Policy and practice

Engaged scholarship entrepreneurship and policy impact

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Kiran Trehan

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Compatible bedfellows? Engaged scholarship entrepreneurship and policy impact’.

In a rapidly evolving world, the role of entrepreneurship research and its impact on policy is more critical than ever. In this blog, I expand on my commentary on Johnson (2023) by exploring the intricate relationship between theory and its real-world application, shedding light on the uncertainty that has long surrounded entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) research. For years, the debate on how research can truly impact practice has been at the forefront of social science discussions (Beyer & Trice, 1982; Starkey and Tempest, 2005; Rynes, 2007; Trehan et al., 2018, 2022). This debate has emphasized the need for applied research in entrepreneurial scholarship that reflects the actual experiences of businesses.

Recognizing and appreciating the importance of research impact is not just a strategic concern for university business schools; it’s a measure of research’s real-world value. The gap between researchers and practitioners has significantly influenced how research is perceived, with academics focusing on ‘rigor’ and practitioners on ‘relevance’. Striking a balance between these expectations is crucial for both communities (Trehan, 2022). Edwards (2018) asserts that achieving policy impact is not only desirable but feasible, despite challenges such as engaging small business owners and the requirement for sustained interaction over time. Policy impact is attainable, but significant challenges persist, particularly in catering to the needs of small business owners and maintaining prolonged engagement.

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What can we learn from local government research systems?

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Andrew Booth, Emma Hock and Alison Scope

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Examining research systems and models for local government: a systematic review’.

Local government has been unfairly characterised as a black hole when it comes to getting evidence into practice. While it is true that work remains to be done to cultivate interest in research across local government, our recent review found plenty of evidence of academia, local officials and other partners collaborating to make a difference around the generation and use of locally-meaningful research.  

What seems to be less common, however, are coordinated approaches to organising research activity within and across an entire local government system. What can we learn from diverse approaches that harness mechanisms across different local government systems?

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Empathy is key to addressing obstacles to policy progress

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Serena Bartys

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article ‘Empathy is key: addressing obstacles to policy progress of ‘work-focused healthcare’’.

Pre-pandemic, the UK government estimated that work loss due to ill-health costed around £100bn per year. This problem places an unsustainable burden on health, employment and welfare systems, and is a major cause of socioeconomic disadvantage and inequality. The potential for healthcare to reduce this burden has been reflected in numerous UK policy initiatives and clinical guidance ever since 2008, when Dame Carol Black published her seminal report Working for a Healthier Tomorrow.

However, over a decade later, avoidable work disability remains a leading public health concern. One key concept – healthcare professionals discussing work with their patients during routine consultations – has remained elusive in practice. There are clearly significant obstacles to translating ‘work-focused healthcare’ policy into practice. Our Evidence & Policy article sheds light on what those obstacles are and how they may be addressed. It raises wider concerns about how scientific evidence is used and understood by policymakers, making a novel contribution to the expanding literature which suggests that researcher-policy-practice relationships are key factors in mobilising the evidence.  

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How can we support evidence-informed policymaking on the African continent?

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Joseph Adu, Sebastian Gyamfi, Ebenezer Martin-Yeboah and Mark Fordjour Owusu

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article ‘Knowledge translation platforms to support African evidence-informed policies: challenges and progress’.

Evidence-based policy is key to reducing public health problems worldwide. The late 2000s witnessed a breakthrough in maternal healthcare delivery in Southern Africa by way of a policy initiative that allowed the use of magnesium sulphate to prevent pregnancy induced hypertension-related deaths among pregnant women. Pregnancy induced hypertension was identified as the single most important cause of death among pregnant women in the Africa sub-region. This feat was attained through the concerted efforts of a team of international researchers, local researchers, health practitioners (academic obstetricians) and policymakers from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa who harnessed their individual knowledge into a policy to address this long existing health scare.

In our review, we found that the intervention by EVIPNet (in making giant strides in the fight against malaria in Africa) improved the capacities of knowledge among institutions on the continent through publication of policy briefs and peer-reviewed articles – resulting in an increment in Africa’s share in global research. This effort, apart from creating awareness about the health challenges on the continent, also served as a springboard to attract researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders as a community of actors championing knowledge translation in Africa.

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New Editors in Chief of Evidence & Policy

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We are pleased to introduce the new Editors in Chief of Evidence & Policy: Professor Zachary Neal, Michigan State University, USA and Professor Caroline Oliver, University College London, UK, who took over from the journal’s previous Co-Editors Professor Katherine Smith, University of Strathclyde, UK and Dr Mark Pearson, Hull York Medical School, UK as of January 2022.

Evidence & Policy is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to a comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between researchers and the evidence they produce and the concerns of policymakers and practitioners.

International in scope and interdisciplinary in focus, it addresses the needs of those who develop public policies, provide public services, or provide the research base for evaluation and development across a wide range of social and public policy issues (e.g. criminal justice, employment and welfare, education, environmental protection, finance, health, housing, international development, social care, and transport), and those who are working to connect the two (such as knowledge brokers).

Zachary Neal, Incoming Co-Editor in Chief of Evidence & Policy, said:

“Mark Pearson and Katherine Smith have done amazing work to establish Evidence & Policy as a leading outlet for research on knowledge translation. I am excited to build on their hard work and look forward to incorporating open science practices that help make this research transparent and available to everyone.”

Caroline Oliver, Incoming Co-Editor in Chief of Evidence & Policy, said:

“It feels an honour to take on the role as Co Editor in Chief with Zak, and we look forward to continuing the great work that Katherine and Mark have done with Evidence & Policy over recent years. In this position, I am looking forward to maintaining the high quality of publications in the journal, as well as encouraging a diversification of articles published in terms of geographic focus, topics, disciplines and theoretical underpinnings, to further that aim.”

We join Professor Neal and Professor Oliver in thanking Co-Editors Professor Katherine Smith, University of Strathclyde, UK and Dr Mark Pearson, Hull York Medical School, UK for their dedication, their excellent stewardship of the journal and the many achievements that have marked their term as Editors in Chief.

Bridging the research‐policy gap: the importance of effective identity leadership and shared commitment

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Frank Mols

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article ‘Bridging the research‐policy gap: the importance of effective identity leadership and shared commitment’

There is widespread agreement, among public policy scholars, that research evidence does not translate readily into policy practice, and that more needs to be done to ‘bridge the gap’ between policy research and policy practice. But why is it so difficult to achieve evidence-based policy in practice?

An important reason for this mismatch is that there are typically different sources of knowledge and evidence, and because stakeholders will often disagree which of these sources of evidence should inform policy. Such disagreements are common when dealing with complex ‘wicked’ policy problems.

As researchers have shown, policy researchers and policy workers often feel as though they live and work in different worlds. Policy researchers are often disappointed their research finding are being ignored, while policy workers tend to complain that policy research lacks practical relevance.

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What I’ve learnt about participatory budgeting for research funding decisions since publishing

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Cobi Calyx

I’ve learnt a few things in the few weeks since my Evidence & Policy debate article about using participatory budgeting for research funding decisions has been published. This article emerged from my PhD research about tradeoffs in deliberative public engagement with science. It argues that using participatory budgeting public engagement methods to make research funding decisions would further the international shift towards public participation in governance.

More controversially, my article argues that this would be a better way to reform research funding than lotteries, which others’ research indicates would be better than current norms. Norms are changing though – one of the things I’ve learnt more about since publishing this article is how the Health Research Council of New Zealand has been using a lottery to allocate some grants. They have been doing that for long enough to publish a peer-reviewed paper about it.

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Lessons from the field about how to ‘nudge plus’

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Liz Richardson and Peter John

Behaviour change policies, known as nudges, have been used by governments across the world to get people to behave in pro-social ways, such as making healthier lifestyle choices or reducing their environmental footprints. Nudges use behavioural insights to steer people into doing the right thing, while also giving them the choice. Critics argue that traditional nudge policies are top-down, manipulative and un-transparent. Nudge policies seem to expect the worse in people, and are easy to caricature as a technocratic approaches to policy design.

However, a new kind of nudge – ‘nudge plus’ – has started to spring up. Nudge plus tackles the risks of paternalism in traditional approaches through the participation of those being nudged.  If nudges are going to be even more ‘bottom-up’, how can such behavioural public policies be developed?

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When evidence alone is not enough: the politics and policy of water fluoridation

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Matthew Flinders, Gary Lowery and Barry Gibson

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a major debate about the role of experts in policymaking and the capacity of politicians to ‘follow the science’. The trend we have seen, where expert advisers have increasingly become the public face of the pandemic, raises questions about the evolving role of experts in other public policy challenges – including challenges where the scientific base is arguably far clearer about effective policy responses. If politicians are willing to ‘follow the science’ with such diligence in relation to COVID-19, why does the same principle not apply to other public health challenges?

Why, for example, when paediatric oral health remains a dire challenge for the UK, don’t politicians ‘follow the science’ in relation to the apparent benefits of fluoridating public drinking water? This is a question that a two-year project at the University of Sheffield has sought to answer through our recent Evidence & Policy article, ‘When evidence alone is not enough: the problem, policy and politics of water fluoridation in England’ . On balance, the available data confirms that fluoridation is a low-cost, high-benefit, low-risk response, which explains its promotion by global health bodies.

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Four practical steps to increase knowledge exchange between researchers and policymakers

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Peter van der Graaf

Keen to have impact with your research but getting lost in all the knowledge exchange frameworks and models that are out there? Based on ten years’ experience working in translational public health for Fuse – The Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, a UK Clinical Research Centre collaboration across five universities in North East England, we identified four practical steps to develop collaborative research and achieve meaningful change in policy and practice.

The challenges of using research to inform policy and practice are well documented, including in public health where the evidence base for interventions or programmes is patchy or contested. In response to these challenges, an abundance of models and frameworks have been developed in recent years that try to define the knowledge exchange process (how research evidence can be used, in combination with other types of knowledge, to change policy and practice). Practitioners and researchers venturing into the field of knowledge exchange are bewildered by the options available, which don’t go beyond the conceptual level and fail to describe in practical terms what research translation on the ground looks like.

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