Articles, Evaluations and Reports

A: Evidence-based museums, archives and libraries work

A1: Introduction: Evidence-based Policy and Practice

The concept of evidence-based policy and practice (EBPP) has been pioneered in the (North American and then Australasian and UK) health service, increasingly applied here in the social care sector and adapted (in one version rebadged as Evidence-Informed Practice) in the UK education system. A major impetus for this approach in the UK has come from the Government policy making vision expressed in Professional Policy Making¹. One of the nine core features identified was that policy making should be evidence-based, that is "Uses best available evidence from a wide range of sources".

Enabling structures have since been put in place by the Cabinet Office, notably:

• the Strategy Unit, which, as the Performance and Innovation Unit, contributed further to Government thinking on this theme², emphasising the need for the policy process to use evidence from pilots and incorporate monitoring and evaluation, and
   
• the Centre for Management and Policy Studies, which set out to identify the benefits of using evidence in policy making³. The Centre is pursuing the task of promoting EBPP by various means including the training of civil servants in interpreting and using evidence, creating 'knowledge pools' for information sharing and offering a policy hub website (http://www.cmps.gov.uk).
   

This lead has been taken up by various Government Departments and Agencies, notably the National Audit Office⁴, various publications from the Home Office on EBPP in probation⁵ and crime reduction⁶, and a programme of initiatives in health and, more recently, social care, culminating in the creation of NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence http://www.nice.org.uk) and SCIE (the Social Care Institute for Excellence http://www.scie.org.uk) to provide another dimension to the work of such agencies as the Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org) and NHS Centre for Dissemination and Reviews (http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd).

Other relevant national organisations include the EPPI Centre (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk) which has completed systematic reviews in education covering teaching English, leadership, inclusion, gender, further education and assessment; the Centre for Evidence-Based Social Services at the University of Exeter (http://www.exe.ac.uk/cebss); and the ESRC UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice (http://www.evidencenetwork.org).

It is clear that EBPP is interpreted in somewhat different ways in the various sectors involved. The Government emphasis is primarily on securing a range of evidence to help in the formation, implementation and evaluation of policy; in the health sector there is a strong focus on meta-clinical evidence as a guide to decision-making, but a growing recognition that different evidence rules apply at the public health end of the continuum; in social care and in education the focus is very much on the nature of acceptable evidence. However, all these approaches recognise that the policy and practice evidence base draws (more or less confidently) upon a variety of sources, including:

• Academic research evidence
   
• Practice-generated impact evidence
   
• Professionally mediated 'best practice' information.
   

1. CABINET OFFICE: STRATEGIC POLICY MAKING TEAM Professional policy making for the twenty first century London: Cabinet Office 1999. http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk [back]

2. CABINET OFFICE: PERFORMANCE and INNOVATION UNIT Better policy delivery and design London: Cabinet Office 2001. http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk [back]

3. BULLOCK, H., MOUNTFORD, J. and STANLEY, R. Better policy-making London: Cabinet Office, Centre for Management and Policy Studies 2001. http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk [back]

4. NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE Modern policy-making: ensuring policies deliver value for money London: The Stationery Office 2001. [back]

5. CHAPMAN, T. and HOUGH, M. Evidence based practice: a guide to effective practice London: Home Office 1999. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmiprob/ebp.htm [back]

6. TILLEY, N. and LAYCOCK, G. Working out what to do: evidence-based crime reduction Crime Reduction Research Series Paper 11 London: Home Office 2002. [back]

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