Research impact – Page 2 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Four best practices for scaling up effective innovations

May 6, 2020August 8, 2017

By Amanda Fixsen, Karen Blase and Dean Fixsen

What is involved in effective scaling up of innovations in order to achieve social impact? Here are four best practices, drawn from our experience in scaling up human services innovations and programs for children and families. We also provide definitions of the key terms used.

1. Understand the target audiences

Effectively scaling innovations first requires attention to defining the denominator, or population of interest for the scale-up effort, as well as the numerator, or the number of children and families who are receiving the innovation with fidelity and good outcomes.

2. Purposeful design leads to high-fidelity use

Human service systems are legacy systems comprised of an accumulation of fragments of past mandates, good ideas, beliefs, and ways of work that evolved over many decades as legislators, leaders, and staff have come and gone. These legacy systems can be fragmented, siloed and inefficient.

To realize social impact, organizations and systems need to be designed, or re-designed, on purpose to produce and sustain high-fidelity use of effective innovations.

3. Focus on scaling proven programs

Attempts to scale ineffective or harmful programs are a waste of time, money and opportunity, so programs must reliably produce positive outcomes for the population of interest.

Given that we are focused on scaling interaction-based programs that require service providers to use the program within a larger systems context, there is a great deal of complexity involved in “scaling up.” It may be difficult to assess the quality of the program for the children and families who are receiving it, as good fidelity measures for programs are not common.

amanda-fixsen — Amanda Fixsen (biography)

Scaling up amidst complexity

October 19, 2021June 27, 2017

By Ann Larson

How can new or under-utilized healthcare practices be expanded and institutionalized to achieve audacious and diverse global health outcomes, ranging from eliminating polio to reversing the rise in non-communicable diseases? How can complex adaptive systems with diverse components and actors interacting in multiple ways with each other and the external environment best be dealt with? What makes for an effective scale-up effort?

Four in-depth case studies of scale-up efforts were used to explore if there were different pathways to positively change a complex adaptive system.

Impacts of social learning in transformative research

September 13, 2021May 16, 2017

By Flurina Schneider, Lara M. Lundsgaard-Hansen, Thoumthone Vongvisouk, and Julie G. Zähringer

How can science truly support sustainability transformations?

In our research projects we often find that the very process of co-producing knowledge with stakeholders has transformative impacts. This requires careful design and implementation. Knowledge co-production in transdisciplinary and other research leads to social learning and can make a difference in the lives of those involved.

Successful implementation demands a great liaison person: Nine tips on making it work

August 10, 2020March 21, 2017

By Abby Haynes on behalf of CIPHER (Centre for Informing Policy in Health with Evidence from Research)

cipher-group — CIPHER Sub-group (Participants)

When external providers deliver a complex program in an organisation, it is crucial that someone from that organisation—a liaison person—gives ‘insider’ advice and acts as a link between their organisation and the program providers. What are the characteristics to look for in filling that role? And how can liaison people best be supported?

Designing for impact in transdisciplinary research

August 13, 2021February 16, 2017

By Cynthia Mitchell, Dena Fam and Dana Cordell

Starting with richly articulated pictures of where we would like to be at some defined point in the future has powerful consequences for any human endeavour. How can we use such “Outcome Spaces” to guide the conception, design, implementation, and evaluation of transdisciplinary research?

Our Outcome Spaces Framework (Mitchell et al., 2017) considers three essential impacts:

(1) improving the situation,
(2) generating relevant stocks and flows of knowledge, and
(3) mutual and transformational learning by the researcher/s and involved participants.

Improving health care services through Experience-based Co-design

September 13, 2021October 20, 2016

By Glenn Robert and Annette Boaz

authors_glenn-robert_annette-boaz — 1. Glenn Robert (biography)
2. Annette Boaz (biography)

There is lots of talk about the potential of co-creation as an approach to improving public services, but what does it actually look like (and do) in practice?

We describe one specific approach that has been used extensively for improving the quality of health care services: Experience-based Co-design.

Key Features and Stages

Experience-based Co-design draws on elements of participatory action research, user-centred design, learning theory and narrative-based approaches to change.

The key features of Experience-based Co-design are that it:

places patients at the heart of a quality improvement effort working alongside staff to improve services
maintains a focus on designing experiences (not just systems or processes).

It has six stages.

Stage 1 involves establishing the governance and project management arrangements.

Six lessons about change that affect research impact

October 20, 2021October 18, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

What do researchers need to know about change to help our research have greater impact? What kind of impact is it realistic to expect? Will understanding change improve the ways we assess research impact?

The six lessons described here illustrate some of the complexities inherent in understanding and trying to influence change.

#1. Research findings enter a dynamic environment, where everything is changing all the time

As researchers we often operate as if the world is static, just waiting for our findings in order to decide where to head next. Instead, for research to have impact, researchers must negotiate a constantly changing environment.

The interplay between knowledge and power / La interacción entre el conocimiento y el poder

August 11, 2020July 14, 2016

By Cristina Zurbriggen

An English version of this post is available

La mayoría de los recientes enfoques para abordar problemas complejos no incluyen la dimensión política. Por otra parte, la ciencia política, así como los estudios de política pública y de gobierno contemporáneo han realizado escasas contribuciones al tratamiento de los procesos de toma de decisiones desde dinámicas complejas.

¿Cómo podemos desarrollar marcos innovadores que incorporen la dimensión política?

Can co-creation achieve better outcomes for people and communities?

October 21, 2021May 5, 2016

By Deborah Ghate

The language of ‘co-processes’ is much in vogue in policy, practice and academic communities worldwide. In commerce, product design and politics, the power of the crowd has long been recognised, but can co-processes be harnessed for the public good? The answer, right now, appears to be ‘maybe’.

What are co-processes and what are they for?

The briefest survey of the literature on co-processes confirms there is substantial variation in how they are defined and what methods or techniques they include. A confusing multiplicity of related terms exists—co-construction, co-production, co-design, co-innovation, co-creation—all are in regular use, sometimes interchangeably, and often defined at an unhelpful level of abstraction (for more on this topic see the blog post by Allison Metz on Co-creation, co-design, co-production, co-construction: same or different?). Nevertheless, however we define co-processes, participatory methods, boundary-spanning and inclusivity to varying degrees are foundational principles that can be detected in most accounts. Beyond that, the stated purposes and proposed outcomes vary considerably.

Towards an evaluation framework for participatory modeling

September 23, 2021March 31, 2016

By Miles McNall

What are the results of participatory modeling efforts? What contextual factors, resources and processes contribute to these results? Answering such questions requires the systematic and ongoing evaluation of processes, outputs and outcomes. At present participatory modeling lacks a framework to guide such evaluation efforts. In this post I offer some initial thoughts on the features of this framework.

A first step in developing an evaluation framework for participatory modeling is to establish criteria for processes, outputs, and outcomes. Such criteria would answer a basic question about what it means when we say that a participatory modeling process, output, or outcome is good, worthy, or meritorious.

Research impact: Six kinds of change

May 12, 2021March 29, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

What kinds of change can implementation of research findings contribute to? Sometimes the aim is to make change happen, while at other times research implementation is in response to particular proposed or ongoing change.

Making change happen

Two ways of making change happen that are important for research impact are: 1) contributing to the on-going quest for improvement and 2) combatting practices or behaviours that have negative outcomes for individuals or society.

Examples of contributing to the quest for ongoing improvement include technological research such as invention of thinner lenses to revolutionise cameras and social research such as development and implementation of a disability insurance scheme.