Alexis Dewaele

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘A grounded theory on collaborative interactions in a community-university partnership: the case of youth in the public space’.

In a society that is steered by complex processes such as globalisation and institutional complexity, we are increasingly confronted with what is sometimes called ‘wicked problems’ (i.e., a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise). At Ghent University in Belgium, we were interested in trying to solve such problems by setting up a collaboration with diverse community stakeholders. We sent out a call to diverse stakeholders asking them to submit proposals on societal challenges that could be addressed by bringing together various actors and making use of scientific knowledge. An employee of the municipal department of well-being and equal opportunities submitted a case related to antisocial behavior by youth at a municipal park. The researchers involved selected the case as a pilot project to further investigate collaborative processes. For our study published in Evidence & Policy, we analysed a set of four video recorded co-creation sessions of this particular case to learn to better understand the process of how knowledge exchange can actually contribute to problem solving.

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Mathieu Ouimet

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Use of research evidence in legislatures: a systematic review’.

Our Evidence and Policy article reports the findings from a systematic review of how and for what purpose legislators use research evidence. It also examines legislators’ perspectives on enablers and barriers to using research evidence.

We searched for all published studies, either in English or French, in which the type of use and the barriers and facilitators to using research evidence by legislators were empirically examined. We included relevant studies regardless of the year of publication, the country where the study was conducted or the kind of legislatures. We found twenty-one studies, most of which were conducted in the United States. There has been a noticeable growth in studies since the 2010s.

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