Month: October 2022

Ethical expertise and pandemic governance: (how) did the UK government include ethical guidance in their COVID-19 response?

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Theresa Sommer, Sarah Ball and Jessica Pykett

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Ethical moments and institutional expertise in UK Government COVID-19 pandemic policy responses: where, when and how is ethical advice sought?’.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for governments, policy advisors and citizens alike. Wide-reaching and contentious decisions had to be made at a moment’s notice while evidence about the virus was scarce, and at times involved conflicting knowledge claims. Under these conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, questions have emerged about how values and ethical advice played roles in the decision-making process.

In our Evidence & Policy article, we look beyond the discussion of scientific advice and ask where, when and how ethical advice was sought. The article is based on documentary analysis of policy papers and documents published by UK government advisory committees and a workshop with UK government ethics advisors and researchers. Our analysis focuses on both the temporal and spatial dimensions of ethical advice during the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. By asking when and how ethical advice was sought, we set out to account for the (changing) role of ethics and point out distinct ethical moments and stages of how ethics were taken into consideration.

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The changing culture of evidence use in local government

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Mandy Cheetham

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘What I really want is academics who want to partner and who care about the outcome’: findings from a mixed-methods study of evidence use in local government in England’.

Background

It is recognised that closer interaction between those working in policy and practice and academic researchers increases the likelihood of evidence being used to improve outcomes, but progress remains slow. Policymakers and researchers continue to be seen (unhelpfully) as occupying separate worlds, with limited research undertaken into efforts to address this perceived division.

In this blog post, we outline the main messages from a recently published article in Evidence & Policy, which draws on a collaborative, mixed methods study funded by the Health Foundation: Local Authority Champions of Research (LACoR). We explore evidence use in the context of local government from the perspectives of those who work there.

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Understanding organisations that provide evidence for policy

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Eleanor MacKillop and James Downe

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Knowledge brokering organisations: a new way of governing evidence’.

New organisations have emerged in different countries to help inform policymaking. Different from think tanks and academic research centres, these Knowledge Brokering Organisations (KBOs) attempt to influence policy by mobilising evidence. Our research examines how their origins and roles are rooted in politics, and explores their need to build credibility and legitimacy in their policy community. Despite examining KBOs on different continents – the Africa Centre for Evidence, the Mowat Centre in Canada and the Wales Centre for Public Policy – we show how they have become a tool mobilised in similar ways by their respective governments.

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Entrepreneurship research makes a difference to policy, despite appearances to the contrary

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Steve Johnson

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘The policy impact of entrepreneurship research: challenging received wisdom’.

Conventional wisdom across the entrepreneurship research community is that policymakers take little notice of our research findings, preferring to follow the ideological inclinations and electoral ambitions of politicians and to take most notice of those who shout loudest. Policies are therefore not always evidence-based and as a result may not achieve their stated objectives.

This argument has some validity. There are many examples of research that questions the rationale for and impact of existing policies or makes policy recommendations that are subsequently rejected or ignored by policymakers. My recently published article in Evidence and Policy explores entrepreneurship research and policy in the UK over 30 years and finds that, despite appearances to the contrary, there are however grounds for optimism among those of us who believe that research can, does and should have some impact on policy.

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