Evidence & Policy最新文献

{"title":"Historical knowledge mobilisation in a post-factual era in the United States","authors":"J. Malin, Dustin Hornbeck","doi":"10.1332/174426421x16328406523829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421x16328406523829","url":null,"abstract":"Background: In the US, and conspicuously via social media, we are witnessing an acceleration of what we term historical knowledge mobilisation: increasingly and in various ways, evidence derived from academic historical research is being shared with broader publics. Moreover, evidence-based and false or misleading historical claims are being advanced with an eye toward influencing key decisions and/or impelling social change.Aims and objectives: This exploratory study draws upon Ward’s (2017: 477) ‘framework for knowledge mobilisers’ to facilitate an analysis of what and whose historical knowledge is being shared, and how and why this is happening. It aims to provide information and guidance to support scholars of knowledge mobilisation or evidence use, as well as active historical knowledge mobilisers.Methods: This study sought to identify patterns vis-à-vis historical knowledge mobilisation by applying qualitative media analysis to a set of cases. We attended to content, style, and process of historical knowledge mobilisation.Findings: Three main themes help to explain the historical knowledge mobilisation: (a) correcting or countering a master narrative; (b) real-time correction of historical claims; and (c) contextualising complicated political moments. We also described new ways to disseminate/exchange this knowledge which altogether function to expand access to historical knowledge, but also to competing historical claims.Discussion and conclusions: The trends revealed provide insights into how historical knowledge is being used to justify political aims, and how some academics are using non-traditional means to counter false and misleading claims. Further infrastructural and empirical development is needed to support these efforts.Key messagesHistorical knowledge mobilisation is shifting/accelerating with the growth of new media platforms.Such knowledge is being shared by historians and adjacent academics for three main reasons.Public demand is high, with a window open for such knowledge to motivate bold policy actions.Although some historians have been successful, further infrastructural and empirical development is needed.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66286868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Policies for evidence: a comparative analysis of Africa’s national evaluation policy landscape","authors":"T. Chirau, Caitlin Blaser-Mapitsa, Matodzi M. Amisi","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16104826256918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16104826256918","url":null,"abstract":"Background: African countries are developing their monitoring and evaluation policies to systematise, structure and institutionalise evaluations and use of evaluative evidence across the government sector. The pace at which evaluations are institutionalised and systematised across African governments is progressing relatively slowly.Aims and objectives: This article offers a comparative analysis of Africa’s national evaluation policy landscape. The article looks at the policies of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya (not adopted) and Uganda. To achieve the aim we unpack the different characteristics taken by the national evaluation policies, emerging lessons for countries who wish to develop a national evaluation policy, and key challenges faced by countries with regard to evaluation policy development and implementation. The article draws on both a desktop review and action research approaches from the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results Anglophone Africa to build national evaluation systems across the region. The approach has included peer learning and co-creation of knowledge around public sector evaluation systems.Key conclusions: The national evaluation policies reviewed share certain common features in terms of purpose and composition. They are also struggling with common issues of institutionalising the evaluation system across the public sector. However, there are variations in the countries’ guiding governance frameworks at a national level that shape the nature and content of policies, as well as the ways through which the policies themselves are expected to guide the use of evaluative evidence for decision and policymaking, and programming.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A sociological treatment exploring the medical model in relation to the neurodiversity movement with reference to policy and practice","authors":"Emily L. Casanova, Cheryl J Widman","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16142770974065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16142770974065","url":null,"abstract":"Background: The Medical Model of disability focuses on diagnosed conditions. It is used in policy particularly to categorise people. This enables predictions and forecasting about the size of policy needs but tends to homogenise disability representations, assigning a negative evaluation to illness that may be irrespective of patho-anatomical correlates. The Social Model considers disability as imposed by society through attitudes and barriers. The Neurodiversity Model is a type of social and cultural model with biological implications; it states that differences in brain and behaviour lie on a non-pathological spectrum. Critics say this whitewashes lived experience. Policymakers may devalue the Neurodiversity Model’s origins within activist neurodiverse communities. The model that policy and practice decision makers use has fundamental effects on their impacts.Aims and objectives: The Medical and Neurodiversity Models are reviewed in reference to their politicisation as ways to characterise disability, and identity politics. The implications socially and for disability policy and practice and evidence use are considered.Key conclusions: Both models fall short in addressing the needs of the broad community of the disabled, yet both have useful features. We propose the Biological Gradient Model (BGM), which integrates scientific theory while avoiding pathology-based concepts and value-laden judgments concerning ‘deficiency’. Its usefulness is demonstrated; it resolves some of the ambiguity and tensions that exist in the way people with disability are viewed by different groups and treated within policy. It has the potential to reduce issues of partial representation, where the voices of those who cannot self-advocate may be less heard.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The many faces of disability in evidence for policy and practice: embracing complexity","authors":"C. Rivas, I. Tomomatsu, D. Gough","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16147909420727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16147909420727","url":null,"abstract":"Background: This special issue examines the relationship between disability, evidence, and policy.Key points: Several themes cut across the included papers. Despite the development of models of disability that recognise its socially constructed nature, dis/ableism impedes the involvement of people with disability in evidence production and use. The resultant incomplete representations of disability are biased towards its deproblematisation. Existing data often homogenise the heterogeneous. Functioning and impairment categories are used for surveys, research recruitment and policy enactments, that exclude many. Existing data may crudely evidence some systematic inequalities, but the successful and appropriate development and enactment of disability policies requires more contextual data. Categories and labels drawn from a deficit model affect social constructions of identity, and have been used socially and politically to justify the disenfranchisement of people with disability. Well rehearsed within welfare systems, this results in disempowered and devalued objects of policy, and, as described in one Brazilian paper, the systematic breakup of indigenous families. Several studies show the dangers of policy developed without evidence and impact assessments from and with the intended beneficiaries.Conclusions and implications: There is a need to mitigate barriers to inclusive participation, to enable people with disability to collaborate as equals with other policy actors. The combined application of different policy models and ontologies, currently in tension, might better harness their respective strengths and encourage greater transparency and deliberation regarding the flaws inherent in each. Learning should be shared across minority groups.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66286177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Analysts, advocates and applicators: three discourse coalitions of UK evidence and policy","authors":"Jasper Montana, James Wilsdon","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16112601473449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16112601473449","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Continued growth of the evidence and policy field has prompted calls to consolidate findings in pursuit of a more holistic understanding of theory and practice.Aims and objectives: The aim of this paper is to develop and explore an analytical typology that offers a way to consider the heterogeneity of different actors in UK evidence and policy.Methods: We draw upon a discourse coalitions approach to analyse a series of semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of professionals in the evidence and policy field.Findings: We describe an analytical typology that is composed of three discourse coalitions, each with their own framings of the problems of evidence and policy relations, the practices needed to address these, the organisation of people, and their priorities for future development. These are: the analytical coalition, which typically theorises evidence and policy relations in a way that matches empirical observations; the advocacy coalition, which typically normatively refines and prescribes particular evidence and policy relations; and the application coalition, which typically evaluates contextual conditions and enacts techniques to bring evidence into policy and practice.Discussion and conclusions: We discuss the potential of this analytical lens to inform recognised tensions in evidence and policy relations, and consider how greater awareness of the positioning of individuals within these coalitions may help to foster improved collaboration and consolidation in the field. Ultimately, we note that distinct priorities in the three coalitions signify different visions for progress within the field that need to be negotiated.Key messagesConsolidation of the evidence and policy field requires a recognition of its heterogeneity.We propose three discourse coalitions – analytical, advocacy and application – to describe the field.Each discourse coalition reflects different problem perceptions, people, practices, and priorities.Recognition of personal positioning in the discourse coalitions could help the field’s development.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Knowledge translation platforms to support African evidence-informed policies: challenges and progress","authors":"J. Adu, Sebastian Gyamfi, E. Martin-Yeboah","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16123456824061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16123456824061","url":null,"abstract":"Background: An effective health system that ensures availability and access to quality healthcare produces active human capital. Responsive health systems are the results of evidence-informed policy practice which is mostly seen in advanced countries. Deficiencies in most African health systems are due to the ineffective use of health research to reinforce public health policymaking.Key points for discussion: This paper discusses the progress and challenges faced by Knowledge Translation Platforms (KTPs) in African evidence-informed policymaking among healthcare systems. Large gaps exist between research evidence and policymaking in Africa due to inefficiencies of the KTPs and the lack of political will to use sound ethical research outcomes to inform health policies. Activities of KTPs in Africa are most often curtailed by many obstacles, but not limited to the following; lack of infrastructure, human and financial capital, high turnover among top-level policymakers, and lack of collaboration between academia and industry.Conclusions and implications: Evidence informed policymaking is crucial to the achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.Key messagesThere is the need for effective translation of scientific knowledge into action where health systems could interrelate closely with health research organisations to create and use available evidence to ensure quality health outcomes in developing nations, including Africa. KTPs are essential players in making this a reality in Africa.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring a non-universal understanding of waged work and its consequences: sketching out employment activation for people with an intellectual disability","authors":"Kim Dearing","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16140992285741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16140992285741","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Supported Employment has been advocated for by successive governments and policymakers alike as the best approach to employment inclusion for people with an intellectual disability who are in receipt of social care. Yet only 5.2% of this demographic are in any form of work and these numbers have been persistently stagnant for many years.Aims: This study aimed to explore the employment landscape and grapple with the intersecting layers of policy consequence for people who have an intellectual disability, and are in receipt of social care, who wish to engage with work preparation employment support.Methods: As an active participant in the field, this study was ethnographic and conducted at a new job club that had been established in England. In addition, three further sites of complementary data were explored in Wales, through interviews and focus groups.Findings: This study demonstrates that there is a mismatch between how evidence informs policy, and how funding is allocated to support with work preparation. Those unable to secure Supported Employment services are, instead, navigating extreme employment disadvantage and scant opportunities, in the open labour market. Further, bound up in this analysis is evidence of a non-universal understanding of waged work where any form of financial remuneration is welcome.Discussion and conclusion: Overall, with a mismatch between evidence that informs policy, policy rhetoric, realistic employment prospects, and available work, without a fundamental employment policy shift, the very low employment rates within this demographic will not increase.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Taking a policy process approach to illuminate the political nature of disability policymaking","authors":"Leanne S. Giordono","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16145933430109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16145933430109","url":null,"abstract":"Background: In an era of increased polarisation, identity politics and growing reliance on using evidence to make disability policy decisions ‐ evidence-based policymaking ‐ how much do we know about the process by which disability policy decisions are made and the use of evidence therein?Aims and objectives: The objective of this Practice Paper is to introduce key policy process frameworks, highlight connections between models of disability and the policy process, and identify opportunities for disability scholars, analysts and advocates to use a policy process approach.Key conclusions: Wider use of policy process frameworks can enhance our understanding of the political nature of the disability policy decision-making process and conditions that influence how evidence is used to inform disability policy.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66285758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Epistemological deliberation: the challenges of producing evidence-based guidelines on lifestyle habits","authors":"H. Lagerlöf, T. Zuiderent-Jerak, M. Sager","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16149619907286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16149619907286","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Promotion of healthy behaviour is increasingly highlighted worldwide as a way to improve public health, prevent disease incidence, and decrease long-term costs for healthcare. In Sweden the National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) used the well-established format of national guidelines to facilitate a more widespread use of approaches for promotion of healthy lifestyle habits in healthcare.Aims and objectives: The aim of this case study was to explore the tensions between public health knowledge and the tenets of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the creation of national guidelines on lifestyle habits.Methods: Based on data from interviews with guideline professionals and the collected documents of the national guidelines, we examine how NBHW negotiated the conflicts between public health knowledge and the format of national guidelines. An analytical model based on approaches from the sociology of standardisation is used to explore the ramifications of these negotiations.Findings: In line with findings in the sociology of standardisation, we show how conflicts between public health knowledge and the format of national guidelines result in both having to yield on certain points. This, we claim, results in compromise, but perhaps also compromised notions of validity and causality.Discussion and conclusion: This case offers important learning about the general compatibility of public health and currently dominant methods of EBM. Important crossroads are outlined, concerning how validity and causality are configured in public health guidelines and how these require extensive epistemological deliberation.Key messagesEpistemological commitments on validity and causality within public health have been compromised to fit the format of national guidelines;Similarly, the format of national guidelines has been subordinated to the public health valuation of risk assessments;Integrating public health into an EBM format requires extensive epistemological deliberation.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66286337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using evidence in shaping disability policy in Romania: the case of sheltered workshops","authors":"Claudia Petrescu, Mihaela Lambru","doi":"10.1332/174426421X16146970604672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16146970604672","url":null,"abstract":"Background: The importance of using evidence to inform the policymaking process has been well established in the literature and practice. In Western countries evidence-based policy (EBP) is already accepted and implemented in many policy areas, including disability policy. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) the interest in EBP (evidence-based policy) is new and limited, hampered in many aspects by the regional specificity of the public administration and welfare services reform.Aims and objectives: The present article aims to explore the development of evidence-based disability employment policy in Romania, in a specific area of work integration: sheltered workshops.Methods: The article draws on the findings of extensive research on sheltered workshops that included multiple research methods, such as public policy analysis, social documents analysis, and secondary data analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.Findings: A number of issues concerning the implementation of evidence-based disability policy in Romania have been identified. Some of these issues are related to the administrative and policy capacity of the government. Others are linked to the limitation of the advocacy capacity of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) active in the disability area, or to the weak presence of the academic/research community in the disability policy forum.Discussion and conclusions: There is a limited knowledge of how evidence-based disability policy is developed in CEE countries. This article will emphasise the role of the sheltered workshops in shaping the policy solutions in the area of work integration for persons with disabilities. The article will contribute to better understanding of the disability policy reform, looking closely at how the evidence is built and used within the disability policy process.","PeriodicalId":51652,"journal":{"name":"Evidence & Policy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66286370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}