Why we need an evidence-informed approach to policy and practice

 

Why we need an evidence-informed approach to policy and practice

Today the importance of adopting appropriate monitoring, evaluation and feedback processes is universally recognised and cannot be overestimated. In the current economic climate the need to justify activity to commissioners is also increasingly important to properly account to policy makers and the general public what organisations do with public funding. From a practical point of view an evidence-informed approach to policy and practice can help providers in this field to demonstrate effectiveness in terms of impact and outcomes, but also prove efficiency and value for money. It can do this, for example, by assisting service providers to adopt a rigorous approach to evaluation and ensuring the benefits of good performance and learning from programme success and failures are learnt.  A relevant case example here includes the CES What Works ProCESs.

CES aims to make a significant contribution to working with and supporting people in communities to provide evidence-informed advice, information and other specialist services to practitioners, commissioners and policy makers.

 

What is an evidence-informed approach to practice and policy?

‘Evidence-informed’ means the integration of experience, judgement and expertise with the best available external evidence from systematic research into your area of work. This includes referral to rigorously evaluated programmes and more often it will also include conducting social scientific research with reputable researchers, and the weighing up findings and adopting or adapting what is deemed to be helpful and appropriate to improve conditions for a targeted population.

An evidence-informed* approach means focussing on results of programme activities and evaluating these against preset criteria. These criteria might derive from professionally agreed and publicly available standards or benchmarks. It also involves assessing outcomes and impact against predetermined goals and objectives, and systematically utilising internal and external evaluation to support learning and development.

 

What are the challenges to this approach?

A key challenge for monitoring systems is to produce the type of data that helps practitioners to have oversight of what they are doing and achieving, while also providing accurate and meaningful information for evaluation and reporting purposes at project, local and national levels. Crucially, with an evidence-informed approach reliance on an evaluation report alone is not sufficient.

Working out the ‘story’ behind the baseline helps to explain the causes and forces at work, which in turn make it easier to set appropriate targets against which success can be gauged in terms of measurably improving the well-being of a target group. Robust planning and conducting a need analysis is important in this process to establish the baselines for programme activity so that it is possible to tell whether conditions are getting better or worse.

 

Why we need a collective approach

An evidence-informed approach develops ideas for action by drawing on the contributions of local partners, research and evaluations, experience from other communities, and practitioners’ own experience. A strategic planning process can take from the most powerful of these ideas and actions with the greatest leverage, including no-cost and low cost actions. Finally, the use of suitably designed logic models can capture the results of a rigorous a strategic planning process in a simplified way. It can then be used internally, for example as a tool for monitoring the work, and externally as a way of summarising the overall purpose and activities of an organisation to outsiders.

 

Recommended reading:

Schorr L.  (2002) Determining ‘what works’ in social programs and social policies: toward a more inclusive knowledge base. Harvard: the Brookings Institution

Schorr L.  (2002) Usable Information about what works – Building a broader and deeper knowledge base. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vol.22 No. 4.

Rossi, P.H., Lipsey, M.W. and Freeman, H.E. (2004) Evaluation: A Systematic Approach. London: SAGE Chapters 1, 4, 5,7, 8 and 9.

The Treasury (2006) Magenta Book Guidance Notes on Policy Evaluation:
Available at: www.policyhub.gov.uk/magenta_book/ or
www.policyhub.gov.uk/evaluating_policy/magenta_book/chapter2.asp

The Colorado Blueprints Programmes can be viewed at www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/

*CES Glossary link