News
UKES Conference November 2009
Sandra Nutley provided a keynote presentation on Promoting and Assessing Research Impact to the 2009 UKES conference, London 23-25 November. To view the presentation, please click here.
University of Stirling Keywords Seminar
Huw Davies recently spoke at a University of Stirling "Keywords" seminar on "Models and Frameworks for Understanding Research Use" (11/11/09). To view the presentation, please click here.
Knowledge Co-production
RURU and the Social Dimensions of Health Institute hosted the latest in a series of ESRC-funded seminars at the University of St Andrews (6/11/09). The theme of the day-long seminar was "Knowledge Co-production". The full range of presentations can be found here: http://www.sdhi.ac.uk/pastevents.htm#ESRC
Enabling the Conditions for Nursing Expertise to Flourish
A recent seminar on evidence in nursing - Enabling the conditions for nursing expertise to flourish - had presentatiosn from Professors Brendan McCormack and Andree Le May. Their presentations can be found here: http://www.sdhi.ac.uk/pastevents.htm#5NovSeminar
International Workshop on Organisational Case Study Methods
Huw Davies was co-host for an International Workshop on Organizational Case Study Methods exploring the “Knowledge-to-Action” process. The workshop was funded by the NIHR SDO Programme and involved around 30 academics and research funders from the UK, Canada, the US and Norway.
One outcome from the Workshop was an outline agreement by the NIHR SDO Programme and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to co-fund comparative case studies in this area across these two jurisdictions.
Research Influences Policy
The report of a research review funded by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (QIS), the national body for standards and improvement for NHS Scotland, is being published and made widely available across the Scottsh NHS.
The research review summarises the experience of various models of quality improvement in health care, all of which have potentially powerful roles to play in getting clinical evidence more widely applied.
The findings of the £50k project have been presented (December 2008 - February 2009) to the QIS Board and to a national seminar of around 70 health care leaders. The Scottish Government sent Derek Feeley, Director of Healthcare Policy and Strategy, to act as Discussant after School of Management Professor Huw Davies' presentation on the findings.
In addition, the British Journal of Healthcare Management have agreed to publish a series of 8 papers reviewing the various models of quality improvement in health care (TQM, CQI, BPR, Lean, Six-Sigma etc.). The first three of these are done, with 5 more to follow:
- Powell AE, Rushmer RK, Davies HTO, Effective quality improvement: recognising the challenges. British Journal of Healthcare Management January 2009 Vol 15 No 1 pp 17-21.
- Powell AE, Rushmer RK, Davies HTO. Effective quality improvement: some necessary conditions. British Journal of Healthcare Management February 2009. Vol 15 No 2 pp 62-68.
- Powell AE, Rushmer RK, Davies HTO. Effective quality improvement: Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) approaches. British Journal of Healthcare Management March 2009 Vol 15 No 3 pp 62-68.
The work has been carried out by Professor Davies, Director of the Social Dimensions of Health Institute, a joint initiative between the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews, and his team Drs Alison Powell and Rosemary Rushmer.
New article: Flows of knowledge, expertise and influence: a method for assessing policy and practice impacts from social science research is now available
Abstract: Social science research undoubtedly does impact on public policy and practice but such non-academic impacts are rarely amenable to precise, quantitative metrics. In the interests of accountability, it is however possible to find proxy indicators of connectivity with research users and these may form steps toward impacts. Understanding these connections can lead to a deeper appreciation of the factors that shape the processes leading to research uptake. This study adopted a detailed and largely qualitative approach to identify the flows of knowledge, expertise and influence that take place during the process of knowledge transfer in order to trial a method for assessing policy and practice impacts from social science research. As a corollary to this assessment, the study further identified five factors that can influence and enhance the process of knowledge exchange between researchers and users.
Meagher L, C Lyall, Nutley S (2008) 'Flows of knowledge, expertise and influence: a method for assessing policy and practice impacts from social science research' Research Evaluation, 17(3):163-173
ESRC seminar series on Evidence and Knowledge Production
Huw Davies and colleagues from the Universities of Aberdeen, Bristol and Belfast (Queen’s) have been awarded ESRC Seminar Series funding for a series of seminars entitled “Conceptual Frameworks and Making Sense of Evidence and Knowledge Production”. The seminars aim to investigate meanings of ‘evidence’ from interdisciplinary, professional and lay perspectives. The overall aim of the series is to develop alternative ways of thinking about ‘evidence’ and knowledge, particularly in the context of health and organisational/management research, where it is clear that there are complex service delivery problems and an array of theories, methods and applications. These seminars will run throughout 2009 and 2010. For more information, please contact Dr Alex Greene at the University of Aberdeen.
Leading national role putting RURU ideas into action
Professor Huw Davies, founding co-director of RURU, has been given an important external role as Director, Knowledge Mobilisation and Capacity Building, for the Service Delivery and Organisation R&D Programme (SDO) of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). In this role (where he is seconded 3/5 to the Department of Health, London), Huw is developing the national knowledge mobilisation strategy for health policy and management research across England 2008-2010. This strategy puts into action many of the ideas explored in “Using Evidence” (Nutley et al, Policy Press, 2007). For more information, please contact Huw Davies at the University of St Andrews.
NORFACE Seminar 3
The 3rd Norface Seminar will take place on Monday 13th October at Thon Hotel Oslofjord (9.30am-4.30pm).
The dinner (7.30pm) will be held on Sunday 12th October at the same venue. For further information and booking details, please visit the NORFACE webpages at CRFR
Scottish Funding Council support for a Knowledge Exchange Network
The Scottish Funding Council have agreed funding from 2008 for a Knowledge Exchange Network co-coordinated by the Alliance for Self Care Research (www.ascr.ac.uk) involving a number of public and voluntary sector partners. The Alliance is a consortium of universities in central and north Scotland that aims to increase the evidence base to support self-care, and to increase the capacity and capability of Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals to undertake research. Current Alliance funding is from the SFC, NHS Education for Scotland and Scottish Government. The conceptual framework for the proposed Knowledge Exchange Network derives from the work undertaken at the Research Unit for Research Utilisation (RURU), and Huw Davies is both a member of the Alliance and a co-applicant on the proposed new Network. For more information, please contact Dr Simon Naji at The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
New article: Why "knowledge transfer" is misconceived for applied social research is now available
Abstract: Knowledge transfer’ has become established as shorthand for a wide variety of activities linking the production of academic knowledge to the potential use of such knowledge in non-academic environments. While welcoming the attention now being paid to non-academic applications of social research, we contend that terms such as knowledge transfer (and its subordinate sibling, knowledge translation) misrepresent the tasks that they seek to support. By articulating the complex and contested nature of applied social research, and then highlighting the social and contextual complexities of its use, we can see that other terms may serve us better. Following from this analysis, we suggest that ‘knowledge interaction’ might more appropriately describe the messy engagement of multiple players with diverse sources of knowledge, and that ‘knowledge intermediation’ might begin to articulate some of the managed processes by which knowledge interaction can be promoted. While it might be hard to shift the terminology of knowledge transfer in the short term, awareness of its shortcomings can enhance understanding about how social research can have wider impacts.
Davies HTO, Nutley S, Walter I. (2008) 'Why "knowledge transfer" is misconceived for applied social research', Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 13(3):188-190
Upcoming event: Prof Sandra Nutley to speak at 'Knowledge in Motion Conference 2008'
New article: Evidence and Policy Networks: the UK debate about sex offender community notification is now available.
Abstract: This article explores the role and use of evidence by actors involved in the policy debate on sex offender community notification in the summer of 2000. It examines what was considered as evidence, how it was used and by which actors. It highlights the wide and fluid nature of evidence and the rapidity with which it can infuse policy debates. Although evidence was used strategically and tactically by most actors, the policy debate was well informed. Overall, the relationship between evidence and policy that emerges is a far cry from the 'two communities' view of evidence providers and evidence users.
Jung T and Nutley SM (2008) ‘Evidence and Policy Networks: the UK debate about sex offender community notification’, Evidence & Policy, 4(2): 187-207
New article: The many forms of research-informed practice: a framework for mapping diversity is now available.
Abstract: Much of the discussion of research-informed practice in education has centred on two perspectives: the rational-linear and interactive perspectives on research use. This paper examines two initiatives aimed at delivering research-informed practice in schools that appear to represent these two perspectives, Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies and the School-Based Research Consortia Initiative. This examination reveals that both initiatives contain rational-linear and interactive elements. It also highlights other features of the initiatives not captured by the rational-linear and interactive perspectives. The paper argues that in order to capture the cross-cutting and multifaceted nature of initiatives on the ground, it is helpful to overlay the rational-linear and interactive perspectives with three models of research use developed in social care field: the research-based practitioner model, the embedded research model and the organisational excellence model. The resulting matrix provides a framework for considering whether, when and how these different approaches to increasing research use might be combined.
Nutley SM, Jung T and Walter I (2008) ‘The many forms of research-informed practice: a framework for mapping diversity’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 38(1): 53-71
Quality Improvement Scotland – two funded research projects
Quality Improvement Scotland (QIS) has agreed funding for two research projects led by Huw Davies that draw heavily on RURU expertise and are located within the Social Dimensions of Health Institute (www.sdhi.ac.uk) at the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews. The first of these is a systematic narrative review of quality improvement methodologies, completed in mid-2008. The second project is an empirical evaluation of the QIS “Joanna Briggs Institute, Connect” initiative for improving evidence-informed nursing practice, which will run 2008-2009. For more information on the first of these projects, please contact Dr Alison Powell through SDHI; for information on the second please contact Dr Joyce Wilkinson, also through SDHI.
NORFACE Seminar Series update
The first seminar in the NORFACE-funded international seminar series on Evidence and Policy took place in Edinburgh on November 26, 2007. The seminar was organised by the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) in conjunction with partners from the University of Iceland, National University of Ireland, University of Oslo and Erasmus University (Rotterdam). The seminar series as a whole aims to advance international and comparative understanding of the use of different forms of knowledge and evidence in the policy process through a process of sharing of ideas and discussion across these jurisdictions.
A report on the first seminar is available at http://www.crfr.ac.uk/researchprojects/rp_nfaceindex.html
Programme and registration details for the second seminar, which is being held in Rotterdam on March 10, are also available on the above website. The topic for the second seminar is the impact of evidence-based policy on the social sciences and vice versa.
New project on 'The use of evidence in the audit, inspection and scrutiny of government'
Professor Sandra Nutley has been awarded a major grant from the Nuffield Foundation which will address the relationship between two important trends in contemporary UK governance
- The changing demands and role of the audit, inspection and scrutiny functions, operating at both national and local levels
- The commitment to more evidence-informed decision making
In collaboration with Dr Ruth Levitt and William Solesbury of King’s College London and Professor Steve Martin of Cardiff University, the 18 month project will work closely with practitioners across the UK. It will explore empirically how audit, inspection and scrutiny work both generates and uses evidence, the extent to which a more or less evidence-informed approach underpins its changing role and how its use of evidence might be improved. The Foundation (http://www.nuffield.org.uk) described this as “an important grant in an area of great interest”. For further information please click here.
RURU to Co-Host NORFACE Seminar Series on Evidence and Policy (2007- 2009)
The University of Edinburgh (Scotland) is organising a seminar series on Evidence and Policy with the University of Iceland, National University of Ireland, University of Oslo and Erasmus University (Rotterdam). The seminars aim to advance international and comparative understanding of the use of different forms of knowledge and evidence in the policy process through a process of sharing of ideas and discussion across these jurisdictions.
Three seminars and a final workshop will:
- explore the role of different forms of evidence in the policy process and assess the relative weight attached to each of these by policymakers (Edinburgh, November 2007);
- consider the impact of the social sciences on policy and the impact of evidence-based policy on the social sciences (Rotterdam, April 2008);
- document the strategies and interventions employed in a range of countries to improve the use of evidence in the policy process and consider any evidence on their effectiveness (Oslo, September 2008);
- draw out overall conclusions and seek to initiate new comparative research on the role and use of different types of evidence in the policy processes of different countries (Dublin, March 2009).
Further details are available at http://www.crfr.ac.uk/researchprojects/rp_nfaceindex.html
Seminar on Using Evidence in the Scottish Polity
To celebrate the publication of Using Evidence: How Research Can Inform Public Services 
New book on evidence-use is now available
Using Evidence: How Research Can Inform Public Services
"Anyone who has ever written or uttered the words 'evidence-based policy' should read this outstanding book. So should anyone else who has hopes for increasing the rationality of policy or practice through reference to systematic inquiry. The volume unpacks the meanings and assumptions embedded in 'evidence-based policy', illustrates its successes and shortfalls, looks at alternative perspectives on the junction of research and practice, and suggests documented ways to improve the engagement of research with policy and practice. This sophisticated book will challenge some current beliefs and offer better grounded and more realistic aspirations."
(Carol H. Weiss, Beatrice B. Whiting Professor Emerita, Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA)
“It is a major contribution to the literature: clear, thoughtful, relevant, and evidence-informed!” (Thomas G. Rundall, Henry J Kaiser Professor of Organized Health Systems, U.C. Berkeley, USA)
Click here to order 'Using Evidence: How Research Can Inform Public Services'
If you are outside the UK, please use one of the following links:
RURU has relocated to Edinburgh
From October 2006 RURU has been relocated to the University of Edinburgh's Management School & Economics. The central location will simplify travelling to RURU events and improve wider accessibility.
Our new contact details are:
Research Unit for Research Utilisation (RURU)
Management School & Economics
William Robertson Building
50 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9JY
RURU - the New Zealand Owl
RURU is the Maori's nickname for the morepork, the only surviving native owl within New Zealand. The word translates as 'big eyes' and refers to the owl's large eyes which it requires for hunting at night. According to Maori mythology the bird acts as a messenger to the gods. Further information on the bird is available on a factsheet published by Wellington Zoo. This can be accessed by clicking here.