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. 

Five tips for getting knowledge into action

This post, written by CRFR co-director Sarah Morton, was originally published on the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research, (KNAER)/Réseau d’échange des connaissances pour la recherche appliquée en éducation (RECRAE) blog.

I think we are at a good time in the knowledge mobilisation field. We have built a body of research that explains a lot about what helps and hinders knowledge getting used to aid decision making in policy and practice. (see Oliver 2014). We are developing rewards and incentives to help academics get research out of the academy (e.g http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/innovation/policies/), and we are at least paying lip service to the idea that policy and practice should be informed by the latest evidence (KNAER is a good example).

Despite this, there are still many pitfalls along the way, and it is often easier to identify where things went wrong rather than success stories. The five tips I have identified below will not surprise many readers of this blog, and yet they are often the pitfalls that I see in practice. I’d really welcome any comments from readers about whether these are issues that you see in your practice, if I have missed something major, or if you disagree completely!

Five tips for getting knowledge into action:

1. Plan ahead

Any good project or process involves careful planning, but how often is evidence-use included in the plan? If researchers want their research to have impact, a well-planned user engagement and KMb strategies have been shown to be effective (http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/research/evaluation-and-impact/taking-stock-a-summary-of-esrc-s-work-to-evaluate-the-impact-of-research-on-policy-and-practice/). On the policy or practice side, valuing evidence, showing leadership and embedding evidence into organisational practices are all key.

So what would a planned evidence use process look like? For those from policy or practice it might consider how evidence will frame any project or development (http://www.crfr.ac.uk/assets/CRFR_ESS_IS_Evidence_base_briefing.pdf) , how it will be considered and built on, what will be done when people don’t agree on what the evidence says, and how evidence will be accessed, analysed and interpreted. For research teams and partners it would consider who will be engaged and involved, what methods are best for engaging stakeholders and how the research might contribute to change. This needs to move beyond simple ideas of making research accessible, into more complex and process focussed projects. (I have written about this much more extensively here http://rev.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/4/405.abstract)

2. Get the right people round the table

In our evidence to action projects About Families (http://www.crfr.ac.uk/projects/current-projects/about-families/) and the Evidence Request Bank (http://www.crfr.ac.uk/projects/current-projects/evidencebank) we learnt a lot about who is involved in evidence-use processes. Like others taking a systems-thinking approach (e.g. Best and Holmes 2010) we believe that it is essential to include a range of key actors in any knowledge mobilisation process. This would include considering the skills mix of any team in accessing, interpreting and animating evidence of different types. Any systems change also needs to include the perspectives of all key players within the system. Depending on the size of the change project these views might be represented in person, or through consultation of various kinds.

3. Have the conversation

Often the starting point for evidence use projects is the evidence itself, but there are a variety of discussions and framings that are essential for evidence to action. What is evidence needed for? What kinds of evidence might be useful? How will they be interpreted? How will evidence inform change processes? Who needs to be involved? Research doesn’t speak for itself so relationships are key to evidence to action. Effective facilitation of knowledge mobilisation needs an ongoing sense of open dialogue, regular revisiting of planned aims, interrogation of context, and keeping the conversation going about the usefulness and relevance of evidence. We worked with Research Impact (http://researchimpact.ca/) and NCCPE (https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/) to develop a manifesto for partnership research that can help frame some of this conversation http://www.crfr.ac.uk/manifesto-for-partnership-research/.

4. Focus on the process

Using evidence is not a one-off event, but an ongoing process. If people feel they have ‘done’ knowledge mobilisation then they are missing a trick. Using and reusing evidence, checking as programmes develop, and building up more evidence as events unfold are all essential parts of successful knowledge mobilisation. An ongoing focus on the processes can open up new opportunities, ensure ground is not lost, help address conflict and tension, and assess changing contexts and their implications for KMb. Overall a focus on processes helps to ensure knowledge mobilisation continues to be as effective and relevant as it can be.

5. Learn, evaluate, review

I said in the opening of this blog that we are in a good place in terms of understanding barriers and facilitators to knowledge mobilisation (although a recent review is opening up this conversation http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/using-evidence-what-works). We are in a less clear place about what strategies and methods are most effective in which circumstances (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK299400/). As a community of knowledge mobilisers we need to develop evaluation methods, reflect more deeply and write up what we find out. My own approach to this has been published here http://rev.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/4/405.abstract. Every project needs a learning, review and evaluation process, even if on a simple team scale. As the field matures this will be essential in honing the craft, creating training programmes and developing the most effective strategies.


So those are my five tips for getting knowledge into action. How do they resonate with your own experience? What might you add? What resources do you use? I look forward to continuing the conversation: leave a comment below or find us on Twitter @CRFRtweets.

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Best, A. and B. Holmes (2010). "Systems thinking, knowledge and action: towards better models and methods." Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice 6: 145-159.

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

Care leavers’ narratives of their past and future selves

Ahead of their CRFR seminar on 13 October and National Care Leavers Week 2015 (22-31 October), Lisa Whittaker (University of Glasgow) and Emma Davidson (University of Edinburgh) reflect on their research project Young People and their Future Selves.

This project arose after a chance meeting at the Journal of Youth Studies conference in Glasgow 2013. Lisa was working for a Scottish youth charity (who we will call the Green Project) and Emma had recently finished her PhD. Lisa had always felt that the video diaries filmed by young people at the end of the Green Project’s residential programme were a potentially fascinating resource. In these videos young people reflect on, and talk to, their ‘future self’. We were fortunate to be awarded funding from The University of Edinburgh’s Challenge Investment Fund for a pilot study to analyse a sample of video diaries combined with interviews with young people who had recorded them. We hoped this would give us an insight into the social worlds of vulnerable young people that research often overlooks.

Over the past 18 months we have interviewed 20 young people, some had not grown up in care but most of our sample had. Young people had different motivations for participating. Many wanted to give ‘something back’ following a positive experience at the Green Project but several were still experiencing challenges in their lives and saw the interview as an opportunity to re-engage with support. The interviews themselves were powerful and often very emotional. While we did hear positive stories about care, unfortunately many more were negative.

Our findings highlight the importance of relationships for young people in care, specifically the role of care, love and consistent unconditional support within professional/corporate relationships. Many of the relationships young people experienced were shaped by bureaucratic boundaries and regulations. There were many examples of positive, supportive professional relationships ending abruptly and without warning, and young people’s own ‘natural’ transitions into adulthood often did not match those impressed upon them by the care system. Young care leavers articulated goals and aspirations in their video diaries and interviews, but all too often structural processes denied them the opportunities to realise their aspirations and were left in precarious situations.

Our findings add further evidence to the research and debate about young people’s experiences of care. In particular we see parallels with IRISS’s exciting project Relationships Matter, the work of CELCIS and Who Cares? Scotland. We have shared our findings at several national and international conferences and will shortly submit several papers to leading journals. However, we would like to look beyond measuring success on the completion of academic outcomes. By working collaboratively with practitioners we can share information, clarify our understandings and inform their practice. Following the CRFR seminar, we have more knowledge exchange activities planned (including a podcast for IRISS:FM) which we hope will help build a network between the University, practitioners, policy-makers and young people.

Please note: our CRFR seminar is now fully booked. If you are interested in finding out more we would really like to hear from you. Please contact Emma Davidson e.c.davidson@ed.ac.uk and Lisa Whittaker lisa.whittaker@glasgow.ac.uk and follow us on twitter via @lisawhittaker02 @emz_davidson

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

Novel approaches to delivering knowledge exchange for academic research - what might be effective for the social sciences?

Ever thought about delivering the results of research through a play based on the first-hand experiences of the study’s subjects? Or how useful might it be to prepare a report for policymakers using a narrative borrowed from crime fiction, that grabs the reader through their “discovering the body” [of evidence] in a piece of research in a way similar to how characters in a murder mystery might discover a corpse?

These were some of the possibilities considered by the CRFR reading group when we recently read Communicating social research findings more effectively: what can we learn from other fields? This publication examines a raft of novel and impactful approaches for conveying outputs from (predominantly non-social science) research to target audiences, which go beyond merely “information telling”.

The challenge of changing minds…
The paper begins with a background section on why it is important for social science research to inform policy and practice agendas and delivery. Many of us found the “Knowing” pathway (adapted from Ekblom, 2002) – shown below – to be a useful summary of the processes and stages involved in successfully formulating and conveying research so that it achieves an impact within the policy/practice arena.

• Know why action is required, for example the relationship between basic values, beliefs and assumptions and future policy decision;
• Know about problems, for example the nature, formation, natural history and interrelations of health and social problems in context;
• Know what works, that is what policies, strategies or specific interventions will bring about desired outcomes, at acceptable costs and with few-enough wanted consequences;
• Know how to put it into practice: knowing what should be done is not the same as being able to do it effectively - knowledge about effective programme implementation is also needed;
• Know who to involve: such knowledge covers estimates of client needs as well as information on key stakeholders necessary for potential solutions and mechanisms for building alliances for action.

As the authors of the paper point out, knowledge exchange needs to be “as much about changing minds and mental models as about supporting specific decisions.”

 

Communicating social research findings more effectively?

Having established the context that, in order to maximise impact from social research, it might be necessary to move beyond “information telling”, the rest of the paper considers a range of knowledge exchange approaches used by “influencers” in fields outside the social sciences. These were divided into six categories:

• Narratives and stories: fiction, faction and persuasion – moving from the use of logic, data and evidence in the promotion of knowledge, to instead generating empathy through emotions, values and imagination;
• Language choice and metaphor diversity; employing more creative use of language as means to more effectively communicate social research;
• Advertising and marketing - using the persuasive and creative skills developed by these disciplines to effectively communicate with, and potentially influence, key knowledge users;
• Journeying together: co-producing knowledge – deploying collaborative models of research production that involve and engage knowledge users throughout the lifecycle of a research project;
• Immersion and experimental learning – moving from seeking to describe the lived experiences identified by qualitative and ethnographic research to seeking to replicate these very experiences first hand; and
• Creativity and the arts – employing art, music and drama as channels through which: knowledge can be exchanged; fostering of practice development can occur, and potentially tools through which research itself can be progressed can be developed.

There was agreement that some of the approaches - such as the co-production of knowledge - were certainly relatively novel in relation to social science research. However, the group identified several examples of social science research projects that utilised a number of novel approaches to promote knowledge exchange. These included:

 

Exploring the lives of people living with alcohol related brain damage (ARBD) using photography. The project culminated in the public exhibition of the photographs, amongst other creative outputs.

•  The appointment of a writer in residence to catalogue the experiences of nurses throughout Scotland, as well as encouraging them to compose their own stories focusing upon their work.
• Working with young people to explore their thoughts and attitudes to self-harm and how this might relate to drug and alcohol use. One of the project's key outputs is the production of an animated film on these issues, produced by young people, for young people.
• The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas, a strand of the Edinburgh Festival that allows academics to debate, sometimes controversial, research with a public audience in a cabaret-style format.
• Practitioner Research: Older People: a series of small-scale research projects led by practitioners involved in delivering care for older people with support from Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) and IRISS

Discussions about these, and other examples of novel engagement initiatives, prompted debate over the possible resultant blurring of boundaries between research activity, knowledge exchange and art.

 

Our deliberations concluded with there being a consensus that the paper was thought provoking in highlighting examples of how non-conventional channels and tools can be used to bring about knowledge exchange and associated impact for the social sciences. However, it's also important to consider that these should be used as part of a comprehensive KE strategy that seeks to engage target audiences in a way that is relevant to their needs and behaviours. To draw an appropriate analogy - given that one of the approaches highlighted in the paper is marketing - there is little point in running an advertising campaign on Facebook, if the majority of its intended target audience is not connected to the internet...

 

Chris Berry

KE and Impact Officer

School of Social and Political Science

 

References

Davies, Huw T.O.; Powell, Alison E. (2012) Communicating social research findings more effectively: what can we learn from other fields? Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, Volume 8, Number 2, May 2012, pp. 213-233(21).

 

Ekblom, P (2002) "From the source to the mainstream is uphill: The challenge of transferring knowledge of crime prevention through replication, innovation and anticipation", in N. Tilley (ed) Analysis for crime prevention: Crime prevention studies, volume 13, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.

Developing an evidence service for the children and families workforce

Karen Seditas shares learning from the Evidence Request Bank - a one year pilot development project which aimed to open up the evidence base for delivering public and third sector services to children and families in Scotland.

The Evidence Request Bank (ERB) aimed to help services to access and use social research evidence by supporting them to identify specific gaps in knowledge and consider how evidence could help address them. The ERB produced reviews of relevant evidence, and supported services to plan how to use evidence in practice. An evidence-to-action cycle was created to support project partners we worked with.

The project was led by the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) in collaboration with Parenting Across Scotland, West Lothian Council, Children in Scotland and the Scottish Government, and based on previous development work by CRFR.

How project partners are using the ERB evidence reviews:

•  West Lothian Council: used an evidence review on transitions to primary school to create a driver diagram to inform tests of change as part of its Early Years Collaborative work. The review enabled them to direct resources to areas that are likely to be effective, and help practitioners be confident that they are doing the right things in a complex area.
• Parenting Across Scotland: held a seminar to discuss a review of data on family households, used the data to inform its online information resources and policy work, and will discuss specific areas, gaps in data, and implications for policy and practice further.
• Parenting Across Scotland and the Scottish Government are developing accessible materials (e.g. infographics) from the report on family households for further sharing.
• Children in Scotland: is planning forum events to discuss implications of the ERB evidence reports relating to children and families, and sharing evidence through its training programme, magazine and website.

What we learned about enabling the children and families workforce to use evidence includes:

• Even when people want to use evidence to inform their work, they find it difficult to be clear about what they want to know and to make decisions about what should be prioritised.
• Approaches to using evidence may differ depending on the context and purpose of why it is needed, and on the previous experience of staff in using evidence in their work.
• Involving whole teams in discussions on how to use evidence helped to explore different understanding and expectations of using evidence and demonstrated how evidence can inform service delivery. It also helped to direct resources where they were most likely to be effective.
• A range of issues may affect how organisations react to evidence. Even where organisations want to use evidence, services may not have the resources to change in response.

You can read more here: http://www.crfr.ac.uk/assets/briefing-73web.pdf

Read the evidence reviews here: http://evidencerequestbank.org/evidence-responses/

What next for the ERB?
In the immediate future, the Evidence Request Bank will be integrated with What Works Scotland (WWS) (www.whatworksscotland.ac.uk), a new initiative to improve the way local areas in Scotland use evidence to make decisions about public service development and reform.

Keep up to date with Evidence Bank developments and What Works Scotland by joining the mailing list here: http://whatworksscotland.ac.uk/contact-us/.

The ERB development project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), with additional funding and in-kind contributions from the partners.
 
What Works Scotland is a collaboration between the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and funded by ESRC and the Scottish Government for 3 years until 2017.

 

  

 

  

 

 

Understanding K* and what it means for knowledge exchange in Scotland

The CRFR KE reading group focus in August 2014 was to explore ideas of knowledge exchange through reading Expanding our understanding of K* - a concept paper emerging from the K* conference held in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, April 2012, that CRFR Co-Director Sarah Morton had attended. We wanted to explore how K* concepts relate to our roles as knowledge brokers here in Scotland.

What is K*? There are many terms used to describe the processes of getting research and evidence into policy, practice, there public or other action. These include knowledge management, knowledge mobilisation, knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, knowledge to action and others. The idea of K* or KSTAR is that it embraces all of these terms through the use of the wildcard star or *

Understanding the K* spectrum
 The K* discussion document sets out what might be involved in different roles to increase these processes. It considers knowledge brokerage from informational, through relational to system functions. At the information end tasks might include improving access to research and knowledge, whilst at the system end roles would be more embedded in change in complex systems.

While our members are involved in slightly different aspects of knowledge exchange work - from strategic planning, knowledge brokering, dissemination to supporting evidence to action, we found the discussion of what K* is to be a helpful peg on which to hang our, sometimes many, hats. The concept of K*, as described in the paper, is the collective term to describe what needs to happen to share knowledge and to enable change to happen. From our round-the-table discussion, it seems that good knowledge exchange requires involvement in the full range of activities, a sentiment supported by the authors. Trying to rank the importance of activities, or to see activities in a linear way, really misses the point. At CRFR, we are involved on a daily basis in dissemination activities: writing research briefings, posting on social media (@CRFRTweets), creating visualisations of research findings. From this we create opportunities to bring people together to share and talk about research and what the findings mean to different sectors and different organisations. Within specific projects we are then able to build partnerships to raise questions about what research topics are most needed, who can contribute to the research and how the resulting evidence can be used. Any one one of these functions can not happen on its own - we invest time at all levels.

The relationship between supply and demand for knowledge
The section exploring the relationship between the supply and demand for knowledge had the greatest resonance with our group members. They appreciated an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the many tasks they do, and sometimes the complexity of what is asked of them. We within social science research, we can be faced with gaps in the evidence - this may be because the nature of qualitative data makes it hard to generalise across wider populations, or because the specific question being asked has not been the focus of existing research or service evaluations. As the paper suggests, the boundaries between what knowledge is wanted and what knowledge we have is fuzzy. We discussed the ways in which we tailored our approaches, to either link people with similar interests but potentially different backgrounds, to support organisations to apply evidence to their own work or to find creative ways of sharing complex ideas.

The difference between knowledge exchange and communications
It seems there have been various conversations between our own colleagues, and within the global K* group, of the difference between knowledge exchange and communications. Within our setting we agreed that the roles are different, with reasonably different specialist skill sets, yet there is a large degree of overlap between the two. My own title includes both - as a way, when it was created, to recognise the increasing value of knowledge exchange within academia but also acknowledging that it was a term still relatively unknown by the wider public, where this type of function may have typically been carried out by a communications or policy professional. What did our discussion add to the debate? Perhaps just to record that within our University setting, the breadth of knowledge exchange activities, particularly the brokering, impact analysis and research synthesis seems to extend beyond typical a communications role. Similarly, our communications colleagues would have greater specialist skills in journalism, marketing and public relations.

Creating knowledge exchange roles within a University setting
Another key point made in the paper is that K* needs to focus on the function, rather than the organisation or individual person who performs them. Our members are all employed by the University of Edinburgh, yet each of us have a different job title and different remit - and we know from our membership of other networks and research by Knight and Lightowler, that the variation in knowledge exchange roles is becoming ever wider. Yet, there are overlaps in many of the tasks and activities we do. We wondered of the feasibility for an organisation such as the University to take a proactive role in creating standardised knowledge exchange roles and descriptions as a way of professionalising what we do, and capturing the breadth of activities involved within knowledge exchange. This is something we as a group will be exploring over the coming year.

Kirsten Thomlinson
Knowledge Exchange and Communications Co-ordinator
CRFR


Refs:
Knight, C., & Lightowler, C. (2010). ‘Reflections of “Knowledge Exchange Professionals” in the Social Sciences: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges for University-Based Knowledge Brokers.’. Evidence & Policy, 6(4), 543-556. 10.1332/174426410X535891

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.