Guest blog by Stephen Anderson, Director of the Campaign for Social Science, discusses why the post of Chief Social Science Advisor should be reinstated. Imagine the outcry there would be if the government announced that...

  Guest blog from Claire Lightowler, programme manager of Evidence-informed practice (EiP) at IRISS, discusses research practice. At an event today about community empowerment in Scotland someone approached me to discuss his less than empowering experience...

  Ceri J. Philips, Professor of Health Economics at Swansea University, discusses his new book, co-authored with Colin Palfrey and Paul Thomas, which reviews the value of evaluation to policy and practice.  It comes at a...

  Michael Gove’s decision to overturn internal advice of the School Playing Fields Advisory board has once again brought to light the difficulties politicians can have with advisory boards, writes Jo Casebourne. Politicians often have to...

  Many claim to be seeking “what works” when looking for the solutions that will meet certain social goals.  This quest for evidence-based policies, programmes and practice has gained a renewed momentum, with the Cabinet Secretary...

  Following last week’s announcement of the Alliance for Useful Evidence, Professor Jonathan Shepherd writes a guest blog on how increasing the demand for rigorous evidence will involve capitalising on the instinct of all decision makers....

  We are delighted to announce that we are working with the ESRC – and others – to create an Alliance for Useful Evidence. As the past few days have shown there are a number of...

  “You say “evidence”. Well, there may be evidence. But evidence, you know, can generally be taken two ways” – Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, 1866 The blogs over the past two weeks have demonstrated that embedding...

  We have talked about the need for more and better use of evidence, but this does not always mean commissioning costly academic research. Instead we can find new ways of utilising the information already available...

  Not everybody thinks that evidence is the most important thing in the world. But most would recognise that knowing whether a programme of intervention is going to be harmful to them, their family or friends,...

  Research, evidence and data do not exist in a vacuum.  To influence decision making, sources of information have to compete with a myriad of other factors, ranging from political pressure, lobbyists, public opinion, ideology and...

  Most people would recognise that we need to improve how we measure the impact of services and programmes. Yet what do we do when an evaluation brings back negative findings? In the quest for ‘what...