Getting evidence into action: how can we understand what we already know?

Our Co-director, Dr Sarah Morton writes about the processes involved in setting up an Evidence Bank to support public and voluntary sector partners in accessing existing research evidence to help to inform decision making.

At the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships we have always valued working closely with non-academic partners. At the end of one particular research partnership with national family organisations (Cool with Change) we started a conversation about what other research the partnership might do together. Many of the topics our partners were interested in were areas where there was already a lot of research, but it was very difficult for these non-academic agencies to get a sense of what that research was. So we set out together to develop ways to make existing research more useful.

We explain the reviewing process we developed to address that issue in an article just published by the journal Evidence and Policy (Evidence synthesis for knowledge exchange: balancing responsiveness and quality in providing evidence for policy and practice). The process focussed on making sure that evidence was useful, timely and relevant, and could be put into action by people working in children and family services.

Why is evidence reviewing important?

Often people need to understand what we already know from research in order to develop services. Traditional systematic reviewing is time consuming and often doesn’t offer very accessible summaries. Our evidence bank process sought to address these issues.

What kinds of topics were reviewed?

We developed a range of ways of interrogating what partners wanted to know from research in order to define review topics. This involved visiting and revisiting questions like:

• What is the general topic area you are interested in? 
• What is the issue or problem you are trying to address? 
• What do you want to know about this issue? 

But we also explored the potential uses of the evidence through questions like:

• What do you plan to do with the data/report? 
• Who will the data/report be relevant to within and out with your organisation? 
• What difference do you hope that using the data/report will make?

In addition to spending time exploring what people wanted, we also created a scoping stage, where we would look at the literature in general terms, get a sense of its size and scope, and return back to a discussion of what the specific focus should be.

Through the process we looked at: Parenting Teenagers; Transitions to Primary school; How families have changed; and other topics.

What was different about the reviews?

As well as being tailored very specifically to real world practice issues, the reviews have a number of distinctive features:

• They explain how the topic review fits in with the wider literature and which subjects and disciplines it comes from, to give a sense of the ‘evidence landscape’ in which it sits.
• The scoping and final reports are peer reviewed by an academic and a user reviewer who has practical experience and knowledge of the field.
• The reports are edited by a knowledge exchange expert, written in plain language with a short summary. 
• Reviews contain ‘talking points’ that focus on the practical implications of the evidence presented, and aim to move thinking away from the idea that research can tell you what to do, towards the idea that research provides a framework to help decision-making. 
• They are conducted in a shorter time frame with involvement from partners throughout.

How have the reviews been used?

We worked closely with partners to explore how to make the reviews useful. We tried and tested a number of approaches, from large forums, communities of practice, and linking with improvement approaches. They have led to some specific actions, for example:

• In West Lothian a review of transitions to primary school was used to test and embed new approaches to supporting children and families.
• One of the partners from the About Families programme used the evidence to develop new ways of including parents in the design and delivery of services. 
• In What Works Scotland a review of partnership working has been used by local authorities to reflect on and improve the effectiveness of partnerships for public service delivery.

What next?

The Evidence Bank review process has been taken into What Works Scotland and is being used there for a number of reviews. 

Learning about evidence and policy at the Scottish Government

CRFR PhD student Rebecca Black reports back from her internship at the Scottish Government 

This summer I had the fantastic opportunity to work as a PhD intern at the Scottish Government. I worked with the Children and Families Analytical Unit, there for three months - a departure from my normal role as a CRFR associate PhD student.

The internship, facilitated by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, was designed to provide the opportunity to work outside of my PhD topic while developing valuable experience and skills. Throughout the internship I took on a variety of projects across a range of topics: From early learning and childcare to children’s rights to Safeguarders’ in the Children’s Hearing System.

I was quickly thrown into the action with a consultation analysis. The Scottish Government recently produced guidance on Children's Rights and Children's Services Planning sections of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (Part 1, section 2 and Part 3 respectively). This guidance was put out for consultation and I found analysing the responses received really interesting. I had to quickly become familiar with the core components of the guidance and the Act and enjoyed distilling the responses into feedback for the policy team[1]. I also learnt a lot during this process, which illustrated the importance of the advocating and lobbying role that institutions such as CRFR play in ensuring that all voices are heard in the government’s work.

I also had the opportunity to see how policy and analyst teams work together to ensure evidence-based policy is crafted and implemented. The increased provision of early learning and childcare was one such policy initiative that I was involved in, producing two preliminary reviews of evidence for the policy team. This involved consolidating vast amounts of research to create a report that succinctly summarised the current state of evidence. These reviews were then incorporated in to briefing packs that were sent to the Ministers and policy teams to aid their decision-making.

One of the key highlights of my time however was working on the development and tendering of a piece of research. It was a novel experience and provided insight in to how research bids are put together and the selection process. It was great to see how analysts and policy-makers collaborate to ensure quality research is conducted and valuable outputs are produced. Having spent quite a while in the academic environment, being part of this process gave me real insight into a different facet of research and the practical processes surrounding this.

The internship, while short in duration, provided me with a wealth of experiences and developed a range of transferable skills (e.g. writing succinctly, writing in lay terms and working with different expectations). The experience has also offered me plenty of ideas on how I can improve my own PhD study’s relevance to policy, hopefully widening its future dissemination and expanding engagement with policy makers.


[1] The analytical report has now been published and available to view online at: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/09/3725/downloads.

Unequal families and relationships

Next week we shall be hosting our 5th International Conference in Edinburgh; on Monday we shall welcome over 200 delegates from 31 countries. 

Here, CRFR co-director Dr Jeni Harden introduces the conference and next week some of our keynote speakers will be posting to our blog. For those who are unable to join us, you can follow the conversations on twitter using the hashtag #CRFR2016.

 We chose inequality as the theme for our 5th conference, reflected in our conference name ‘Unequal Families and Relationships’. Inequalities and social divisions are created, reflected, reinforced and sometimes subverted within families and personal relationships. We received a fantastic response to the call for papers, which has allowed us to produce a very interesting programme for the three days.

In the paper sessions we will address some key questions: How are social divisions and inequalities experienced within the context of families and personal relationships? How do inequalities of gender, social class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and generation, intersect within and between families, households or friendship groups? How are families and relationships implicated in sexism, racism and bigotry, as well as political resistance to injustice and encouragement of inclusiveness, fairness and equality? What comparisons can we draw between the global north and global south?

We are also very pleased to have keynote speakers who are leaders in the field of families and relationships. Julia Brannen; Kyung Sup Chang; Kathleen Gerson; Lynn Jamieson; David Morgan; Peter Moss.

We are introducing a couple of new things to the conference this time – Skills Taster sessions providing a brief introduction to a range of methods used in researching with children and families and the Evelyn Gillan Research Impact Prize for families and relationships research that has influenced the lives of children, families, or households. The prize, supported by the Scottish Government is in memory of our late colleague Evelyn Gillan (1959-2015).

We hope that everyone attending the conference will have an enjoyable and inspiring time. Remember to join the conversation on twitter #CRFR2016.

An End to the Crisis of Empirical Sociology? Trends and challenges in social research

CRFR associate director Linda McKie and co-editor Louise Ryan introduce their new book; An End to the Crisis of Empirical Sociology? Trends and challenges in social research. London: Routledge 

Social research is facing challenges, as well as exciting new opportunities, from the growth of private sector research companies, rapid advance of social media, and intense debates on privacy and big data. At the same time in universities, research councils and learned societies we are debating the teaching of research methods. How can we ensure the training of future generations of researchers? In what ways do we need to update training and how can we maintain and enhance quality in research? These debates have wide implications for research on families and relationships as we consider the diverse and dynamic nature of intimate and family life.


The idea of ‘crisis’ is discussed in the opening chapter. The idea of a crisis in social research coalesced around developments in big data, the growth in research undertaken by private sector companies and charities, and debates on causality and the claims emanating from research projects. In questioning any simplistic notion of a ‘crisis’, this book brings together well-known, leading authors in the field as well as newly emerging young scholars to explore the many innovative strategies and techniques being employed within the social sciences.

In subsequent chapters colleagues working at the forefront of these debates offer a range of data and insights on these issues. Evelyn Ruppert examines the ecologies of big data, while Richard Webber and Trevor Phillips use a range of demographic data to research entrepreneurship among different migrant groups. Various applications of big data are examined by Roger Burrows, and David Miller and William Dinan to research elites and the super-rich. These chapters illustrate the practical uses of big data for social scientists. This topic is further explored by Dhiraj Murthy in his analysis of how twitter data could be used to answer sociological questions.

Further innovations in research techniques are discussed by David Byrne in his use of the extended case study to conduct comparative research on cities. Annabel Tremlett and Roxy Harris consider how researchers could go beyond the interview to use a range of ethnographic methods. Focusing on survey data, Rachel Lara Cohen discusses the possibilities of a quantitative feminist sociology. The advantages of mixing quantitative and qualitative methods are explored by Alessio D’Angelo and Louise Ryan in their analysis of migrant social networks; most research project designs are mixed method and this is a core debate for researchers. Despite the many opportunities for innovative research, there are practical challenges in teaching research skills to under graduate sociology students, as discussed by Malcolm Williams, Geoff Payne and Luke Sloan. In his thought-provoking epilogue, Mike Savage reflects on the many ways in which sociologists are responding to on-going challenges and ends on a rather optimistic note.

The book provides up to date and accessible material of interest to diverse audiences, including students and teachers of methods, research design, data analysis, policy analysis and social media. The authors offer critical insight into how education/ academia is responding to methodological advances and innovations and the impact of this for student training.

For a 20% discount please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/posts/9779

===================

CRFR associate director Linda McKie is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University.
Louise Ryan is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex University

Using research to influence family services and policies: issues and challenges

Today Policy Press announced that the number 1 spot on Families Societies and Relationships' top downloaded papers for 2015 is occupied by 'Using research to influence family services and policies: issues and challenges' by CRFR co-director Sarah Morton and colleagues Sandra Nutley (Director of the Research Unit for Research Utilisation) and David Phipps (Executive Director - Research & Innovation Services. York University, Canada). Policy Press have opened access to this for the month of February, along with the other top ten articles.

You can read the original blog that accompanied the publication of the article here: CRFR Blog: Using research to influence family services and policies

Involving children and young people in research and consultation: lessons learned from Scotland

Sara Lembrechts, of the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (KeKi) in Ghent, Belgium, attended our series of continuing professional development (CPD) courses exploring research with children and young people last year. In this post, Sara reflects on her time with us in Edinburgh and what she took away from the course and implemented in her day-to-day work back home.

In Spring 2015, my colleague and I attended the CPD “Involving children and young people in research and consultation” with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships. In three times two days, dr. Susan Elsley and prof. Kay Tisdall guided us through the do’s and don’ts of meaningful and ethical participation of children and young people in research and policy making. The programme was a success – it stimulated our critical perspective on innovative creative and digital methods, made us become aware and question the assumptions that implicitly guide our work, and encouraged us to return to Belgium with a whole set of new ideas to implement.

The course conveners managed superbly well in creating a welcoming and comfortable environment in which interaction with the small group of participants was only natural. We have benefited greatly from the knowledge and experience of fellow researchers, practitioners, youth workers, artists, TED-speakers, poets, academic writers, resource persons and – last but not least – the children who joined us with their views and tips & tricks throughout the programme. The invitation to be creative and go digital ourselves was refreshing, as it opened our mind to new resources we were previously unfamiliar with. What is our own image of childhood, and how does it influence our work? How do you make sure participation is not tokenistic? How can we use the arts or digital media as a “way in” to get in touch with young people? How do you translate creative output into data?

The debate about such questions has indeed proven its great use in our day-to-day work at the Flemish Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (in Dutch Kenniscentrum Kinderrechten vzw, abbreviated as KeKi). Operational since 2010, KeKi aims to gather, make available, disseminate, stimulate and increase knowledge on children’s rights. As such, KeKi operates as a bridge between (1) researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines, (2) policy makers in local, regional and federal government, and (3) practitioners working on matters concerning youth and children’s rights. In this role, KeKi develops tools, trainings and content that encourage critical reflection and can, at the same time, help in translating knowledge on children’s rights to these diverse domains (see www.keki.be/en).

One example in which we were able to implement what we had learned in Edinburgh, is a policy advice we recently wrote for the Flemish Government Administration on child participation in (local) policy making. We were asked to collect good practices, in particular on how to involve vulnerable youth (including children in poverty, children with disabilities and children in institutional care) in local and regional (i.e. Flemish) policymaking. Using the resources Susan and Kay had generously made available, we were able to show Flemish policy makers what they could learn from their colleagues abroad and hint at the tips and tricks we learned from everyone we met in Scotland.

Thanks to all who contributed in making our stay in Edinburgh so relevant and inspirational!

CRFR’s next CPD course Involving children and young people in research and consultation takes place in March and there are a limited number of spaces available. For further information and booking details, please visit: www.crfr.ac.uk/eventsandtraining/training/cpd-training/involving-children-young-people/

What next for the early childhood research agenda?

What are the current trends, tensions and innovations in research with young children? What can we learn from early childhood research undertaken in different parts of the world? Where should early childhood research go next? In this blog CRFR Co-Director, Kay Tisdall introduces the recently published Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Research within which she and her co-editors set out to address these questions.

Policy-wise, early childhood used to be largely ignored. But in recent decades, early childhood has gained unprecedented attention, globally and nationally. Certain empirical evidence has helped garner this attention, from the tradition of child development, to the interest of economists, to the brain scans of babies. Qualitative and quantitative research has accumulated, across an even broader range of disciplines. As early intervention and early childhood become popularised policy concerns, it is timely to take stock.

Ann Farrell (Queensland University of Technology) reached out to Sharon Lynn Kagan (Columbia University) and myself, to ask if we wanted to put a book together. The result is the edited collection, just published as The Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Research. We set out to include a broad range of disciplines, both areas with rich and long-standing research investment and emerging ones, and learning from different contexts around the world.

Some of this was challenging to achieve. We were surprised by the number of childhood researchers who felt they ‘didn’t do’ early childhood. The magic age of 8 was a cut off for quite a few of our potential authors. This is a finding in itself: is there too artificial a divide between ‘early childhood’ research and ‘childhood’ research, reifying age and stage distinctions that may not be applicable to the research agendas and questions at hand? Is there more than could be learned across these literatures and research areas? We sought to encourage all authors to think widely, not to assume that their findings would address all diversity and all contexts. While this was well familiar to many of our authors working in the Global South (majority worlds), this was more challenging for some of our authors from the Global North (although generously receptive to our editing suggestions). Some authors came from a critical perspective on early childhood research in general and their own particular areas of work, while others were encouraged to introduce such a critique within their chapter, to stimulate us and future readers.

The book now has four parts: situating early childhood research; theorising early childhood research; conducting early childhood research; applying early childhood research; and considering the future. It covers a wealth of topics (from children in conflict situations to sustainability), a range of methods (from econometrics to narrative inquiry), and disciplines (from human geography to neuroscience). By the end, we identified three focal areas for the future early childhood research agenda. First, we need to address under-considered areas: responsiveness to cultural and ability variation; systematic structures and elements; and global comparison and trends; and the quality of ECE services, their equitable distribution and their sustainability. Second, we need to enhance research methodologies, tools and approaches, including new technologies and valuing both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Third, research results need to be applied more systematically and judiciously.

We conclude that implementing such an agenda is not a short-term or piecemeal undertaking. We aspire to the book contributing to critical reflection and provoking controversial thinking. By doing so, we think this will move early childhood research to its rightful place admist meaningful, sustainable and effective policy and practice.

=========================================================================

Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people

Partnerships for Impact- making research partnerships work

The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships in consultation with ResearchImpact in Canada and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) have developed a Manifesto for Partnerships between Universities and Non-academics. Here Executive Director Sarah Morton explains what’s in the manifesto and how it can be used.

There is broad agreement amongst research funders in the UK (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/pe/embedding/) that if academics work more closely with partners from outside the academy their work is more likely to have impact. It helps to embed research in real world issues, creates a group of willing and ready stakeholders, linked to wider networks and can help academics learn about the kind of language and methods required for effective take-up of research. At CRFR we often work together with range of public and third sector partners. We wanted to draw together what we have learned from this and make it more widely available. A partnership manifesto was the way we decided to do this.


Where did the manifesto come from?

In my own research (Creating research impact: the roles of research users in interactive research mobilisation) I investigated partnership and found that there were many ways in which CRFR working in partnership with ChildLine Scotland had led to the impact of that research. I presented these findings about impact to the Scottish Third Sector Research Forum in 2014, and the level of interest led to the idea for a manifesto for partnership research.

Findings from my research were discussed at a workshop at the NCCPE national conference in 2014, with a range of experienced researchers and KE professionals adding their experience. It was then discussed by the Scottish Knowledge Exchange Community of Practice and the ResearchImpact network in Canada:

"At ResearchImpact we were happy to be invited to collaborate on the Manifesto." says David Phipps, Executive Director, Research & Innovation Services, York University, Canada. "We shared it among our members who provided feedback to Sarah and her CRFR team. Working closely with partners creates the conditions for research to have an impact beyond the academy. The manifesto provides guidance and tips to help support community-campus collaborations."

The final version has taken on board all comments received and we are confident it is based on the most recent research and informed by the key experts in this field.


What is in the partnership manifesto?

The manifesto takes a process approach to thinking about partnership. It looks at identifying partners, and then goes through the stages of partnership research: starting partnerships, developing funding bids, developing partnerships, and sharing research findings. Advice includes being explicit about what both sides in a partnership can gain, and what commitment is needed, recognising knowledge and resources, and being clear about the difference between research, evaluation and commissioning. A few final comments suggest the need to choose partners carefully where possible, create spaces to reflect on what is and isn’t working, and to include impact assessment so that everyone can show what difference is being made.


How can the partnership manifesto be used?

We hope that the manifesto will provide a useful tool for people interested in research partnerships, whether from third or public sector organisations, or researchers themselves. Whatever stage of partnership people are in, we imagine the manifesto being a useful tool for discussion, development and reflection during partnership research. It can be a means of ensuring everyone is on the same page, by setting out key considerations for open discussion. When partnerships are not going well it might be a tool for reflecting together or separately on what the issues are and how they might be addressed.

Download a copy of the partnership manifesto

Progressing research impact – a ‘contributions’ approach

Sarah Morton has been working in knowledge exchange since 2001 and has recently published a framework for assessing research impact based on contribution analysis. Here she talks about how her approach not only provide impact analysis, but helps improve knowledge exchange with a focus on making a difference for people and communities. http://rev.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/4/405

My interest in assessing research impact rose from working on getting evidence into action. With colleagues here at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (www.crfr.ac.uk) over the last 15 years I have explored how to make research accessible, useable and meaningful to those working with children and families, or making policy on their behalf. Knowing whether or not we were making any difference was a logical extension from that work.

We have a small team of KE professionals working closely with our research team at CRFR. We have worked around the knowledge exchange agenda through an artist in residence (Levehulme), a three year project working with the voluntary sector to try to close the knowledge to action gap, a six year contract working closely with analysts in the Scottish Government, a dissemination post attached to the Growing up in Scotland (http://growingupinscotland.org.uk/) study, as well as well-planned programmes of engagement and dissemination for each of our research projects. I became interested in impact assessment because I wanted to know more about if we were making a difference, and if so, in what ways.

But assessing the impact of research on policy and practice is not easy. Our approach at CRFR recognises that research users are not passive recipients of knowledge, but that they engage with research from their own perspective, and that complex relationships and networks of researchers and research users are often channels through which research is communicated, debated, utilised, reworked, reused and developed. To understand impact we need to consider changes in policy and practice, changes in people’s knowledge and understanding of an issue, as well as the broad range of potential areas of influence, all highly context dependent. All of these factors make understanding and assessing research impact difficult, as I discuss in more detail in my paper.

I was delighted to be introduced to Contribution Analysis by Erica Wimbush, then Head of Evaluation at NHS Health Scotland (http://www.healthscotland.com/), on a visiting scholarship to the University. Many things about it seemed to make sense for research impact:

• A focus on who is engaged and involved, in what ways, and the learning needed to underpin change.
• The concept of ‘contribution’ is more appropriate for research which cannot cause change on its own, but need to be facilitated by a receptive environment and the actions of change agents
• A way of linking activities to wider outcomes, with a focus on processes, to create a strong story of how impact occurs.

I used this approach to develop the Research Contribution Framework, within a study that looked at what research impact was and how it happened. (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/ep/2015/00000011/00000001/art00004) Since developing it we used it in various ways, including with CRFR’s research, ESRC genomics investments, a participatory research programme at the University of Leicester (http://www.crfr.ac.uk/briefing-assessing-research-impact/), as the basis of a four star REF impact case study (http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=23984) and to plan impact for the ESRC/MOD Future Reserves Programmes (http://www.future-reserves-research.ac.uk/).

At is core the framework sets out a pathway to impact, assessing for risks and assumptions and gathering evidence to show that it is robust. It can be used to plan and assess knowledge exchange as you go, retrospectively to assess impact, or in combination. It is highly adaptable to different timescales and contexts. It works best as a tool for teams, ideally including research users, to plan and align activities that have the most chance of really making a difference to communities and people. At its most simple it breaks down impact into three processes:

• Research uptake: research users have engaged with research: they have read a briefing, attended a conference or seminar, were research partners, were involved in advising and shaping the research project in some way, or engaged in some other kind of activity which means they know the research exists.
• Research use: research users act upon research, discuss it, pass it on to others, adapt it to context, present findings, use it to inform policy, or practice developments.
• Research impact: changes in awareness, knowledge and understanding, ideas, attitudes and perceptions, and policy and practice as a result of research

By thinking through these processes, a pathway with potential measures can be set out:

So at CRFR we now work with research teams or advisory groups to set out this kind of pathway for all of our new projects. The more perspectives, views and knowledge about the context for impact the easier it is to explore. We use this framework to help plan our KE activities, and we track as we go, allowing us to assess effectiveness early on, and adapt when approaches don’t seem to be working. We can see the impact story unfold in different ways, and if unexpected impacts occur, incorporate these into our pathway. Some of the tools we use for doing that are on our website (http://www.crfr.ac.uk/using-research/knowledge-exchange-training-and-resources/).

This approach sets out a linear pathway to impact, but this does not imply that research uptake, use and impact happens in a linear way. There may be several threads running through an impact story at different timescales, and looping back and forth between the categories. This is discussed and set out in the paper in more detail.

What’s great about working in this way, is that it helps to focus on why carry out KE activities, who they will engage and how, what they need to do differently for change to occur. It can help identify partners and steer resources towards where they can be most effective. Most of all it is usually an enjoyable way of getting teams together to explore what difference they might make through research and knowledge exchange.

How does research impact happen?

CRFR have been working in partnership with key voluntary sector organisations from the children and families sector since our inception in 2001.  Sarah Morton carried out an impact case study on the wider effects of CRFR and ChildLine Scotland’s (CLS) joint research conducted between 2004 and 2009.  

This research had investigated children’s concerns about significant others and children’s concerns about sexual health.  Findings about how impact occurs have just been published in an article in the Evidence and Policy Journal which the Policy Press have kindly granted open access to until the end of May 2014: Creating research impact:the roles of research users in interactive research mobilisation. The study is one of very few examples of detailed analysis of the processes of research use by non-academics.

The concepts of ‘research uptake, use and impact’ were defined in this study, in order to describe the processes of research utilisation and their link to different kinds of impact:

• Research uptake: research users have engaged with research: they have read a briefing; attended a conference or seminar; were research partners; were involved in advising and shaping the research project in some way; or engaged in some other kind of activity which means they know the research exists.
• Research use: research users act upon research, discuss it, pass it on to others, adapt it to context, present findings, use it to inform policy or practice developments.
• Research impact: changes in awareness, knowledge and understanding, ideas, attitudes and perceptions, and policy and practice as a result of research.

The phrase ‘research uptake, use and impact’ then sets out a process-orientated definition of research getting into policy and practice, and implies a pathway of engagement between research and relevant communities, activity and change that creates impact.

The impact case study found many examples of research from the CRFR/CLS partnership being used in several sectors. However, there were only three examples of clear links between the research and wider change. The paper demonstrates how research came to have an impact in alcohol policy, sex education practice, and in the call-taking practice of CLS. In each case practitioners, policy-influencers or policy-makers played a key role in generating impact. They used their specific knowledge of the settings they worked in to rework the research in order for it to have an impact:

In the alcohol policy example a key policy-influencing organisation commissioned a follow-up study from ChildLine Scotland to draw out children’s experiences of living with parents who drink which had a significant impact on national policy.

In the sex education example, one organisation created a quiz based on the research which was extensively used throughout schools and children’s services in a large local authority area. There was clear evaluation evidence that this quiz had changed parents, teachers and other professionals views of their role in sex education.

Within ChildLine Scotland, an organisational learning process involved all key stakeholders in consideration of the implications of the research for the service, leading to a change in call-taking processes, and specialised training for call-takers.

The fact that the research had been conducted in partnership between a service agency and a research centre was important in achieving impact. The research was relevant and timely due to the participation of a non-academic with rich networks and on-the-ground knowledge in the research team. Both agencies had high levels of credibility and trust amongst policy and practice communities who were interested in the research. ChildLine Scotland workers talked about the research within their networks prior to it coming out creating anticipation of the findings and readiness to use them.

While the ways that research led to impact described here suggest that engagement and collaboration between research producers and research users are important elements in how research gets used, it is those members of the public, business, government or the third sector who take up the research, if timely and relevant, who are key to subsequent impact. Impact cannot be achieved by researchers alone. It would be impossible to anticipate all of the context-specific potential uses of research that might create impact, and interacting with all of the relevant stakeholders in a meaningful way may also be challenging. Knowledge exchange work to generate impact by CRFR and CLS was also key to stakeholders engagement and subsequent use of the research.

Read the full article here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/ep/2015/00000011/00000001/art00004

Journal Club: Is that clear?

Relevance, access, collaboration, timeliness – magic words in the world of knowledge exchange. They were also key factors, helpfully identified by Oliver et al in their systematic review of studies of barriers and facilitators in using evidence. Taking the lead from Research Impact’s Journal Club, the CRFR Knowledge Exchange reading group ‘Practice what you preach’ met to discuss the review and reflect on our own experience of working in the field of evidence-use. We have captured our thoughts here, with links to some examples.

 

Oliver, K., Innvar, S., Lorenc, T., Woodman, J and Thomas, T. (2014). A systematic review of barriers to and facilitators of the use of evidence by policymakers, BMC Health Services Research, 14:2

Stop talking about dissemination

• Is it time to move beyond the concept of dissemination[i]? Dissemination was a key term in many of the papers in this systematic review. Research needs to get out there, but this one-way concept isn’t going to achieve results in getting policy makers engaged with research. We, along with the rest of the academic community, talk more about engagement, impact, and collaboration. It is important to plan, from the outset, how different audiences will be able to access and use research.
• It is a shame that the report authors grouped ‘access to research’ with ‘dissemination’ in their factor analysis. They are two very distinct issues – does it mean access to primary research, and/or research being made accessible through translation? A breakdown of these terms would have provided a clearer understanding of the barriers and facilitators for policy-makers.

How clear is clear?

• It would have been helpful if the authors had unpacked what was meant by 'clarity of research findings' within the studies they analysed. Were they referring to research which was written clearly and easy to understand, or were they referring to research which had clear recommendations and proposals? Research rarely provides clear recommendations of potential actions even though that is often what policy-makers and practitioners want.
• Knowledge exchange and mobilisation work means working with the available evidence to help shape what might happen next. We explored this in our CRFR briefing ‘Claiming an evidence base for services and interventions’. We are constantly working in this terrain as knowledge brokers for example:
• Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) – practitioners often ask for more information about how to use study research findings in practice. 
• About Families project and Evidence Request Bank development project– we often explain that research doesn’t provide direct answers, it poses questions and helps service professionals reflect on practice and share understandings with colleagues
• So we need to separate out ideas of knowledge exchange and implementation, as Melanie Barwick, who is running a KE training course here in Edinburgh in May says:

  “Knowledge translation and implementation are complimentary but different constructs. Knowledge translation involves helping others to understand the evidence; implementation involves supporting them to make the changes needed to apply the evidence. Impact means capturing that people knew what to do with the knowledge you shared.”

What are people doing?

• We noted that most studies included in the review were based on researcher’s or policy-makers perceptions of evidence use. There is a big difference between what people think they or others do, and what those people actually do. Sarah Morton’s forthcoming publication in Evidence and Policy will explore exactly what research-users do to apply research to policy or practice.
• The research-policy gap still appears as a barrier to evidence use within this review. Lack of policymaker research skills was also highlighted as a barrier, and we wondered, given the sheer amount of policy-relevant research that is produced, whether these two factors were linked. The issue of a research skills gap in local policy-making has been highlighted elsewhere[ii].
• So does more need to be done to present research in formats that can be easily digested into the policy environment? We have been working on this…
• GUS briefing in partnership with the Scottish Childcare and Protection Network, ‘What can research do for you?’ 
• GUS Briefing from Scottish Government Community Regeneration and Tackling Poverty Learning Network Learning Point 50 ‘GUS: Using evidence in practice’
• GUS Briefing for the Improvement Service ‘Key Messages from Growing Up in Scotland – Briefing for elected members no.13’
• Evidence Request Bank and About Families project - produces and shares appraised summaries of evidence in direct response to practice needs.
• We facilitated a meeting with Scottish Government policy staff to help inform the development of the Parenting Strategy, highlighting research from several of our Directors.

Improving collaboration

• In our experience collaboration and access are closely linked. Close collaborations between policy-makers and researchers increases access to research surely?
• There is general recognition of the importance of relationships between policy and research sectors, and issues are now more about nurturing a collaborative approach where both parties are active participants.
• We were also pleased to see that comparing the previous review with this one, mistrust is less of an issue. It seems a success of those working within the broad knowledge exchange field that the various audiences are at least recognising the role each other plays.

Tactical evidence

• We noted that the article didn’t refer to tactical or political use of evidence; that is when evidence is used or presented in a certain way to provide a desired answer. We felt that it must have been mentioned in some of the research included in the review.

[i] http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/promoting-change-through-research-impact-research-local-government  http://www.alliance4usefulevidence.org/publication/squaring-the-circle/
[ii] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/08/19/is-it-time-to-ban-the-term-dissemination/

Making more sense out of evidence-based practice

Evidence-based policy and practice and knowledge mobilisation are frequently used terms, but what are the key challenges in using research to develop and improve services for children and families? In this blog, CRFR Co-Director (Knowledge Exchange) Sarah Morton reflects on a recent talk at The Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto.

I was delighted to be asked to open up a discussion about what we mean by knowledge based approaches, what helps and hinders knowledge utilization, and what approaches we can take to enhance knowledge mobilisation in different policy and practice settings. 

I drew on my 12 years experiences of leading knowledge exchange at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (www.crfr.ac.uk) based at the University of Edinburgh, with partners across Scottish Universities. This built on my experience of working in voluntary and statutory sectors on family and relationship issues, and more recently my PhD looked at how research impact occurs, and how it can be assessed.[1] 

In the space of a blog there is perhaps room for three key messages from my talk:

• What do we mean by research-utilisation?
• What is evidence for service and practice?
• Key ways of improving research use

What do we mean by research utilisation?
We often think that using research means creating a policy or practice change based on research findings, but research can be used in many ways. Drawing on work by Nutley et al (2007) research might raise awareness of an issue, change people’s knowledge or understanding of an issue, challenge attitudes, perceptions or ideas – all of these are pre-requisites of policy or practice change.

What is evidence for service and practice?
I have become concerned recently that we are narrowing our definition of evidence-based practice to mean solely that we are using programmes based on randomised controlled trials (RCT’s), for example, parenting programmes. Whilst this kind of evidence-based practice has its place, it is also problematic. Usually the trials have taken place in different contexts and countries, and adopting them wholesale undermines the expertise of local practitioners and underplays the cultural differences between communities. Recent work with Evaluation Support Scotland (http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/) set out a range of ways we can think about evidence-based practice and services.

A programme can be evidenced-based in various ways:

• Our evidence: We have run this programme before and collected evidence to show that it worked for this group.
• Similar organisation evidence: Another organisation like us has run this programme before and collected evidence to show it would work (although not experimentally tested it).
• Broad research evidence: We’ve reviewed the research base and found strong evidence from research that the approach we are taking can work for the client group we are working with
• ‘What works’ evidence: This approach has been subject to randomised control trials (RCT) and we believe that our client group and context are similar enough for the same approach to work here.
• Innovation in the evidence-gap: Where there is no clear and appropriate evidence of what works for a particular client group, a programme can contribute to the evidence by experimenting and evaluating an approach that looks like it might work (from the available evidence). 

A full version of this discussion is available here: http://www.crfr.ac.uk/assets/CRFR_ESS_IS_Evidence_base_briefing.pdf

Key ways of improving research use.
There is well documented discussion of the key challenges for research use (e.g. Walter et al 2003). In order to improve the way that research links with policy and practice we need:

1. Translation – research in easily accessible forms for all those who might use it (this might be different for different groups).
2. Networks of relationships between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to ensure that research is discussed, new research agendas have joint ownership and the possibility for close partnerships throughout the research cycle[2].
3. Learning organisations with strong leadership that recognise and understand new knowledge, assimilate and combine it with existing knowledge and translate knowledge into actions that will benefit the organisation[3].

We have a long way to go to develop these new ways of working that will enable researcher, policy-makers and practitioners to close the gap between knowledge and action. Organisations like The Factor—Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and CRFR are important in leading the way.

Dr Sarah Morton, BA, MSc, MSc.
Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh. Knowledge Exchange Specialist to the Scottish School of Public Health Research. Associate of the Research Unit for Research Utilisation (St Andrew’s University), and the National (UK) Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. 

[1] Morton (fasttrack 2014) Creating research impact: the roles of research-users in interactive research mobilization. Evidence and Policy
[2] Best and Holmes(2010): Systems thinking for Knowledge to Action. Evidence and Policy May
[3] Harvey, G., et al. (2010). Absorptive Capacity: how organisations assimilate and apply knowledge to improve performance. Connecting knowledge and performance in public services : from knowing to doing. K. Walshe, G. Harvey and P. Jas. (eds) Cambridge University Press. 

   

 

Research impact, the long way round

Lesley Kelly works as a knowledge broker for Growing up in Scotland a longitudinal research study tracking the lives of thousands of Scottish children and their families from birth through to the teenage years and beyond. She is part of the knowledge exchange team at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships www.crfr.ac.uk

No matter how hard we try to engage directly with stakeholders, sometimes research impact can happen in a more unplanned, circuitous way.

As part of my role in engaging a wide range of stakeholders with the Growing up in Scotland study,  I recently sent out an electronic newsletter to our 1,500 research network members.   As usual, our newsletter featured links to new publications, including journal articles published using data from the study. In this case it included an article about ‘Early parental physical punishment and emotional and behavioural outcomes in pre-school children’. The article had been written over 3 years ago by a public health professional as part of a postgraduate course of study but was only recently published on-line in the journal Child: care, health and development.

A freelance journalist who received the newsletter picked up on the article, particularly the finding that children living in Scotland whose parents had used smacking as discipline technique during their first 2 years were at increased risk of emotional and behavioural problems by age 4 years. The author uses the findings to argue for a change in the law to ban physical punishment of children and for more resources to promote positive disciplinary techniques amongst parents.

This set off a whole chain of awareness raising, debate and publicity.

The journalist wrote a short article for the Scottish newspaper The Herald and contacted one of Scotland’s leading children’s sector charities, who responded by releasing a statement in support of a ban on the use of physical punishment. This is an issue on which many NGOs have been campaigning for years  from a human rights based perspective, so were delighted to find new research providing further support for their argument.

Subsequently, ‘should smacking be made illegal?’ was the subject of a debate on a high-profile programme on BBC Radio Scotland, Call Kaye, featuring detailed input from one of the directors of the children’s charity and many listeners who called in to express their views. While the research itself was given only a brief mention by the radio presenter it might be argued that sharing the research findings helped to raise the profile of the campaign to ban the physical punishment of children in Scotland.

So, the children’s charity, thousands of readers of The Herald and listeners to Radio Scotland were engaged in the issues of whether physical punishment of children should be banned. That group includes parents and carers, practitioners and policy-makers. In the world of knowledge exchange, we have to accept that no matter how hard we plan, there is always room for serendipity. Impact can happen by accident and is no less valuable than planned exchange.

Lesley Kelly
Dissemination Officer (Growing Up in Scotland study)
Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh
www.growingupinscotland.org.ukwww.growingupinscotland.org.uk
@growingupinscot
lesley.kelly@ed.ac.uk

This is a simultaneous blog for CRFR and Mobilize This! http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/