios of supportive decision-making models in future research. rs.