This edited book provides a hard-hitting and deliberately provocative overview of the relationship between evidence, policy and practice, how policy is implemented and how research can and should influence the policy process. It critiques the notion of ‘evidence-based practice’, suggesting instead a more inclusive idea of ‘knowledge-base practice’, based in part on the lived experience of service users. It will be of interest to everyone in health and social care policy, practice and research.
This book provides a timely and novel contribution to understanding and enhancing evidence use. It builds on and complements the popular and best-selling “What Works?: Evidence-based policy and practice in public services" (Davies, Nutley and Smith, Policy Press, 2000), by drawing together current knowledge about how research gets used and how this can be encouraged and improved. In particular, the authors explore various multidiscipliary frameworks for understanding the research use agenda; consider how research use and the impact of research can be assessed; summarise the empirical evidence from the education, health care, social care and criminal justice fields about how research is used and how this can be improved and draw out practical issues that need to be addressed if research is to have greater impact on public services. “Using evidence" is important reading for university and government researchers, research funding bodies, public service managers and professionals, and students of public policy and management. It will also prove an invaluable guide for anyone involved in the implementation of evidence-based policy and practice.
The initial enthusiasm for the evidence-based policy agenda has recently been replaced with increasing scepticism. Critics point out that ‘policy-based evidence’ characterises the relationship more accurately. Analysing the role and nature of evidence in the context of UK drug policy and drawing on a range of theories of the policy process and research utilisation, this book pursues an alternative route for conceptualising the evidence and policy connection, which moves beyond zero-sum statements of evidence-based policy and policy-based evidence. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in public policy and criminology.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This important book offers practical advice for using evidence and research in policymaking. The book has two aims. Firstly, it builds a case for ethics and global values in research and knowledge exchange, and secondly, it examines specific policy areas and how evidence can guide practice.
The book covers important policy areas including the GM debate, the environment, Black Lives Matter and COVID-19. Each chapter assesses the ethical challenges, the status of evidence in explaining or describing the issue and possible solutions to the problem. The book will enable policymakers and their advisors to seek evidence for their decisions from research that has been conducted ethically and with integrity.
When it comes to adopting evidence-based approaches, does the size of an organization really matter?
This practical guide brings leading police and sociology experts together to demonstrate how police forces of all sizes can successfully embed evidence-based methods by using their strengths and limitations to their advantage. Drawing on experiences of policing in North America, it proposes new ways of strategizing and harnessing the talents of ‘change champions’.
Building on the authors’ widely adopted first book on evidence-based policing, this is essential reading for practitioners, aspiring leaders, students and policy-makers.
Available open access under CC-BY-NC license. Homelessness is unequivocally devastating. In the UK, people affected by homelessness are ten times more likely to die than their peers in the general population, yet we still miss important opportunities to adequately address the issue.
The Centre for Homelessness Impact brings together this urgent book gathering the insights and experiences of leaders in government, academia and the third sector to present new evidence-based strategies to end homelessness.
Demonstrating why and how a new movement is needed that embraces data and evidence as integral to ending homelessness effectively, this book provides crucial methods to underpin future policy, practice and funding decisions.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is about the opportunities and challenges involved in mainstreaming knowledge about children in international development policy and practice. It focuses on the ideas, networks and institutions that shape the development of evidence about child poverty and wellbeing, and the use of such evidence in development policy debates. It also pays particular attention to the importance of power relations in influencing the extent to which children’s voices are heard and acted upon by international development actors. The book weaves together theory, mixed method approaches and case studies spanning a number of policy sectors and diverse developing country contexts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It therefore provides a useful introduction for students and development professionals who are new to debates on children, knowledge and development, whilst at the same time offering scholars in the field new methodological and empirical insights.
A philosopher and a logician take their child on a train from London to Glasgow. As they cross the border into Scotland they see a brown cow standing alone in a field. ‘Look,’ says the child, ‘the cows in Scotland are brown.’ ‘No,’ says the philosopher, ‘there are cows in Scotland, and at least one of them is brown.’ ‘That’s not right either,’ says the logician, ‘there is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’ (Anonymous popular anecdote) Introduction The evidence before our own eyes can be the subject of debate
How can evidence-based skills and practices reduce re-offending, support desistance, and encourage service user engagement during supervision in criminal justice settings? How can those who work with service users in these settings apply these skills and practices?
This book is the first to bring together international research on skills and practices in probation and youth justice, while exploring the wider contexts that affect their implementation in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Wide-ranging in scope, it also covers effective approaches to working with diverse groups such as ethnic minority service users, women and young people.
77 Evidence & Policy • vol 10 • no 1 • 77-92 • © Policy Press 2014 • #EVPOL Print ISSN 1744 2648 • Online ISSN 1744 2656 • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/174426413X662824 Evidence and the antisocial behaviour policy cycle Jon Bannister, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK jon.bannister@mmu.ac.uk Anthony O’Sullivan, University of Glasgow, UK tony@newhavenresearch.co.uk Context conditions the nature of policy development. The relationship between evidence and policy is similarly conditioned in terms of the types of evidence deployed to address specific policy
