As the leading publisher in Social and Public Policy, we publish in the core social sciences to highlight social issues, advance debate and positively influence policy and practice.
Our list leads the way on conversations around inequality and social injustice featuring authors such as Peter Townsend, Kayleigh Garthwaite, Danny Dorling, Pete Alcock, John Hills and Bob Jessop. Series including the International Library of Policy Analysis and Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy bring international, high-quality scholarship together in order to address global social challenges.
Our key journals in this field are the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, an internationally unique forum for leading research on the themes of poverty and social justice, Policy & Politics, a world-leading journal that is committed to advancing our understanding of the dynamics of policy making and implementation, and Evidence & Policy, dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between researchers and the evidence they produce and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners.
Background:
Research quality is often discussed in terms of excellence, emphasising replicability and trustworthiness. Practice-based research instead emphasises implementability and practical impact, and thus, may reflect other values and logics and challenge how high-quality practice-based research is defined. The aim of this study is to explore what characterises excellent practice-based research.
Method:
R&D staff at social and health care organisations in Sweden were invited to participate in a concept mapping study. Forty-eight participants were prompted to finish the sentence: ‘Excellent practice-based research is characterised by …’ in a brainstorming session. Next, participants (n=22) worked individually to sort statements by similarity and rate perceived importance (n=13) and experience (n=10). Data was analysed with multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis and t-tests. Lastly, a digital workshop with 50 participants was conducted to facilitate the interpretation of cluster solutions.
Results:
Eighty-three statements were distilled into 11 clusters from characteristics typical for traditional academic values (for example, ‘deploying appropriate methods’) and practice-based research (for example, ‘being actionable’) to characteristics emphasising the unique blend between them, such as ‘capturing and conveying reality’ and ‘embracing different agendas and perspectives’, the latter rated as the most important quality of excellent practice-based research, followed by ‘deploying appropriate methods’ and ‘being actionable’.
Conclusions:
Practice-based research is a complex field, addressing both ‘why things are’ and ‘how they work’. This study offers insights into how excellent practice-based research can be defined, broadening the view of what excellence entails.
The household means test plays an essential role in social assistance schemes worldwide. Consequently, the legal definition of what constitutes a household importantly impacts social outcomes, while also being constantly challenged by the dynamic societal reality of living arrangements. Despite its significance, this ‘household-construct’ has received strikingly little attention among social policy analysts. Our contribution explores this issue through a longitudinal analysis of the household-construct in the Netherlands’ social assistance legislation and parliamentary history. After conceptualising the household means test in view of the literature on targeted and conditional welfare provision, we discuss the importance of demographic developments (diversifying household composition) as a continuous challenge for household means-tested income support. We then provide a longitudinal analysis of the most important legislative changes (and underlying rationales) to the household-notion in the Dutch main social assistance (minimum subsistence) scheme. The results demonstrate that the household means test has gone through considerable alterations over time, largely in response to societal shifts and in recent decades also as an outflow of the welfare conditionality paradigm. At the same time, the fundamental logic of (1) needs-based targeting and (2) needs assessment at the level of household resources (rather than the individual) have remained intact, thereby adhering to the traditional conception of the economic union of marriage and maintenance obligations between partners. The study demonstrates how a systematic examination of legislative documents can provide valuable insights into the complex interrelationships between this specific area of social security policy, the changing social context and social policy paradigms.
Voluntary roles undertaken wholly or partly through digital technologies have become commonplace and yet there are still significant gaps in our understanding of what makes this kind of work meaningful as a sustained form of volunteer effort. Interview accounts from 15 people describing themselves as digital or social media volunteers are analysed, exploring how they make sense of their role. Relational and temporal aspects of the experience are explored. Relations with the organisation are important in providing meaningfulness through the recognition of volunteer efforts. Digital volunteering is understood temporally as meaningful in relation both to the volunteer’s long-term life goals and immediate circumstances. The flexibility of digital volunteering in the context of other time demands is particularly valued. Digital volunteers value autonomy, dignity and recognition, but autonomy and recognition can be in tension where temporal and spatial flexibility of working results in lack of visibility to others in the organisation.
Background:
Patients with cardiovascular diseases often experience fear of death, depression and anxiety, all of which are linked to a heightened risk of future cardiac events. Research indicates that improved empathy is associated with a reduced risk of such events, making the enhancement of empathy among cardiac nurses crucial. Knowledge brokering, a strategy that utilises various interventions to strengthen practice, is key to achieving this.
Purpose:
This study aims to examine the impact of knowledge brokering on nurses’ empathy towards patients receiving cardiac care.
Methods:
This experimental study involved 100 cardiac nurses who were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. The intervention group received knowledge brokering using Dobbin’s seven-stage method. Empathy levels were measured using the Empathy Construct Rating Scale (ECRS), with scores ranging from +252 to -252, and analysed using SPSS version 21.
Results:
Findings showed a significant mean empathy change score (MECS) of 22.90 ± 50.93 in the intervention group (p=0.003) compared to 7.10 ± 60.20 in the control group (p=0.408). Notably, nurses with a baseline empathy score of ≥100 in the intervention group exhibited a significantly higher adjusted MECS than the control group (11.44 units versus -15.42 units).
Conclusion:
Knowledge brokering can enhance empathy in moderately empathic cardiac nurses, with its effectiveness influenced by the nurses’ initial empathy levels. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the knowledge brokering strategy in healthcare settings.
The factors that influence volunteerism are still insufficiently investigated today. What motivates people to engage as volunteers, and how can their willingness to do so be increased through the application of behavioural psychology in marketing campaigns? This study analyses the possibility to influence volunteer participation by applying behavioural psychology, in particular, ten behaviour change techniques (BCTs) from the BCT Taxonomy. Eighty-three study participants were recruited via the mailing list of an inclusive local charity (KEEN Oxford). Individuals were assigned to one of two groups (control/intervention) in a survey, each consisting of an email addressing potential recruits. The results show a significant difference between the two groups (p<.05), for the increase in both willingness to volunteer (1.56 vs 0.35 points on a ten-point scale) as well as time commitment (4 vs 0.54 hours). This reinforces the hypothesis that behavioural psychology can increase volunteer participation.
This article identifies the volunteer process model (VPM) as a useful umbrella term to situate and understand the lived experience of volunteering of a small sample of habitual volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a methodological approach based on interpretive phenomenological analysis to offer granular analysis of lived experiences of committed volunteers. Our analysis suggests, first, that the sample of committed volunteers lived experiences allow critical insights into how a particular user group can establish value and meaning and how these can be interpreted. Second, that the use of the VPM as a unifying concept allows a critical reflection on volunteering as an experiential activity that is wholly humanistic, and that contributes towards an understanding of volunteer engagement beyond the ‘black box’. This article provides an empirical basis for these arguments, offering a framework that can take forward this limited research as useful to provide explanatory rationales and expanded ways of organising and managing volunteer engagement.
Background:
Our interdisciplinary team initiated a project to inform the COVID-19 vaccination programme. We developed a novel research co-creation approach to share emerging findings with government.
Aims and objectives:
We critically assess the ‘Functional Dialogue’ (FD) programme for future research translation practices in time-limited policy-making scenarios. We identify what factors helped us to put the FDs together and consider their effects on all aspects of the research programme. We draw out key moments of impact, weaknesses and challenges and identify how future FDs might be enhanced.
Methods:
Between January 2021 and June 2022, we conducted 14 FDs with state and federal government, exploring attendees’ attitudes, beliefs, experiences, roles and observations regarding our research. FDs and research team debriefs were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically.
Findings:
FD processes proved invaluable to the timeliness, impact and flow of our research project by creating systems that helped to bridge the evidence–policy gap. Relationships and reciprocity helped, but other professional commitments of our government partners posed challenges and produced fluctuating engagement. FDs built the capacity of the research team, strengthening communication skills and creating opportunities to contribute to pandemic policies.
Discussion and conclusion:
We struggled to quantify the impact of FDs on policy decisions due to the ethical requirements of academic research, barriers for policy makers in isolating and/or acknowledging impact, and the collaborative nature of dialogue. Nevertheless, the structures of knowledge transfer that we foresaw as necessary to ensure impact became the central plank of the project’s broader success.
This practice piece will present a comparative reflection of how the use of evidence in policy looks when viewed from the outside, as a researcher, with how evidence use is experienced when working as a policy maker. The three authors are unusual in sharing an experience of studying evidence use in policy before becoming elected politicians who are involved in policy making and who have therefore gained a very different, more direct experience of how evidence is used in policy-making settings. Synhaeve has studied evidence use in secure youth care and is an elected councillor and was elected national member of parliament for the Democrats 66 Party in the Netherlands, McMahon has studied evidence use in public health and is an elected councillor for the Labour Party in England, while Heap has studied evidence use in social security policy and is an elected councillor for the Green Party in Scotland. The practice piece will consider to what extent their perspectives on evidence use in policy have shifted as they have moved from researcher to political representative and policy maker, and will consider to what extent these experiences have been shaped by their substantive policy interests and the political systems in which each is operating. It will conclude by summarising the collective insights that have emerged for the three authors as they have shifted to viewing evidence use from the perspective of an insider, who is using evidence in making policy, rather than an outsider, producing evidence with a view to influencing policy.
Background:
The 2018 Declaration of Astana acknowledges the need to include traditional, complementary and integrative health care (TCIH) knowledge and technologies within primary health care. The World Health Assembly has also called member states to integrate TCIH into national healthcare systems. However, little attention has been given to developing supportive resources for this process in practice, policy, research and education.
Methods:
This study employed Delphi methodology to refine a framework for the evaluation and implementation of text-based traditional knowledge in contemporary health contexts. An international sample was recruited of expert participants with experience in a diversity of settings and disciplines. Framework items were retained, removed or modified based on participant consensus agreement on the importance of each item (consensus set at ≥75 per cent agreement), and mapped for comprehensiveness against an implementation framework.
Findings:
The initial survey round was completed by 19 participants and the second round by 15 participants. Most participants (n=15) held TCIH qualifications, representing six TCIH professions in total (naturopathy, Western herbal medicine, osteopathy, traditional Chinese and Oriental medicine, Ayurveda, and homeopathy). Participants typically had experience in multiple contexts across clinical practice, research, education and policy development. Consensus was achieved after two rounds and the resulting framework included three sections comprising guiding principles (five items), critical appraisal criteria (three items) and application criteria (eight items).
Conclusions:
As the international health community increasingly recognised the potential value and importance of TCIH knowledge and technologies, this Contemporary Implementation of Traditional knowledge and Evidence (CITE) Framework provides a timely and much-needed practical guide to rigorous and respectful traditional knowledge implementation.
The first section of the landmark Equality Act 2010 has been lying dormant for 14 years. The ‘public sector duty regarding socio-economic inequalities’ – passed by the Labour government in 2010 – was never brought into force in England by the Conservative-led coalition that replaced them. The new Labour government has committed to its resurrection. Drawing on evidence from Scotland and Wales, where the ‘socio-economic duty’ has been in force since April 2018 and March 2021 respectively, this article offers three reflections for policy makers and those who will be tasked with its implementation in England: the promise of its ‘holistic’ incorporation into the Equality Act 2010 of impact assessment processes; the ongoing necessity for support with evidence collection and data sharing; and the duty’s potential as a catalyst for broader organisational change far beyond a strict interpretation of its legal remit. Although (very) far from a panacea, if coupled with well-executed guidance, training and oversight, its commencement could help to encourage greater consideration and transparency of evidence on socio-economic inequalities in key areas of public sector decision making.
