Evidence is “the six-stone weakling of the policy world” … confronted by … “the four-hundred pound brute called politics”

(Ray Pawson)

Diverse forms of knowledge and evidence

• Research & evaluation reports

• Audit & inspection findings/data

• Routine monitoring data, stats and PIs

• Local & international exemplars

• Costings data

• Client & user experience data

• Expert views & insider knowledge

• Surveys, opinion polls & stakeholders consultations

• System capacity data• Models & forecasts

Many active players in policy networks

Politicians Civil servants Political advisors

Professional bodies

Professional bodies

MediaMedia

Lobbyists and advocacy groups

Lobbyists and advocacy groups

Audit, inspection and scrutiny

regimes

Audit, inspection and scrutiny

regimes

Government analysts

Government analysts

University and college

researchers

University and college

researchers

Research institutes and independent evaluatorsResearch institutes and independent evaluators

Think tanks and knowledge

brokers

Think tanks and knowledge

brokers

Wider community

Loc govt officers

Service providers Service users

Challenge of opening up to many voices, loosening control, tolerating diverse views on ‘evidence’…

F

What image best represents how you think about the main challenges?

A

ED

CB

Improving evidence use: addressing supply, demand, and that in between

Improving stocks or reservoirs of evidence-based knowledge

Increasing demand in political and professional worlds, and wider society

Research translation, knowledge management and knowledge pools, research brokering and boundary spanning, co-location, secondments

and role cycling, partnerships of all kinds, sustained interactivity…

• The importance of context• Interaction with other types of

knowledge (tacit; experiential)• Multi-voiced dialogue• ‘Use’ as a process not an event

Moving away from ideas of ‘packaging’ knowledge and enabling knowledge transfer – recognising instead:

Addressing that in between