Hannah Durrant, Rosie Havers, James Downe and Steve Martin
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Improving evidence use: a systematic scoping review of local models of knowledge mobilisation’.
Knowledge mobilisation (KM) describes a process for enabling the use of research evidence in policymaking and public service design and delivery. Approaches to KM have evolved over the last two decades – away from one-directional efforts to push research out to decision makers towards a kaleidoscope of research-policy-practice engagement across overlapping phases of knowledge production and policy action. These processes are generally poorly understood at local levels of decision-making, where the specificities of policy and public service context can undermine generic ‘what works’ claims.
Our recent Evidence & Policy article, ‘Improving evidence use: a systematic scoping review of local models of knowledge mobilisation’, identifies three key features of local KM as well as highlighting the gaps in our understanding of how KM is done and with what effect.
Our aim was to determine how KM is done ‘on-the-ground’, which can get obscured in frameworks that emphasise complexity while simplifying process. We argue that more detail is needed on these practices of KM to inform and improve process. Equally, attention is also needed on demand for and impact of evidence on policy and practice decisions.
Three key features of knowledge mobilisation
KM at the local level is relational in nature, it actively involves the integration of different types of knowledge, and it is tailored to the contexts of decision-making, including to the particular cultures and capacities for evidence use within policy and practice teams, organisations and wider systems.
Key feature #1: A relational process
Local KM is a relational, not transactional, process. Ongoing and iterative interaction between diverse groups of research producers and users helps to ensure the ultimate relevance and usability of evidence. This interaction is particularly important at early stages of problem framing and research conception, and extends throughout interactive research production and policy development phases. When describing the relational practices involved in KM, the initiatives reviewed focused on establishing formal mechanisms for interaction; such as advisory groups, communities of practice, or forms of embedded expertise (e.g., a researcher-in-residence within a policy team or a policy fellow attached to a research project). But little attention is given to what happens within and as a result of these practices, especially at those early stages where the coproduction of research-policy-practice enquiry are crucial. Little detail is given on who is involved, when and why. For example, how are roles and equality of participation negotiated to ensure ownership rather than mere buy-in of all partners? This lack of information leaves gaps in our understanding of which approaches to interaction work best in different contexts or phases of KM, how collaborations are created, managed, and maintained, and what the costs to evidence-informed policy and practice are when they break down.
Key feature #2: Knowledge is integrated
As a result of these interactive processes of KM, research evidence isn’t delivered to policy and practice settings, but integrated and interpreted alongside other forms of knowledge – such as professional, experiential, and local. This contextualization of research-based evidence is critical to its relevance and usability because it adds richness and diversity of perspective, allowing policy makers and practitioners to view complex problems from different angles. The practices of knowledge integration focus on techniques for filtering, evaluating, synthesising, and translating evidence. Outputs tend to include systematic or rapid reviews, evidence briefings and toolkits. Again, there is little evidence on what happens within and the impact of these approaches, which would better aid understanding of how KM is done and what makes it effective. This leads to several questions, such as where does the contextual understanding to tailor evidence come from? How and with what intention is evidence integrated? What transformations happen to the forms of knowledge in the process? In short, how does knowledge integration stem from the interactive processes of KM.
Key feature #3: Engagement with context
KM processes are constantly operating in response to the contexts, cultures and capacities of individuals, organisations and systems that are involved in the application of evidence to policy and practice. The initiatives reviewed in our paper provide more detail on practices in different contexts but are mainly focused on developing the capacities and attitudes of individuals (researchers, policymakers and practitioners). They advocate training to improve communication and interpretation skills, as well as the attitudes and cultures needed on both sides for evidence-informed policymaking. They also emphasised the influence of multi-level structural barriers – e.g., a lack of leadership buy-in, inadequate resourcing and reward schemes – on the development of closer relationships between research and policy and to valuing the knowledge mobilisation roles that underpin these. But there are gaps on how these are overcome.
What we don’t know
Our review provides greater clarity about what happens in local KM, and identifies the need to interrogate the demand for and impact of local KM. There is a tendency for those practicing KM to assume policymakers and practitioners across public service want evidence to inform their decisions, that researchers want to provide it, and that it makes a difference to decision-making processes and outcomes. An absence of robust demand for KM may help explain the lack of detail on how relational ways of working are established and maintained, how different forms of knowledge are integrated and how interpersonal and structural barriers to knowledge utilisation are overcome, such that KM can have an impact on policy and practice.
Image credit: Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash
Dr Hannah Durrant is Senior Research Fellow at the Wales Centre for Public Policy. Her research interests include knowledge mobilization, research-policy engagement and evidence-informed policy making.
Rosie Havers is a Research Associate at the Wales Centre for Public Policy. Her research interests include knowledge mobilisation, evidence-informed policy and practice, and community-public sector collaboration.
Professor James Downe is Director of Research at the Wales Centre for Public Policy. His research interests include local government performance regimes, ethical leadership, and evidence-informed policymaking.
Professor Steve Martin is the Director of the Wales Centre for Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Management at Cardiff University. His research focuses on policy evaluation and evidence-informed policy making.
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Durrant, H. Havers, R. Downe, J. and Martin, S. (2023). Improving evidence use: a systematic scoping review of local models of knowledge mobilisation. Evidence & Policy, DOI: 10.1332/174426421X16905563871215.
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested in reading:
Use of research evidence in legislatures: a systematic review OPEN ACCESS
Breaking the Overton Window: on the need for adversarial co-production
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