Special Issues

How youth reference groups can help amplify research findings in public discussions and improve policymaking

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Lucas Walsh, Mark Rickinson, Blake Cutler and Joanne Gleeson

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘How youth reference groups can contribute to amplify research findings to public discussions and potentially improve policy making‘, part of the part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: The Role of Youth-Led Research in Policy Change.

Where youth engagement in policymaking is often tokenistic or absent (Waite et al, 2024), this could be improved by collaborating with young people as research evidence users. 

In a previous post, we examined what it means for practitioners to use research well (Rickinson et al., 2024). The Quality Use of Research Evidence (QURE) Framework guides how research can effectively be applied in practice. High‑quality, relevant research needs to be thoughtfully integrated into professional practice through critical engagement and deliberate implementation. Quality use is best supported by individual skills, mindsets and relationships, as well as organisational leadership, culture and infrastructure to enable effective evidence use. We’ve now applied the QURE Framework to better understand what enables quality use of research evidence in Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to amplify youth voices in public discussions and policymaking. 

In YPAR, ‘youth train as researchers to study equity issues they want to influence and advocate for changes based on their findings’ (Ozer et al., 2020: 269). More an orientation than a method, ‘youth are considered experts who generate valid knowledge about the conditions they seek to change while working to shift power structures and change inequitable systems, policies, and practices’ (Ozer et al., 2020: 269). In our case study, young people disrupted typically scholar-dominated research to contribute as collaborative research evidence users.

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Policy impacts through local intergenerational collectives

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Asherah Adler-Eldridge, Dane Stickney and Milahd Makooi

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Drive for equity: the impact of youth-generated evidence on transportation policy’, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: The Role of Youth-Led Research in Policy Change.

On a policy level, life has been hard lately. Certainly, in the United States, we understand that the current administrations’ policy decisions, which have been implemented quickly, harshly and without public comment, have left people shocked and demoralised. Unfortunately, the persistent absurdity produced by sporadic policy decisions has led to widespread desensitisation, creating a sense that defeat is both inevitable and enduring.

We also think that’s the point. At times, governmental officials use the policy process to isolate, intimidate and punish people, encouraging them to withdraw from civic life. There is hope, however, and we find it on deeply local and personal levels by addressing community inequities through intergenerational collectives.

Our Evidence & Policy article, ‘Drive for equity: the impact of youth-generated evidence on transportation policy’, explains how adult educators and teenage students came together to critique, research and reform policies that oversee streets, buses and trains in Denver, Colorado. Our article describes two cases that leveraged youth participatory action research (YPAR), which is framework in which young people lead as researchers, analysts and policy developers.

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Politics of neutrality: intermediaries and research use in civics programming

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Mariah Kornbluh

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Politics of neutrality: intermediaries and research use in civics programming‘, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: Research (Mis)use and Mis/Disinformation in and around Education.

Public education has become a political environment fraught with misinformation in the United States.  Book bans, educational gag orders and outright educator censorship influence (sometimes heavily) local school district policy. International efforts have highlighted that civics education offers a unique avenue in educating for a ‘just’ democracy. However, global trends and mounting national pressure highlights the curriculum’s vulnerability to being censored, constricted and outright distorted.

The problem: ‘neutrality’ perpetuating research misuse within civics education

Engaging in discourse on social issues and events that are relevant to students’ lives is an incredibly valuable method for them to gain needed civics skills. Yet, educators operate in an oppressive policy context that dissuades such practices and politicises historic events. Civics education has historically promoted neutrality as a pedagogical good which often manifests in a ‘both-sideism’ framework. This framework prioritises presenting ‘both sides’ of a social issue, often to the detriment of accuracy. Such an approach has been critiqued when 1) specific issues have overwhelming scientific evidence (i.e., climate change), but are presented as ‘open questions’, contributing to misinformation, and 2) such a format can set the stage for false equivalences in discourse around social injustice. Thus, the quest for ‘neutrality’ is a contested pedagogical approach within civics education, yet it has not been explored through the lens of research misuse.

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Fighting misinformation in education: what works, what doesn’t, and what we still need to learn

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Maithreyi Gopalan and Francesca Lopez

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Countermeasures to misinformation: lessons from the social sciences and applications to education in the United States‘, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: Research (Mis)use and Mis/Disinformation in and around Education.

In today’s polarised political climate, misinformation about education has fueled book bans, educational gag orders and teacher self-censorship – developments that threaten the integrity of our public education system. From debates about critical race theory to evidence-based teaching practices, false or misleading claims spread rapidly, shaping policy decisions at school, district, state and federal levels.

Despite the urgency of this problem, there is remarkably little research on how misinformation spreads in education or how to effectively counter it. In a new study published in Evidence & Policy, we comprehensively review and synthesise evidence from about 400 studies published broadly in the social sciences between 2010 and 2024 to identify what we know (and don’t know) about fighting misinformation in the uniquely decentralised world of US public education.

Research shows that false information spreads faster and more broadly than true information online, making this work especially urgent. While scholars continue to debate how best to define and study misinformation, we adopt a broad, inclusive definition of misinformation encompassing both intentional and unintentional false or misleading information consistent with prevailing expert guidance. We use the term misinformation throughout the review to describe the full spectrum of inaccurate or distorted information, regardless of intent and are particularly focused on uncovering remedies to mitigate ‘systemic misinformation’ that operates through mis-, dis- and mal-information channels.

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Far-right mother organisations and their crusade against public education

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Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, Huriya Jabbar, Kiah Combs, Mira McDavitt, Tamra J. Malone and Teresa Leyva

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Mama bears in the belly of the beast: Moms for Liberty disinformation campaigns in California’, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: Research (Mis)use and Mis/Disinformation in and around Education.

Far-right extremism – often characterised by nativism, religious fundamentalism, White supremacy and misogyny – is on the rise worldwide. And education has become a key battleground. The thought of far-right extremism often conjures images of angry young men, but the attack on public education in the United States and associated democratic institutions (such as local and regional elected school boards) has actually been spearheaded by a highly coordinated mothers’ organisation, Moms for Liberty.

Showing up at state houses and school board meetings to oppose sex education, challenge accurate and inclusive teaching of history, ban books, accuse teachers of sexually grooming children and oust educational leaders, Moms for Liberty projects a loud voice intent on reshaping education. Research on their tactics and consequences is growing, but far less attention has been paid to how they build support through disinformation in progressive states like California, where Moms for Liberty leaders describe themselves as vanguards ‘in the belly of the beast’.

Our study situates Moms for Liberty within a longer history of far-right women’s movements in the United States and internationally. We examine their organisational structure, activities, core messages and long-term strategies.

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Youth research as real school improvement

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Adam M. Voight, Rosalinda Godinez, Xiaona Jin, Amirhassan Javadi, Marissa J. Panzarella and Katelyne J. Griffin-Todd

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘The effects of youth participatory action research on education policy: a mixed methods study of three dozen high school projects‘, part of the Evidence & Policy Special Issue: The Role of Youth-Led Research in Policy Change.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) has long been celebrated for how deeply it engages young people in understanding – and acting on – the issues that shape their educational lives. But increasingly, practitioners and policymakers are recognising something larger: YPAR is not simply a youth development strategy or an engagement initiative. It is an emerging two-in-one approach that strengthens both young people and the institutions that serve them. When students conduct rigorous, locally grounded research and bring their findings to decision-makers, they simultaneously build the very ‘future-ready’ skills that educators value while generating evidence that can help schools improve.

Our study published in Evidence & Policy presents the strongest empirical demonstration of this school-level impact to date. Drawing on data from 36 discrete YPAR projects in high schools across the U.S. Midwest, it is – based on our review of the literature – the largest analysis ever conducted on the setting-level effects of YPAR. This scale matters. Much of what we previously knew about YPAR’s institutional influence came from one-off case studies or anecdotes about a particularly successful project. Those accounts are important, but they leave open a crucial question: under what conditions does youth-led research catalyse real change in schools?

By looking across dozens of projects rather than a handful, our study offers the first systematic evidence of the patterns, strategies and contexts that predict whether students’ research leads to changes in school policy, practice or culture.

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Learning through comparison

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Katherine Smith, Niklas Andreas Andersen and Valérie Pattyn

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy Special Themed Section ‘Learning Through Comparison’, Published in Evidence & Policy Vol 21 No 2, May 2025.

One of the central aspects of any process of learning and knowledge generation is the act of comparison. By comparing how our own ideas, norms and actions align or differ with those of others, we can see ourselves in a new light and thus better understand the particularities of our own situation as well as potentially re-evaluate taken-for-granted assumptions. This is true of every-day examples of individual learning as well as learning within and across research-communities. However, learning through comparison is also an inherently difficult endeavour as it often entails acquiring in-depth knowledge of research areas or settings that are (at least initially) completely foreign to us. This is perhaps one of the reasons why many fields of research often struggle to produce truly comparative research.

This is indeed the case with the now extensive research exploring, and trying to strengthen, the use of evidence in policy and practice. Single case studies and analyses of specific policy domains, countries or jurisdictions dominate this literature, limiting our ability to understand and compare how evidence, and evidence-for-policy mechanisms, function across time, and distinct institutional, national, and disciplinary contexts. The consequence is, we suggest, that we’re likely to be missing opportunities for cumulative knowledge building (in research) and lesson drawing (in practice).

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Learning from failure: improving behavioural health treatments through understanding mis-implementation

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Grace Hindmarch, Alex R. Dopp, Karen Chan Osilla, Lisa S. Meredith, Jennifer K. Manuel, Kirsten Becker, Lina Tarhuni, Michael Schoenbaum, Miriam Komaromy, Andrea Cassells and Katherine E. Watkins

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Mis-implementation of evidence-based behavioural health practices in primary care: lessons from randomised trials in Federally Qualified Health Centers’, part of the Special Issue: ‘Learning from Failures in Knowledge Exchange’.

“This is disappointing, but I agree we’ve done the best we can.” 

– CEO of a rural health care system

In October 2021, a rural healthcare system in the US discontinued implementation of a new program to improve access to quality care for patients with co-occurring opioid use disorder and mental health disorders. The program’s mission, fueled by passion for patients, was to help complex patients not fall through the cracks. After two years of immense effort, the system experienced ‘mis-implementation.’  Mis-implementation refers to unsuccessful efforts to implement treatments in real-world settings. Although it is a disappointing outcome, studying mis-implementation can provide insights to improve processes and make changes more successfully in the future.

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Productive interactions without impact?

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Magnus Gulbrandsen and Silje Maria Tellmann

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Productive interactions without impact? An empirical investigation of researchers’ struggle to improve elderly’s oral health’, part of the Special Issue: ‘Learning from Failures in Knowledge Exchange’.

Even if researchers do everything that is expected of them – collaborate with stakeholders, target important societal problems, engage in intensive science communication – societal impact may still not happen. What are the possible explanations?

A recurring observation in studies of the societal impacts of research is that substantial change typically involves a great deal of ‘productive interaction’ between stakeholders and researchers. However, not all interactions provide the desired societal impacts, as our empirical study of a cross-disciplinary research group focused on improving oral health in the elderly shows. In our Evidence & Policy article, we examined the subtleties of productive interactions and the intricate web of stakeholders, to shed light on the gaps that keep research efforts from having the desired societal impact.

We followed a group of researchers for six years, and even though they carried out many of the recommended activities to make impact happen, they were unable to achieve the expected outcomes. Even if many events took place that may – in an optimistic perspective – prepare the groundwork for future impact, no decisions in policy or practice targeting elderly’s oral health emerged. To analyse this process, we began by considering the oral health of the elderly as a problem area in which a wide range of stakeholders have a stake, but with varying interest, sense of urgency or capacity to make changes happen.

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What can we learn from co-production approaches in voluntary sector evaluation work?

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Louise Warwick-Booth, Ruth Cross and James Woodall

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Obstacles to co-producing evaluation knowledge: power, control and voluntary sector dynamics’, part of the Special Issue: ‘Learning from Failures in Knowledge Exchange’.

Co-production has been increasingly discussed as a positive and useful approach in health and social care research, based on principles such as partnership working, reciprocation, power sharing and the appreciation of all expertise. We have used co-production values to inform our evaluation work for many years, but in our Evidence & Policy article we reflect upon the challenges that such approaches bring, specifically in relation to sharing findings, known as knowledge exchange. Our article discusses evaluation work across three interventions that constitute perhaps the most challenging of our experiences in over a decade of such work. Conflict in evaluation work remains largely underreported, but we feel our experiences provide a useful contribution for readers.

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