Integration and Implementation Insights
A community blog and repository of resources for improving research impact on complex real-world problems
By Directors and Coordinators of the Latin American and the Caribbean Evidence Hub
A Spanish version and a Portuguese version of this post are available
How is the routine use of evidence in policy in Latin America and the Caribbean progressing? How is it being institutionalized?
We provide a brief history of key initiatives to institutionalize evidence-informed policy making mechanisms in the region.
By Enrique Mendizabal
How can researchers seeking to change a policy get a useful picture of the key actors involved in that policy space? Who should they partner with? Who will need convincing? Whose arguments will counter their own?
The Alignment, Interest and Influence Matrix (AIIM) was designed to address these questions.
The AIIM tool is useful as far as it can encourage an open and thoughtful conversation. In my experience, the tool is most useful when the people involved provide a breadth of experience and insight into the policy process that they are trying to affect.
By Emily Hayter
How can researchers be supported in communicating their research and in supporting policymakers to use research and evidence? Are there particular issues for researchers in the global south?
The three lessons presented here are based on the experience of INASP (International Network for Advancing Science and Policy), an international development organisation which has been working with a global network of partners in Africa, Latin America and Asia for nearly 30 years.
1. Policy engagement needs to build mutual understanding between researchers and policymakers as actors in a system (the ‘how’)
The research/policy space is not quite the chasm it is often presented as, needing a ‘bridge’ to cross between two distinct groups.
By Alexandra Knight and Catherine Allan
As a society, how do we encourage early and ethical action when building our knowledge and confronting serious challenges?
In this blog post we explore the conceptual framework of intentional ecology and apply it to a case study to illustrate how it deals with the question raised above.
Intentional ecology – foundations and actions
Intentional ecology, illustrated in the figure below, is a new conceptual framework that enables early, applied and relevant integrated action, as well as reflexive and dynamic approaches to implementation of conservation and sustainability measures. It’s a better way of doing science.
By Alison Ritter
Is it possible to be both a researcher and an advocate? Indeed, is there even a duty to be both researcher and advocate?
“Advocacy” has been seen by some in the academy as a dirty word. Oliver and Cairney (2019) distinguish between an ‘honest broker’ and an ‘issue advocate’, suggesting that advocacy crosses some line. Simon Chapman, who has championed public health advocacy, has noted that some people see it as a “fraught, politicised activity” (Chapman 2015), and “disparaged” (Haynes et al., 2011). In the comments on Dorothy Broom’s blog post Researcher activism: A voice of experience one “persistent idea” is that academic work is somehow neutral while advocacy work is political. Smith and Stewart (2017) nicely reflect the tensions when they contrast it as either a “disciplinary duty” or “political propaganda”.
These contrasting views on advocacy seem to rest on what is being defined as “advocacy”.
By Denis Karcher and Chris Cvitanovic
How well do researchers achieve the research impacts they aim for? And if there is a mismatch, does it matter?
Together with colleagues (Karcher et al., 2021), we systematically searched for and reviewed nearly 400 studies that described goals and outcomes that were claimed for knowledge exchange at the science-policy interface. Although our focus was on the environmental sciences, the results may be more widely useful.
Big ambitions
The eight top goals that studies described for their knowledge exchange activities were:
1. Usability, eg., that the interaction with policy makers and/or the knowledge created were credible, legitimate, relevant, and timely (458 references).
By Kirsty Jones and Sara Bice
How can combining frameworks help plan a research implementation process? What specific contributions can different frameworks make?
In our research with industry, we found combining three frameworks to be an effective way to get handles on a complex implementation landscape and to design the necessary steps to systematically work our way through it. The frameworks we found useful were: a logic model, a pathway to impact and the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, which we adapted to our context.
We provide four figures to show how we used each framework and briefly describe the benefits we derived from each of them. Although fully understanding the detail in the figures requires familiarity with the specifics of our research, we trust the figures provide insight into how each framework was used.
By Chris Cvitanovic and Rebecca Shellock
How important is trust at the science-policy interface? How can you build trust when working with decision-makers? And how can trust be repaired after a break-down?
How important is trust when working at the science-policy interface?
Trust is important at 3 levels:
By Sobia Khan and Julia E. Moore
How can implementation practitioners – those who are implementing in practice rather than for research – become more effective? How can the pragmatism required to apply implementation science principles to practice be taught and fostered? What are the core competencies of implementation practice?
We conducted a scan of the literature and grey literature and then consolidated six existing core competency documents, covering implementation practice, knowledge translation, and knowledge mobilization. The core competencies outlined across these six documents required some synthesis and re-framing in order to really make sense and resonate with practitioners, particularly to address differences across settings.
By Niki Ellis, Anne-Maree Dowd, Tamika Heiden and Gabriele Bammer
What does it take for research to be impactful? How should research impact be assessed? How much responsibility for impact should rest with researchers and how much with government, business and/or community partners?
We present five key insights based on our experience in achieving research impact in Australia:
By David D. Hart and Linda Silka
How can universities use their broad array of expertise to help in understanding and addressing complex challenges, including pandemics, environmental degradation, poverty and climate change?
For more than a decade, we have been engaged in an innovative collaboration with more than 200 faculty from nearly 30 academic disciplines to align university research with societal needs. We conceived of this initiative as an “institutional experiment,” in which our public university in the US state of Maine served as the “laboratory.”
Given Maine’s priorities and our collective expertise, we focused these problem-solving efforts on the challenge of sustainable development, which requires a dual focus on improving human well-being and protecting the environment.
By Petra Lundgren
How do funders think about investing in research that is intended to lead to change?
This blog post is written from the perspective of a research funder. More specifically it is based on reflections and lessons learned during five years managing and directing strategic research programs at a not-for-profit foundation, investing in science that would benefit the health and resilience of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Our funding mandate was to include research in a larger body of work towards a broader vision of change. This therefore provided the basis of my work and helped me shape the view that the funder has a big and critical role to play.
In the research that my organisation funded, it was important to both define and deliver impact beyond that of classic academic achievement.