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This book analyses the role of evidence in taking wellbeing from an issue that has government attention to one that leads to significant policy change. In doing so, it draws on contributions from political science, policy theory and literature specifically on the evidence and policy relationship. The book has three main aims: to understand the role of evidence in shaping the prospects for wellbeing in public policy; to inform the barriers literature on the use of evidence in policy; and, to inform the multiple streams approach (MSA) to agenda-setting. While the book focuses on developments at UK government level, a number of the findings and arguments presented here have wider significance, both in relation to wellbeing developments elsewhere and to the theoretical literatures on agenda-setting and evidence use. The book draws on insights from interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders that were undertaken as part of the work of the Community Wellbeing Evidence Programme of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.
This edited book provides a hard-hitting and deliberately provocative overview of the relationship between evidence, policy and practice, how policy is implemented and how research can and should influence the policy process. It critiques the notion of 'evidence-based practice', suggesting instead a more inclusive idea of 'knowledge-base practice', based in part on the lived experience of service users. It will be of interest to everyone in health and social care policy, practice and research.
Health policy is a highly contested arena where there have been increasing calls for policy to be more 'evidence based'. A central question remains 'is evidence-based health policy possible?' This book offers a critical perspective on the interplay between generation and policy formulation. The purpose of this book is to critique the notion that evidence-based medicine can make an unproblematic transformation into evidence approach to health policy that makes use of the best available research in an explicit, rigorous and accountable way. The book is illustrated by eleven case studies of health policy making that elucidate how evidence is used in particular policy making contexts. These case studies provide unique insights from the people who have been involved in the policy process. They reveal the complex nature of evidence-based research. The premise of the book is that although the idea of evidence-based health policy holds considerable promise, it will not be realised without substantial evaluation of the problems, conceptual and practical, that beset it.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. There has been an enormous increase in interest in the use of evidence for public policymaking, but the vast majority of work on the subject has failed to engage with the political nature of decision making and how this influences the ways in which evidence will be used (or misused) within political areas. This book provides new insights into the nature of political bias with regards to evidence and critically considers what an ‘improved’ use of evidence would look like from a policymaking perspective. Part I describes the great potential for evidence to help achieve social goals, as well as the challenges raised by the political nature of policymaking. It explores the concern of evidence advocates that political interests drive the misuse or manipulation of evidence, as well as counter-concerns of critical policy scholars about how appeals to ‘evidence-based policy’ can depoliticise political debates. Both concerns reflect forms of bias – the first representing technical bias, whereby evidence use violates principles of scientific best practice, and the second representing issue bias in how appeals to evidence can shift political debates to particular questions or marginalise policy-relevant social concerns. Part II then draws on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology to understand the origins and mechanisms of both forms of bias in relation to political interests and values. It illustrates how such biases are not only common, but can be much more predictable once we recognise their origins and manifestations in policy arenas. Finally, Part III discusses ways to move forward for those seeking to improve the use of evidence in public policymaking. It explores what constitutes ‘good evidence for policy’, as well as the ‘good use of evidence’ within policy processes, and considers how to build evidence-advisory institutions that embed key principles of both scientific good practice and democratic representation. Taken as a whole, the approach promoted is termed the ‘good governance of evidence’ – a concept that represents the use of rigorous, systematic and technically valid pieces of evidence within decision-making processes that are representative of, and accountable to, populations served.
First Published in 2012. The past 150 years have seen dramatic and continuing improvements in health and life expectancy. In the last century alone. Formulating a 21st century public health agenda to address the increasing burden of chronic diseases worldwide will require the same innovation and perseverance. Split into three sections, the first highlights the public health significance of mental health by focusing on the evidence and epidemiology of the burden; the second on policy aspects central to population mental health, including the mental health care system, laws and regulations, and finally the global effort to improve the mental health of populations; focus on public health practice as it applies to mental health care utilization of the population as whole, as well as vulnerable subpopulations, such as children and the elderly.
In this important new book, Ray Pawson examines the recent spread of evidence-based policy making across the Western world. Few major public initiatives are mounted these days in the absence of a sustained attempt to evaluate them. Programmes are tried, tried and tried again and researched, researched and researched again. And yet it is often difficult to know which interventions, and which inquiries, will withstand the test of time. The evident solution, going by the name of evidence-based policy, is to take the longer view. Rather than relying on one-off studies, it is wiser to look to the ′weight of evidence′. Accordingly, it is now widely agreed the most useful data to support policy decisions will be culled from systematic reviews of all the existing research in particular policy domains. This is the consensual starting point for Ray Pawson′s latest foray into the world of evaluative research. But this is social science after all and harmony prevails only in the first chapter. Thereafter, Pawson presents a devastating critique of the dominant approach to systematic review - namely the ′meta-analytic′ approach as sponsored by the Cochrane and Campbell collaborations. In its place is commended an approach that he terms ′realist synthesis′. On this vision, the real purpose of systematic review is better to understand programme theory, so that policies can be properly targeted and developed to counter an ever-changing landscape of social problems. The book will be essential reading for all those who loved (or loathed) the arguments developed in Realistic Evaluation (Sage, 1997). It offers a complete blueprint for research synthesis, supported by detailed illustrations and worked examples from across the policy waterfront. It will be of especial interest to policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and students working in health, education, employment, social care, criminal justice, regeneration and welfare.
Mental health social workers work within multidisciplinary teams, often based in health settings. The variety of services they work within are shaped by mental health policy that is increasingly being influenced by research evidence of ′what works′. This fully-revised second edition has a new chapter on systematic reviews and greater coverage of the impact of the 2007 amendment to Mental Health Act 1983 on mental health practitioners and services.
There are at least three ways in which a public health program or policy may not reach stated goals for success: 1) Choosing an intervention approach whose effectiveness is not established in the scientific literature; 2) Selecting a potentially effective program or policy yet achieving only weak, incomplete implementation or "reach," thereby failing to attain objectives; 3) Conducting an inadequate or incorrect evaluation that results in a lack of generalizable knowledge on the effectiveness of a program or policy; and 4) Paying inadequate attention to adapting an intervention to the population and context of interest To enhance evidence-based practice, this book addresses all four possibilities and attempts to provide practical guidance on how to choose, carry out, and evaluate evidence-based programs and policies in public health settings. It also begins to address a fifth, overarching need for a highly trained public health workforce. This book deals not only with finding and using scientific evidence, but also with implementation and evaluation of interventions that generate new evidence on effectiveness. Because all these topics are broad and require multi-disciplinary skills and perspectives, each chapter covers the basic issues and provides multiple examples to illustrate important concepts. In addition, each chapter provides links to the diverse literature and selected websites for readers wanting more detailed information. An indispensable volume for professionals, students, and researchers in the public health sciences and preventative medicine, this new and updated edition of Evidence-Based Public Health aims to bridge research and evidence with policies and the practice of public health.
Written to support practitioners undertaking a Masters in public health, this book considers the main concepts, issues and methodologies of the second core competence of the Public Health Skills and Career Framework: ′Assessment of evidence of the effectiveness of interventions, programmes and services to improve population health and wellbeing′. Coverage includes the theoretical definition of evidence and its use in public health, the role of critical appraisal methods and tools in evidence assessment and how Effectiveness, Efficiency and Quality inform evidence. The book is packed with case studies and activities to help link theory and practice and prompt personal reflection.
Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policy makers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality--of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyze evidence the right ones? In Evidence-Based Policy, Nancy Cartwright, an eminent scholar, and Jeremy Hardie, who has had a long and successful career in both business and the economy, explain that the dominant methods which are in use now--broadly speaking, methods that imitate standard practices in medicine like randomized control trials--do not work. They fail, Cartwright and Hardie contend, because they do not enhance our ability to predict if policies will be effective. The prevailing methods fall short not just because social science, which operates within the domain of real-world politics and deals with people, differs so much from the natural science milieu of the lab. Rather, there are principled reasons why the advice for crafting and implementing policy now on offer will lead to bad results. Current guides in use tend to rank scientific methods according to the degree of trustworthiness of the evidence they produce. That is valuable in certain respects, but such approaches offer little advice about how to think about putting such evidence to use. Evidence-Based Policy focuses on showing policymakers how to effectively use evidence, explaining what types of information are most necessary for making reliable policy, and offers lessons on how to organize that information.