Pro-active Evaluators: Enabling Research to Be Useful, Usable and Used

Abstract

Evidence-based policy making presents challenges for researchers as the pragmatic imperative of delivering `the right information, at the right time, for the right people' can appear to compromise traditional academic roles and responsibilities. Using the recent evaluation of the UK Cabinet Office-led `Better Government for Older People' programme as a case study, we discuss attempts to meet these challenges in practice. Our experience confirms that there has been a shift from the assumption of rational models (i.e. that evidence will be used as part of a linear planning process) to a more `realistic' perspective in which evidence from research requires advocates to promote its potential contribution. In turn, this suggests that it is in the interest of the research community to try to understand the policy-making process, and so design, undertake and disseminate their research in a way that maximizes the likelihood of its use in actively contributing to policy development.