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UK employment services are increasingly delivered by public, private and third sector organisations in quasi-markets that can be viewed as fields with actors (providers) competing for resources and position. The commissioning of the Work Programme produced an ‘episode of contention’ as fewer resources, shifting policy priorities and new contractual arrangements restructured relationships within the field. Drawing on empirical research the paper demonstrates how providers with different resources have navigated this period, employing strategies to manage challenger and incumbent roles and maintain their position in the field. The findings contribute to both field theory and our theoretical understanding of employment services.
The third sector has a long history of delivering employment services alongside statutory and private sector providers, but the landscape of provision has changed with the introduction of prime-led supply chain contracting and payment by results. This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study of the Work Programme and findings from an evaluation of Work Choice, the two main programmes operating in the field to explore how third sector providers have responded to these changes. It highlights the varied strategies TSOs have employed to navigate reputational and financial risk, and to then re-orientate services to secure a position in the evolving field. The chapter underlines the diversity of providers within the field and challenges a normative approach to understanding third sector experiences in these forms of public service delivery.
Background:
There is growing interest in and recognition of the need to use scientific evidence to inform policymaking. However, many of the existing studies on the use of research evidence (URE) have been largely qualitative, and the majority of existing quantitative measures are underdeveloped or were tested in regional or context-dependent settings. We are unaware of any quantitative measures of URE with national policymakers in the US.
Aims and objectives:
Explore how to measure URE quantitatively by validating a measure of congressional staff’s attitudes and behaviors regarding URE, the Legislative Use of Research Survey (LURS), and by discussing the lessons learned through administering the survey.
Methods:
A 68-item survey was administered to 80 congressional staff to measure their reported research use, value of research, interactions with researchers, general information sources, and research information sources. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on each of these five scales. We then trimmed the number of items, based on a combination of poor factor loadings and theoretical rationale, and ran the analyses on the trimmed subscales.
Findings:
We substantially improved our model fits for each scale over the original models and all items had acceptable factor loadings with our trimmed 35-item survey. We also describe the unique set of challenges and lessons learned from surveying congressional staff.
Discussion and conclusions:
This work contributes to the transdisciplinary field of URE by offering a tool for studying the mechanisms that can bridge research and policy and shedding light into best practices for measuring URE with national policymakers in the US.
