Research implementation – Integration and Implementation Insights

Six lessons for connecting evidence to policy and practice in the Global South

August 8, 2023July 11, 2023

By Fréjus Thoto

How can the ecosystem of evidence use in policy and practice work better in Global South countries such as Benin?

Here I provide six lessons drawn from activities undertaken by the African Center for Equitable Development (ACED), a non-profit think-and-do tank, located in Benin, West Africa. Our focus has been on the food and nutrition security sector.

Lesson 1: Access to policy-relevant evidence is still a big challenge

There is still much work to do in order to ensure that timely and policy-relevant evidence is produced and accessible to users. We have developed a national platform to consolidate and display the available statistical data, research findings, and evaluation findings. However, a platform alone is not enough, and research agenda setting, research-policy dialogues and other strategic activities are required.

Lesson 2: Involve governments at all levels in evidence-informed policymaking processes

Challenges to science-policy-society interactions in transdisciplinary research

August 15, 2023July 4, 2023

By Oghenekaro N. Odume, Akosua B. K. Amaka-Otchere, Blessing N. Onyima, Fati Aziz, Sandra B. Kushitor and Sokhna Thiam

authors_odume_amaka-otchere_onyima_aziz_kushitor_thiam — 1. Oghenekaro N. Odume; 2. Akosua B. K. Amaka-Otchere; 3. Blessing N. Onyima; 4. Fati Aziz; 5. Sandra B. Kushitor; 6. Sokhna Thiam (biographies)

Why is transdisciplinary research that aims to co-produce knowledge across academic disciplines, policy contexts and societal domains often so difficult? What are the key challenges that need to be overcome?

We identified five key challenges when we analysed five projects implemented in nine African cities which were part of the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030 in Africa (LIRA) program (Odume et al., 2021).

Challenge #1: Conceptual threshold crossing

Science-policy-society interactions require active engagement of diverse actors, often with different discursive language and epistemic backgrounds. Translating academic discourse into accessible everyday language can be challenging. In the same vein, policy and societal actors use discourse unfamiliar to academic actors.

Conceptual threshold crossing in terms of intellectual, ontological, and cognitive transformation is particularly challenging when projects are not just about understanding problems or raising awareness, but about true co-production of knowledge and co-ownership of the resulting outcomes.

Institutionalizing evidence-informed policy-making in Latin America and the Caribbean / Institucionalizando la toma de decisiones informadas por evidencias en Latinoamérica y el Caribe/ Institucionalizando a formulação de políticas informadas em evidências na América Latina e Caribe

June 16, 2023May 9, 2023

By Directors and Coordinators of the Latin American and the Caribbean Evidence Hub

authors_directors-coordinators-latin-american-and-caribbean-evidence-hub — Author biographies

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.Research and policy interface

* The Latin American and the Caribbean Evidence Hub is an interdisciplinary and trilingual team who work together to create a dynamic and diverse community that articulates and mobilizes producers, intermediaries and users of knowledge in the region for decision making informed by the best available evidence. In 2022, it organized workshops with multi-country stakeholders and a regional meeting.

Analysing key policy actors with the alignment, interest and influence matrix (AIIM)

August 3, 2023June 21, 2022

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. Users should not rule out having to put the AIIM on hold while they gather further evidence, nor going back to the matrix as they gain new insights during the implementation of their plans.

The process involves 6 steps and can be completed during a participatory workshop.

Three lessons for policy engagement

April 28, 2022April 26, 2022

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.

Intentional ecology: Building values, advocacy and action into transdisciplinary environmental research

April 19, 2022

By Alexandra Knight and Catherine Allan

authors_alexandra-knight_catherine-allan — 1. Alexandra Knight (biography)
2. Catherine Allan (biography)

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.

Drawing lines between researcher and advocate?

April 19, 2022March 22, 2022

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”.

Overcoming the mismatch between goals and outcomes in knowledge exchange

January 11, 2022

By Denis Karcher and Chris Cvitanovic

authors_denis-karcher_christopher-cvitanovic — 1. Denis Karcher (biography)
2. Chris Cvitanovic (biography)

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).

Combining and adapting frameworks for research implementation

September 28, 2021September 28, 2021

By Kirsty Jones and Sara Bice

authors_kirsty-jones_sara-bice — 1. Kirsty Jones (biography)
2. Sara Bice (biography)

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.

Trust at the science-policy interface

July 27, 2021

By Chris Cvitanovic and Rebecca Shellock

authors_christopher-cvitanovic_rebecca-shellock — 1. Chris Cvitanovic (biography)
2. Rebecca Shellock (biography)

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:

Trust in individuals (eg., an individual researcher and an individual policy-maker), which is important for providing space for open dialogue;
Trust in the research organisation, which focuses on organisational legitimacy and credibility, and acting in a way that is free of bias;
Trust in the process by which knowledge is generated and exchanged.

Core competencies for implementation practice

September 5, 2023June 29, 2021

By Sobia Khan and Julia E. Moore

authors_sobia-khan_julia-moore — 1. Sobia Khan (biography)
2. Julia E. Moore (biography)

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.

Five insights on achieving research impact

July 8, 2021June 1, 2021

authors_niki-ellis_anne-maree-dowd_tamika-heiden_gabriele-bammer — 1. Niki Ellis (biography)
2, Anne-Maree Dowd (biography)
3. Tamika Heiden (biography)
4, Gabriele Bammer (biography)

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:

Planning for impact is essential
Quality relationships trump all other factors
Assessment of research contributions should be tailored to the type of research and based on team, not individual, performance
Researchers alone cannot be responsible for achieving impact
Be open to continual learning.