Background: COVID-19 accentuated an evergreen dilemma in evidence-informed policy making--the imperative to synthesise the best available evidence with limited time to produce high quality synthesis. The pandemic prompted the adaptation of evidence synthesis practices to match the urgency of the crisis, and heightened demand by policy makers,…

Background: A supportive context is essential for successful implementation processes. Local politicians are delivery system actors who might both enable and hinder the implementation of health and social policies. Aims and objectives: The study examines the relationship between perceived prerequisites and the type of actions taken by local…

Background: Political scientists have repeatedly argued that politicians' behaviour can be influenced by their beliefs about their constituents' ability to hold them accountable. Yet, how such accountability beliefs affect politicians' information processing or behaviour remains understudied. Aims and objectives: I investigate how accountability…

Background: There has been little applied learning from organisations engaged in making evidence useful for decision makers. More focus has been given either to the work of individuals as knowledge brokers or to theoretical frameworks on embedding evidence. More intelligence is needed on the practice of knowledge intermediation. Aims and…

Background: Knowledge brokering plays an important role in the evidence-to-policy system, but little is known about whether and how it occurs within government departments. Aims and objectives: Using empirical evidence from one UK government department, this article analyses how knowledge brokering takes place inside the policy making process and…

Background: Academic research on technical advice to policy commonly focuses on social and related policy areas such as health, education and crime (Oliver et al. 2014) and disciplinary advice from science disciplines (Jasanoff 1994; Millstone and van Zwanenberg 2001). Little or no prior research in the social sciences have explored engineering…

Background: This paper discusses findings from a study of English Local Authority (LA) Adult (ASCDs) that explored how managers use telecare. A decade earlier, a large clinical trial, the 'Whole System Demonstrator' project (WSD), funded by the Department of Health (DH) investigated telecare's effectiveness in promoting and maintaining…

Background: Oman has prioritised enhanced efforts for supporting evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM), including establishing a knowledge translation department in the Omani Ministry of Health (MOH). Aim and objective: Our aim was to gather insights to guide the process of activating this department. Methods: We conducted a document review and…

Background: The literature on evidence-based policy in education offers insight into the need to form partnerships between researchers and practitioners with particular attention to the role of "intermediaries." However, the operationalisation of the partnership, especially in school violence prevention, the focal policy of this…

Background: Despite the growing attention given to the political process of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM), we still know little about how evidence is processed at the early stages of the policymaking process, especially at the agenda-setting stage. Whether and when political elites pay attention to evidence-based information is crucial to the…

Background: Seeing how governments formulate decisions on our behalf is a crucial component of their ability to claim democratic legitimacy. This includes being seen to draw on the knowledge and evidence produced by their civil service policy advisers. Yet much of the advice provided to governments is being increasingly withdrawn from public…

Background: Recent complex and cross-boundary policy problems, such as climate change, pandemics, and financial crises, have recentred debates about state capacity, democratic discontent and the 'crisis of expertise'. These problems are contested and open to redefinition, misunderstanding, spin, and deception, challenging the ability of…

Background: Despite calls for greater use of research and an appetite to do so within adult social care, a gap persists between research and practice. Aims and objectives: To explore views of adult social care staff about research and its application to everyday practice. To understand how these might impact upon research use capacity-building…

Background: This article comes in response to two gaps within the research use literature: a lack of work on quality of use as distinct from quality of evidence, and a lack of research use models based on practitioner, as opposed to researcher, perspectives. Aims and objectives: The study probes into the views of education practitioners about…

Background: Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy. Aims and objectives: This article…