Michael O’Donnell at Bond, the UK membership body for NGOs working in international development, explains why commissioners and managers should always consider the ‘design triangle’ when selecting an evaluation method – and a new guide that...

Eibhlin Ni Ogain on the key lessons learnt from implementing evidence and impact measurement in Nesta’s Impact Investments fund. Two and a half years ago we launched Nesta Impact Investments. We boldly stated that we would...

This year, the Alliance’s cross UK project – Evidence Exchange – has been sharing evidence across the UK. This blog outlines some of the learning from the project’s first six months. What are we talking about?...

Robert G. Picard explains how new visualisation techniques can aid our understanding of complex data. Large-scale and complex data create challenges for businesses, government, and civil society organisations to act upon and is now leading scholars...

Zoe Ferguson, former Chief Researcher in the Scottish Government, provides a brief outline of ‘the Scottish approach’ to policy making, which has significant implications for cross UK evidence exchange and analysis. The development of a distinctive...

Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of Nesta, and David Halpern, What Works National Advisor make the case for an international platform for commissioning and funding research. Many governments – and people – around the world are wrestling...

The post-mortem on the UK’s General Election continues. Sue Littlemore, Chief Executive of the Education Media Centre and former BBC Education Correspondent, found that politicians ignored research, but journalists were interested in finding evidence. Learning lessons from...

Finding your evidence by Wikipedia or Googling can be a dangerous business. Better to use tried-and-tested databases. Below is a review of the main UK social policy databases by Rebecca Riley at the Idox Information Service covering...

A new guide to the evidence on crime by Sense About Science will help the public understand some of the dubious promised made politicians to ‘tackle’ crime, says Alex Thompson, research and policy officer at Sense About Science....

A decade ago, writes Louise Shaxson, Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute’s Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) Programme, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) began to grapple with the challenge...

Let’s learn from the evidence in the devolved jurisdictions Whatever happens after the general election, we can be sure about one thing. Wellbeing and the evidence ecosystem will be at the heart of social policy making not...

The rise of “evidence-based policy” has resulted in confusion regarding its definition, writes Ron Haskins Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. This makes it the responsibility of those...