Evidence & Policy最新文献

Background: Intermediary actors navigate a complex political ecological landscape in which specific policies, contexts and sociopolitical events create 'pull factors' in the curation, suppression and dissemination of information utilised to inform school decision-making (Lubienski et al, 2014). Applying the political ecology framework of Scott and colleagues (2018), this article explores the role of politics and power structures in the dissemination and utilisation of research evidence within civics educational programming.

Methods: Data sources include 84 interviews conducted with 39 intermediary actors (non-profits, state departments, university centres, philanthropies, and for-profit sectors) and 45 educational decision-makers (principals, subject coordinators and lead teachers). Data analysis involved qualitative (thematic analysis) methods to unpack power narratives.

Findings: The positionality of the intermediary actors, the local district climate, and larger state and national politics fostered a desire to select research that supported civics programming identified as 'neutral'. Such curriculum avoided discourse around pressing social issues, maintained the status quo and focused on the historic foundations of government rather than a more applied action focus. Rationales justifying such decision-making emphasised the importance of stepping in to protect educators from potential community and parental backlash.

Discussion: Pre-emptive gatekeeping contributes to research misuse, as civics scholarship has documented the value of discussing social issues relevant to young people's lives (Clay and Rubin, 2020). Such decision-making has notable implications in relation to critical programming that is reflective of and fully meets the needs of students lived realities (Mirra and Garcia, 2017).

We examine how a selection of working groups established by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland co-produced evidence for higher education student admissions reform between 2016 and 2019 to promote the government's political goals. These goals included accelerating transitions from tertiary education to working life by reforming how students applied for and were selected by universities. In Finland, government's working groups aim to promote evidence-based policy making. In these groups, stakeholders can work with public officials to develop ideas for advancing the government's political goals. We approach working groups as a site of co-production whose members collectively produce and assess evidence. We analysed documentary data and interviewed ten key informants in working groups, using qualitative content analysis to highlight relevant themes. Our results show that co-production in working groups was actualised during writing. A political and corporatist frame steers which information is used. Public officials play a key role in selecting which information is taken up, relying on stakeholders' experience and expertise. In the co-production process, public officials learn of stakeholders' interests, while stakeholders learn about the political will concerning Finnish higher education policy. Members prioritise and assess evidence based on whose interests it serves. Our study contributes to understanding the politics of evidence use, and how co-production is used to drive the government's political goals.

Background: Supporting the use of research evidence in policy making is a perennial challenge. A key theme in the literature is the importance of the production and mobilisation of research that is relevant to policy needs. Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) are an example of a UK government lever designed to support the production of policy-relevant research. The often-overlooked role of research funders in this process forms the focus of this article.

Aims and objectives: This article looks at the ways in which ARIs act as a mechanism for negotiation and interaction between government and research funders in order to mobilise existing research and to connect government research interests with the priorities of research funders.

Methods: Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic researchers, research funders, government officials and knowledge mobilisers.

Findings and discussion: ARIs provide a systematic and transparent set of policy research needs which can be used to support cross-government discussions to inform funding processes, both in terms of new research investments and mobilising existing funded research. While funders were committed to knowledge mobilisation, they can lack the skills and capacity required to implement it effectively. That is not to underestimate the volume of time and work required to support this process. While technical developments are likely to help, we argue that this will need to be complemented by a significant amount of relational work to understand and engage with the research needs of government officials and to support the interpretation and use of existing research.

We synthesise evidence from about 400 studies on mis/disinformation published between 2010 and 2024, drawing on research from across the social sciences. Despite widespread misinformation related to education, we find few studies that focus on how it spreads or how to address 'systemic misinformation' in this context. Building on prior syntheses (Blair et al, 2024), we categorise the main strategies used to fight misinformation in the United States across various domains such as public health, climate change and science communication into four types: informational, educational, sociopsychological and institutional. We then assess which of these approaches, widely studied in other fields, might be most useful to thwart misinformation in the uniquely decentralised world of US public education. As past research has shown, informational strategies - like fact-checking, pre-bunking and labelling content for credibility - are the most studied. However, their success depends on many factors, such as the setting, how the message is delivered, the topic and the audience's beliefs. Educational approaches, like media literacy programmes, show some promise, but have predominantly worked in reducing online misinformation only. Interestingly, we find that sociopsychological and institutional strategies, though less studied - may be especially promising for addressing misinformation in US K-12 education. These approaches may be key in countering organised campaigns that contest equity-focused evidence-based teaching practices. We close by identifying ways to fill current research gaps and suggest combining the most effective elements of different strategies to examine what works - and in which contexts - when it comes to tackling misinformation in education.

Getting evidence into practice remains a stubborn problem. To get knowledge-to-care (K2C) we identify five 'impact components': improvement science, implementation science, knowledge mobilisation, patient and public involvement and engagement, and co-working. In this article we have (1) provided a simple definition for each component, (2) established an overview of whom, what, when, where, why and how components have been reported and/or combined in published literature, and (3) enhanced understanding of how components are selected and combined. We (1) identified seminal papers to capture common definitions of components of impact, their synonyms and evolution, (2) sampled the most relevant papers (searching CINAHL and Medline, from 2018 to 2021) to map the landscape where one or more impact component had been applied in empirical research, (3) conducted focus groups and (4) a survey to deepen our understanding of these issues from practitioner and researcher perspectives. We found differentiation between components difficult due to multiple definitions and overlapping features. Workshops and survey demonstrate blurred application of components with participants drawing on a common pool of strategies to influence practice. Our future intention is to develop strategies to support practitioners to advance uptake of evidence-based care by demystifying the 'science' of components and how they may be applied in practice. To this end, we invite debate regarding the questions: How do we 'science up' without hindering application of implementation science (impS), improvement science (impR) and knowledge mobilisation (KMb) in practice? Are the differences between impS, impR and KMb real, or simply in the eye of the beholder? Is there a need to go beyond the potentially 'tribal' labels of impR, impS and KMb and consider more deeply specific ways of working?

Background: Youth participatory action research (YPAR) engages students as co-researchers to investigate issues affecting their schools and advocate for institutional change. Although prior studies document YPAR's developmental benefits, less is known about the conditions that enable school-level impact.

Purpose: This study examines the frequency and predictors of perceived setting-level change across 36 YPAR projects implemented in diverse Midwestern high schools.

Methods: Using a mixed-methods design, we analysed survey data and focus group transcripts from student participants. Quantitative analyses tested how project strategies, stakeholder responsiveness, student ownership and issue focus related to reported success. Qualitative analyses explored contextual mechanisms underlying these relationships.

Results: Regression analyses indicated that projects incorporating policy advocacy and administrative engagement were significantly more likely to effect school-level change. Qualitative findings highlighted the importance of adult allies who help youth navigate institutional systems and elevate their research. Projects aligned with administrative priorities (for example, school safety, postsecondary readiness) achieved greater success than those addressing diffuse or complex issues such as mental health or school culture.

Conclusions: Successful YPAR initiatives combined high student ownership with strategic adult facilitation and institutional receptivity. Findings underscore the value of aligning youth-led research with organisational priorities and providing structured opportunities for students to present findings to decision-makers.

Effective use of research in policy making is essential to address persistent societal challenges and respond to emerging issues. While much is known about individual preferences and practices of policy-maker research use, the structuring role of institutionalised influences remains less understood. This article addresses that gap by examining how institutional conditions shape research use in policy making, drawing on survey data from 1,606 respondents in Norwegian ministries and directorates. We analyse policy makers' perceptions of four types of institutional conditions - formal instruction, financial and infrastructural support, peer environment, and informal encouragement - and their relationship to instrumental, conceptual and symbolic uses of research. The findings show that encouraging institutional conditions are stronger determinants of research use than enabling ones, and that the distinction between formal and informal conditions matters. Formal instruction is associated with conceptual use, supporting long-term reflection and planning, while informal encouragement is more strongly linked to instrumental use in short-term, time-constrained policy tasks.

Background: Guidelines are essential tools for improving healthcare decision-making. Over the last few decades there has been substantial investment in developing international standards and frameworks to support the technical or methodological aspects of making recommendations. However, exploration of the social processes involved has been more limited.

Objective: To explore the perspectives and experiences of stakeholders on the social processes of developing recommendations in decision-making contexts in Ireland.

Methods: A descriptive qualitative study using data from 14 semi-structured interviews was conducted with former guideline development group and expert advisory group members via MS Teams (February-August 2024). Interviewees included clinicians, methodologists and managers. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, analysed thematically and reported in accordance with the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research.

Findings: Voices was identified as a central theme. Strong voices and hierarchies may influence decision-making, leveraging pre-existing hierarchies of professions and hierarchies of evidence. This can be exacerbated when a chair embodies this hierarchy. Our data highlighted a lack of alignment of goals and expectations between the chair and patient voices which, at times, could dominate group discussions. Methods for mitigating dominant voices included forming groups through combinations of personal and professional networks, multidisciplinary voices, briefing and debriefing patient and public representatives, and anchoring the discussion within the evidence and frameworks.

Conclusions: The study highlights the varied voices and social structures shaping the evidence to recommendation journey, with mechanisms to mitigate against dominance within guideline development processes.

Across the United States, Moms for Liberty (M4L) has used coordinated strategies to spread fear and disinformation to ban books and elect conservative board members aligned with their agenda. However, to date, few empirical studies have systematically examined their tactics, messages and consequences. Additionally, most media and scholarly attention has focused on the activities of M4L in traditionally conservative states. Less studied are the ways that they are building support through disinformation in progressive states such as California. In this article, we first examine the political, economic and social characteristics of the 16 counties with M4L chapters, compared to those without. We then study the group's tactics of disinformation through textual analysis of 502 documents pulled from nine California chapter websites, six social media accounts and 29 podcast episodes. We find that counties with M4L chapters more often experienced an increase in Republican voters, were more often urban, had higher rates of Bachelor degree attainment, and had lower percentages of native US citizens. Consistent with previous findings, we found that California chapters used a range of strategic activities to promote their agendas, including collaborating with other far-right organisations, taking legal action, disseminating information, and voter engagement through local electoral races. Through disinformation campaigns they combined parents' larger critiques of schools and society with White-implied Christian nationalism, anti-trans and anti-communist narratives to further far-right policy agendas. Unveiling these strategies and narrative frames is a first step in a broader research agenda that can counter disinformation strategies and promote equitable education policies.