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

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.

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. 

   

 

Getting the Word Out: A Journey in the Science and Practice of Bringing Evidence to Application and Impact

CRFR is delighted to welcome Melanie Barwick to Scotland in May to deliver the extremely successful Knowledge Exchange: Concept + Planning + Evaluation = Impact Workshop. Here, Melanie gives an insight into what will be discussed and practiced during the workshop, and what has motivated her professional career over the last decade.

Early in my career, I set out to become a child psychologist and researcher in child and youth mental health, and I did. Along the way, serendipitously, I fell into the world of knowledge translation/knowledge exchange when I took on the leadership of Ontario’s outcome measurement initiative in 2000. Together with my team, we set out to train child and youth mental health practitioners in 120 provider organizations to use a level of functioning measure called the CAFAS, thereby creating a common metric for functioning across the province’s system of care. We were naïve, approaching the task with one-off training workshops to convey the rationale, knowledge of the CAFAS tool, and support practitioners to achieve rater reliability and to consequently use the tool in their practice. I reiterate: we were naïve. Some months into the task the light bulb illuminated, and we realized that effective practice change required more than translating evidence-based practice in a traditional didactic manner; it required a different approach altogether.

The outcome measurement initiative is in its 14th and final year, and will metamorphose into other developments as the system enters into clinical transformation dictated by Ontario’s policy framework for child and youth mental health. During this time, I’ve been funded to study practice change in several studies, and have expanded my enquiry beyond child and youth mental health into education, health, and global health. This rich and contextual research program has taught me a lot along the way, about practice change, implementation, and knowledge translation.

In a nutshell, this is what I now know.

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.

Practice change is not one-off. It’s a complex process that has many moving parts, some of which are likely universal but some that are unique to the particular context, and we are still learning what those are. There is alchemy in the practice change recipe. Every context calls for different amounts of the more universal ingredients, and a dash or two or other key elements that are necessary for that particular context. The practice change recipe for child and youth mental health, for health, or education will (I hypothesize) look different from one another.

Practice change calls for structure and an approach that is both adaptive and incremental. There is a method to the madness, and the application of good project management combined with the application of implementation teams, stages, drivers, and cycles will lead to more effective implementation, whatever the context.

The road to practice change – the implementation journey – has far better signage and lighting than it did 14 years ago. As implementation frameworks and theories become more refined, we are digging below the surface of categorical frameworks to identify the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of changing practice. It is no longer sufficient to direct implementers to identify barriers and facilitators, tailor interventions to populations, facilitate the change endeavor, and measure outcomes without specifying how they are to accomplish these things. We are beginning to identify key factors that are implicated in effective implementation of evidence in practice across different sectors, and we are focusing on how to measure these key elements in a standardized way so that a common story can be told across case studies and contexts. Lastly, there is a growing library of openly accessible resources to help practitioners map their own implementation journey. Researchers are endeavoring to produce both scientific outputs whilst also developing resources and tools that can be of real and practical use in the field. It has never been a more fascinating and illuminating time, and the journey continues.

Contact:
Melanie Barwick, PhD, CPsych
Senior Associate Scientist
Community Health Systems Resource Group, Psychiatry
Child Health Evaluative Sciences, Research Institute
The Hospital for Sick Children
Associate Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Dalla Lana School of Public Health
University of Toronto

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/

Using research to influence family services and policies

CRFR co-director Sarah Morton and colleagues Sandra Nutley (Director of the Research Unit for Research Utilisation, www.ruru.ac.uk) and David Phipps (Director of Research Servics & Knowledge Exchange at York University, Canada) offer seven lessons, and associated challenges, to improve how research is used in policy and practice in a recent article in the new journal Families Societies and Relationships.

1.    Set realistic ambitions and expectations: Research is one form of knowledge that policy makers and practitioners will be using, but it is rare for research to have the definitive word.

2.    Improve research strategies to ensure they address relevant issues and expand our knowledge base rather than unwittingly replicate existing studies. Reviewing research and evaluation processes helps to ensure that research responds to relevant issues and address the main knowledge gaps.

3.    Shape - as well as respond to - policy and practice debates: Take up opportunities to influence policy and practice debates when they appear, - rather than waiting for opportunities to open up, work with advocacy organisations to raise issues of concern and get debates going.

4.    Create dialogue around research by pulling together different perspectives: Research on its own does not create change, but it can influence it. Encourage dialogues between people that recognises research needs to interact with practice experience and tacit knowledge.

5.    Recognise the role of dedicated knowledge broker organisations and networks: There are increasing numbers of knowledge broker organisations and networks who can help to facilitate the creation, sharing and application of research-based knowledge.

6.    Target multiple audiences to increase the reach and impact of your message: Disseminate research findings into wider political and public debate, alongside more targeted approaches. This might be targeting influential people, participating in media debates, speaking at policy and practice conferences and seminars or responding to consultation processes.

7.    Evaluate, learn, improve: Knowledge exchange is still an immature discipline; only through improved evaluation and learning will our understanding of effective strategies develop over time.

Don’t forget that challenges remain:

• Partnerships and collaborative approaches often lead of increased research use and impact, but further investigation is needed into the effects of such relationships on the whole research agenda.
• Excitement in using communication technologies and online tools can override the purpose of the communication and the needs of the audience. Evaluation is needed to determine online communication creates meaningful interactions.
• Creativity and flexibility will become more important in ensuring social research is used in times of shrinking budgets and service cuts.
• While we are better at sharing evidence, further work is needed on improving the knowledge to action process.
• There needs to be better recognition of the role and skills of knowledge brokering and other knowledge exchange support activities.
• Methods for better planning and evaluation of activities will only enhance the achievements in knowledge exchange practice already made.

We would like to thank editors of Families, Relationships and Societies, for their permission to reproduce key points from the journal article in this blog.

Please read our briefing, Knowledge Exchange at CRFR: past, present and future, for more information on the CRFR approach to knowledge exchange.