Research

 

You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.

Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
 

Books: Research

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Lessons and Insights from an Evidence Movement

The last decade has seen a growing focus on producing evidence-based policy and practice in governments around the world – with a specific focus on causal evidence of the impacts of a particular policy on outcomes for citizens. The UK is a key example of this, with the establishment of 14 What Works Centres which collate, create and translate evidence in different policy and practice domains.

In this book, leaders, researchers and practitioners from these institutions share insights to help understand what has worked so far in the Centres, and what could be done better in future. It offers guidance to policy makers and funders looking to establish new centres, and for academics looking to create similar institutions that can have a practical impact on the improvement of the world around us.

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A Practical Handbook for Public Service Organisations
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Why is it hard to know if you are making a difference in public services? What can you do about it?

Public services throughout the world face the challenge of tackling complex issues where multiple factors influence change. This book sets out practical and theoretically robust, tried and tested approaches to understanding and tracking change that any organisation can use to ensure it makes a difference to the people it cares about.

With case studies from health, community, research, international development and social care, this book shows that with the right tools and techniques, public services can track their contribution to social change and become more efficient and effective.

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Controversies, Consequences and Challenges

Measuring research impact and engagement is a much debated topic in the UK and internationally. This book is the first to provide a critical review of the research impact agenda, situating it within international efforts to improve research utilisation. Using empirical data, it discusses research impact tools and processes for key groups such as academics, research funders, ‘knowledge brokers’ and research users, and considers the challenges and consequences of incentivising and rewarding particular articulations of research impact.

It draws on wide ranging qualitative data, combined with theories about the science-policy interplay and audit regimes to suggest ways to improve research impact.

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Evidence, Policy and Practice

This timely book is the most comprehensive account yet of recent commissioning practice in the English NHS and its impact on health services and the healthcare system.

Drawing on eight years of research, expert researchers in the field analyse crucial aspects of commissioning, including competition and cooperation, the development of Clinical Commissioning Groups and contractual mechanisms. They also consider the influence of recent commissioning reforms on public health infrastructure.

For academics and policy makers in health services research and policy, this is a valuable collection of evidence that deepens understanding of how commissioning works.

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The Case of Social Policy, Sociology and Political Science Research
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Impact has become a central part of the assessment criteria for academic worth. It has been adopted by many research funding bodies, and it is firmly embedded in the British Research Excellence Framework. However, a clear definition of impact remains elusive and guidance on how exactly to achieve it is often superficial.

This concise, informative book analyses impact across the social sciences. It draws on the analysis of the most highly ranked British impact case studies from the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, as well as fifteen interviews with senior academics, providing a longitudinal and critical framing of impact. The author concludes with valuable recommendations of how and when scholars can achieve impact.

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The science of delivering evidence-based practices to at-risk youth

Converting research evidence into practice is an issue of growing importance to many fields of policy and practice worldwide. This book, by a leading implementation specialist in child welfare and mental health, addresses the frustrating gap between research conducted on effective practices and the lack of routine use of such practices.

Drawing on implementation science, the author introduces a model for reducing the gap between research and practice. This model highlights the roles of social networks, research evidence, practitioner/policymaker decision-making, research-practice-policy partnerships, and cultural exchanges between researchers and practitioners and policymakers.

He concludes with a discussion of how the model may be used to develop more widespread use of evidence-based practices for the prevention and treatment of behavioural and mental health problems in youth-serving systems of care, as well as partnerships that promote ongoing quality improvement in services delivery.

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Practical approaches for researchers and users
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Social research practitioners and others working in the public and voluntary sectors, in academia and consultancy are increasingly under pressure to provide policy-related evidence with limited resources and rising expectations. Demystifying evaluation is an accessible introductory guide setting the foundations for tackling those challenges, explaining the options open to evaluators, their merits and uses, and how to make appropriate choices of research methods.

Drawing on his experience of policy and programme evaluations for the public sector and outside, David Parsons provides a practical roadmap cutting across different evaluation theories. He covers issues such as managing expectations of evaluation, using and mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, engaging stakeholders and providing action-orientated approaches to help end-users.

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