2023 webinar: November

Grant consult: ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellowship

Evidence: from engagement to impact - CAPE

In this blog Ben Hepworth from the Ministry of Justice describes how civil servants working in knowledge exchange roles across government have been supported by CAPE to convene a forum – the Policy Knowledge Brokering Forum (PKBF) – to discuss topics of mutual interest. The substantive content of this blogpost explores and summarises one session of the PKBF that discussed evidence usage, academic engagement, and ‘impact’.

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Training course: Bringing Qualitative Analysis to Life: Making the most of your senses

Join Anuja Cabraal, Daniel Turner and Christina Silver for two days exploring creative, tactile and reflexive ways of working with qualitative materials. This workshop encourages you to go beyond rea

REF 2028: What could go wrong? - Research Professional News

The next REF’s details are more devil-ridden than has been appreciated, says Anna Grey

Ethics and Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice

This open access book provides a practical guide that will help other institutions to start introducing Research Ethics in their organizations.

Why Is It So Hard to Evaluate Knowledge Exchange?; Comment on “Sustaining Knowledge Translation Practices: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis”

Despite a growth in knowledge exchange or translation (KT) activities, and a smaller growth in their evaluations, it remains challenging to identify evidence of efficacy. This could be due to well-documented political and logistical difficulties involved in evaluating knowledge exchange interventions. By bringing in theory from science and technology studies, Borst et al offer a new way of thinking about this problem. Most KT evaluations draw on health research traditions; centralising comparability, efficacy, and so on. Borst et al propose focusing on the work it takes to move knowledge over boundaries between these communities, seeing relationships as interactions, not just conduits for evidence. They show how ‘context’ can be understood as a mutual creation, not a static environment; and institutions as shaping behaviours, as opposed to merely being sites or platforms for evidence mobilisation. Seeing knowledge translation as a creative, active practice opens new ways to design and evaluation KT mechanisms.

Evaluating the quality of research co-production: Research Quality Plus for Co-Production (RQ + 4 Co-Pro) - Health Research Policy and Systems

Background Co-production is an umbrella term used to describe the process of generating knowledge through partnerships between researchers and those who will use or benefit from research. Multiple advantages of research co-production have been hypothesized, and in some cases documented, in both the academic and practice record. However, there are significant gaps in understanding how to evaluate the quality of co-production. This gap in rigorous evaluation undermines the potential of both co-production and co-producers. Methods This research tests the relevance and utility of a novel evaluation framework: Research Quality Plus for Co-Production (RQ + 4 Co-Pro). Following a co-production approach ourselves, our team collaborated to develop study objectives, questions, analysis, and results sharing strategies. We used a dyadic field-test design to execute RQ + 4 Co-Pro evaluations amongst 18 independently recruited subject matter experts. We used standardized reporting templates and qualitative interviews to collect data from field-test participants, and thematic assessment and deliberative dialogue for analysis. Main limitations include that field-test participation included only health research projects and health researchers and this will limit perspective included in the study, and, that our own co-production team does not include all potential perspectives that may add value to this work. Results The field test surfaced strong support for the relevance and utility of RQ + 4 Co-Pro as an evaluation approach and framework. Research participants shared opportunities for fine-tuning language and criteria within the prototype version, but also, for alternative uses and users of RQ + 4 Co-Pro. All research participants suggested RQ + 4 Co-Pro offered an opportunity for improving how co-production is evaluated and advanced. This facilitated our revision and publication herein of a field-tested RQ + 4 Co-Pro Framework and Assessment Instrument. Conclusion Evaluation is necessary for understanding and improving co-production, and, for ensuring co-production delivers on its promise of better health.. RQ + 4 Co-Pro provides a practical evaluation approach and framework that we invite co-producers and stewards of co-production—including the funders, publishers, and universities who increasingly encourage socially relevant research—to study, adapt, and apply.

Grant consult: ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellowship