Evidence

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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Evidence & Policy 2025 Carol Weiss Award

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We are thrilled to announce the prize for the 2025 Carol Weiss Award winning paper published in Evidence & Policy. The Carol Weiss Prize is in honour of Dr Carol Weiss, the first North American Editor of Evidence & Policy, and a pivotal contributor and thinker to our field. The award is given every two years to early career contributors to the journal.

This award cycle, we are delighted to announce that the winners of the 2025 Carol Weiss Prize are Lise Moawad and Dr Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler for their Evidence & Policy article, ‘Social studies, technology assessment and the pandemic: a comparative analysis of social studies-based policy advice in PTA institutions in France, Germany and the UK during the COVID-19 crisis’.

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New Evidence & Policy issue – Volume 21: Issue 4

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The editorial team of Evidence & Policy is pleased to see the publication of our fourth and final issue for 2025, Evidence & Policy Volume 21: Issue 4. This issue has a lot of work focused on how political elites use and are impacted by evidence in the policymaking process. A major thread through this work is that while evidence has an impact, there are important limitations.

The first piece examines programs designed to support scientists and engineers in engaging in public policy, specifically studying the state of Virginia. Through surveys and interviews of program leaders, the study finds evidence of perceived impact, though limits in the ability to implement evidence-based approaches.

The second article also finds impact and its limitation, but this time using policy documents. They find that policy think tanks draw from academic expertise more readily than governments.

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Supporting effective collaboration in large transdisciplinary research teams

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Taru Silvonen and Ges Rosenberg

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Optimising teamworking processes in an ongoing research consortium: a qualitative study’.

Considering collaboration is needed to solve complex societal problems, why are the structures that can help teams work together so often overlooked in research settings?

Complex research projects often require large teams with a wide range of expertise to work together. Working across disciplines and professional boundaries can be exciting but also comes with its own challenges, as shown by research in team science. These challenges are particularly present in transdisciplinary partnerships that aim to tackle evolving societal challenges, which makes our work relevant beyond academic teams. While interdisciplinary teams combine knowledge from different fields, transdisciplinary teams aim to create real-world change by involving both academic and non-academic partners. This provides opportunities for peer learning as well as bridging thinking between different perspectives. However, an appreciation of different ways of working, thinking, and communicating within a team will be required.

Our Evidence & Policy article shares insights from a UK-based research consortium called TRUUD (Tackling Root Causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development), which focuses on creating healthier urban environments to reduce non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the UK. TRUUD consists of 40+ academics in a transdisciplinary consortium, meaning it does not just combine academic disciplines – it also includes practitioners and stakeholders working together to solve real problems. Our qualitative study explores what helps large, complex teams work well together, especially in transdisciplinary (TD) settings, and how to overcome common challenges (i.e. building shared understanding and navigating conflict).

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How to lead an evidence centre

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Steve Martin

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Leading research–policy engagement: an empirical analysis of the capabilities and characteristics of leaders of evidence intermediary organisations’.

In the last ten years, a range of countries have invested in organisations designed to bridge the gap between researchers and policymakers. In the United Kingdom alone, we now have 12 What Works Centres, 30 Health Determinants Research Collaborations, three Local Policy Innovations Partnerships, several regional evidence centres, and dozens of policy engagement teams working in universities, businesses and charities.

The leadership of these evidence intermediaries is key to their effectiveness. But we know very little about their leaders – where they come, what they do, and what skills they need for the job. To help fill this gap, I conducted in-depth interviews with leaders of some of the UK’s most high-profile evidence intermediary organisations. Their stories provide fascinating ‘warts and all’ accounts of what it takes to lead an organisation that can overcome the formidable institutional barriers that often stand in the way of evidence-informed policy and practice.

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Evidence & Policy Call for Abstracts: Special Issue: Strengthening Research Practice Partnerships in Social Care: Evidence, Impact and Policy Learning

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Special Issue Editors: Professor Annette Boaz and Professor Ann-Marie Towers

Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday 3 November 2025

Background to the Special Issue

Research practice partnerships (RPPs) offer transformative potential by embedding rigorous evidence into decision making and practice, yet there is limited synthesis of how such collaborations function and their influence on policy and practice.  Research practice partnerships have featured in previous editions of Evidence & Policy (for example, Hoekstra et al 2021; Gray et al 2024) and the importance of collaborative working and relationships is a core theme in journal submissions, including in a key paper by Best and Holmes (2010).

This Evidence & Policy special issue builds on empirical and conceptual learning from six RPPs in England funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.  It will also feature contributions from a wider group of partnerships emerging from the social care/ human services sectors internationally—to generate comparative insights on structures, mechanisms for co production, knowledge mobilisation strategies, and policy impact. 

Aims of the special issue:

  1. Evaluate the impact of RPP typologies in social care/ human services.
  2. Examine co-production and governance models that facilitate practitioner and public engagement.
  3. Evaluate how generated evidence contributes to organisational policy decisions and builds research capacity
  4. Identify transferable lessons for establishing and sustaining collaborative RPPs.

Invitation to Submit Proposals

Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract to Special Issue Editors Professor Annette Boaz (Annette.boaz@kcl.ac.uk) and Professor Ann-Marie Towers (ann-marie.towers@kcl.ac.uk) by Monday 3 November 2025.

Invitations for full paper submissions will be sent in mid-November, and full papers will be due by end of March 2026.

We welcome submissions on:

  • Research Articles employing mixed methods evaluations of RPP outcomes.
  • Perspectives discussing methodological and ethical challenges in partnership design.
  • Theory & Methods papers on frameworks for assessing embedded evidence impact.

Optimising microsurveys to improve the use of research evidence from websites

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Esmeralda Michel, Megan Mitchell, Nehal Eldeeb and Valerie B. Shapiro

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Promoting the use of research evidence from websites: optimising microsurveys as feedback loops to drive improvement’.

There are many efforts to make research evidence accessible to educators online through toolkits and in other user-friendly formats. Intermediaries – which are organisations that sit between research and practice – can take on the mission of synthesising, translating and sharing research for the public. One such intermediary is the Greater Good in Education (GGIE), an organization that hosts a website of evidence-based practices for educators. Yet a persistent challenge remains among these types of intermediaries: once research evidence is packaged and posted, how do we know the extent to which the evidence is being accessed, appraised and applied in practice? Intermediaries are missing ‘feedback loops’ that could help the intermediaries adapt and improve their efforts to promote the use of research evidence.

In a recent study published in Evidence & Policy, researchers Eldeeb, Ren, and Shapiro explored whether microsurveys could help fill this gap. Microsurveys are short surveys embedded directly on a webpage, triggered by specified interactions with the website. They can capture real-time feedback from users, providing actionable insights into whether research evidence is likely to be applied in practice.

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Recognising the expertise of people with disability

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Shane Clifton

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Disability lived experience and expertise: recognising the expert contributions of people with disability’.

The disability rights movement was founded on the principle of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’. This idea highlights the importance of including people with disability in decisions that affect them and recognises their expertise in shaping their own lives. While people with disability have too often been subject to controlling and dehumanising systems, as we explore in our recent study, there is now a growing understanding that disabled people should play key roles in designing, producing and leading disability healthcare, policy and research. The knowledge they bring is often called ‘lived experience’.

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Beyond barriers: new insights from the ESRC Policy Fellowships

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Matthew Flinders and Jessica Benson-Egglenton

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Understanding the dynamics of research–policy fellowships: an evaluative analysis of barriers and blockages’.

Supporting embedded academics requires understanding role types, managing ‘bandwidth,’ and setting clear expectations.

In recent years the dominant notion of ‘research excellence’ has expanded to include a joint emphasis on both knowledge creation and knowledge utilisation. Research funding is now targeted as addressing specific societal challenges. Forms of co-production and co-design have been promoted as a way of bringing potential research-users into project design and delivery. Thus, a vast and complex landscape of boundary-spanning initiatives and investments has been established to facilitate the use of research by policy-makers.

The challenge, however, is that policy-making is a messy and sometimes irrational process. Brian Hogwood and Lewis Gunn famously exposed this simple fact in their book Policy Analysis for the Realworld (1985), and recent work from the Institute for Government underlines the continuing validity of ‘the real-world messiness’ argument.

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New Evidence & Policy issue – Volume 21: Issue 3

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The editorial team of Evidence & Policy are excited to share this special collection of articles focused on the intersections between health, evidence use, and the application of research within evolving and complex public health policy contexts.

Articles in this issue explore and critically examine innovative models and frameworks (i.e., Functional Dialogue, Policy Advisory Boards) for leveraging research to inform policy in times of public health crisis (specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic). They also focus on improving medical practice (i.e., Knowledge Brokering, Contemporary Implementation of Traditional knowledge and Evidence (CITE) Framework, Integrated Systems of Care), as well as efforts to expand and broaden health care coverage and directly influence policy addressing structural determinants of health (Participatory Deliberative Processes).

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