Academics and policymakers alike are facing mounting pressures to improve the supply of rigorous evidence for decision-making. Yet improving the supply of good evidence is not the same as translating that evidence into meaningful changes in...

A growing wariness between what is fact and what is fiction in recent years has been highlighted by increased political polarisation, a fractured media and the accelerated pace of technological change. The Evidence Initiative, the recently launched...

This week marks International Open Access Week 2018. At the Alliance for Useful Evidence, we’re big supporters of the principles behind the open access (OA) movement: scholarly research should be available to everyone, not just to...

Jonathan Breckon provides a guide to the Results First Clearinghouse Database, which brings together the evidence base for over 2,500 US programmes. Could it provide a model for something similar in the UK? Earlier this summer,...

Those working to increase the use of evidence need to understand the internal journey that’s required for people to change their behaviour, writes Kerry McCarthy. Back in 2015 I started to wonder what, as an evaluation...

For the third time, the Alliance for Useful Evidence is pleased to be partnering with the Political Studies Association on their Annual Awards, to celebrate the successful use of evidence in policy-making. Nominations are now open...

The authors of the report ‘UK What Works Centres: Aims, methods and contexts’ share the findings of their research and the lessons that can be learnt by the wider sector. The UK is unique in having...

Changing the way that decision-makers engage with evidence is no easy task. For all our efforts, making high quality evidence available and accessible often just isn’t enough. What motivates a politician to commission a review, or...

Ruth Puttick, author of our report ‘Mapping the Standards of Evidence used in UK social policy’ discusses the differences in Standards of Evidence in more depth. Over the past decade, Standards of Evidence have become increasingly...

Janet Grauberg (an organisational learning consultant working in children’s services) explains why Action Learning is an ideal way to embed evidence-informed practice. Most days, I don’t have time to read all the interesting bulletins that land...

At the Alliance we have been arguing for ages that the evidence community needs to learn more about the use of research by policymakers and professionals. What exactly helps people to use evidence? We need more...

Last month the Alliance’s Senior Research Officer Emma Taylor-Collins was invited to speak about evidence at a Citizens Advice Research & Campaigns Forum in Bristol.  The event, focusing on using evidence to influence policy, brought together...

The What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care shares its next steps. Today is World Social Work Day – an event that encourages the celebration and promotion of the profession’s contributions to individuals, families, communities and...

Earlier in the year, we invited people from practitioner, policy and professional bodies with an interest in using evidence to a Scottish Evidence Summit. The day was organised in partnership with Iriss. Thirty senior representatives, from...

Richard Clubbe discusses the mixed findings of Sense about Science’s spot check on how transparent government departments are about their evidence use. Last week Sense about Science published a report on how transparent the UK government...

Away from the despairing talk of ‘post-truth politics’, governments in countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and France have been setting up important new institutions whose job is to reinforce evidence, and indeed truth, in...

When government implements far-reaching policies whilst ignoring the evidence there can be catastrophic consequences, writes Geoff Mulgan (Nesta). Private finance initiatives (PFIs) and public-private partnerships (PPPs) are in the spotlight again thanks to the collapse of...

Evidence should be more than a footnote in the revamped Ministerial Code, says David Walker, contributing editor for Guardian Public and chair of the ESRC’s Understanding Society board. Theresa May has revamped the Ministerial Code, the mini-bible...

Let’s have the courage to consider the harm that our interventions might do, as well as their intended impact, writes Dr Nick Axford (Plymouth University and Dartington Service Design Lab). Not a million miles away from...

On 7 November leaders of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the College of Policing and the Chartered College of Teaching met at the Royal Society to sign the Declaration on Evidence, written by Professor Jonathan...