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Your dashboard is a one-stop shop for accessing various NCCMT resources, tracking your progress as you work through available training opportunities, saving evidence syntheses and publications, and building your own toolkit to match your evidence-informed decision making needs.
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Five different types of knowledge translation processes are identified as being essential for evidence-informed policy making, bridging the gap between research and policy. Evidence-informed policy making is best achieved when both research and the policy making process are purposefully linked. Knowledge translation activities can act as a bridge between the two sectors. The article, Research, Public Policymaking, and Knowledge-Translation Processes: Canadian Efforts to Build Bridges, outlines five knowledge translation processes.
These five knowledge translation processes are part of a larger framework linking research to policy making at the national level (Lavis et al., 2006). Within this larger framework, efforts to link research to action include:
assessing if the general environment is supportive of using research in policy making
determining if user needs are identified through priority setting in producing research
using knowledge translation processes linking research to policy making (this article)
supporting and funding rigorous evaluation of efforts to link research to action
Key practice implications include the following:
Knowledge translation processes need to be timely and rigorously evaluated.
These processes need to done on a sufficiently large scale with strong evaluations to increase evidence on the effectiveness of knowledge translation activities.
Steps for Using Method/Tool
Five types of KT activities have been identified to bridge research and public policy making:
Production activities—methods that involve integration of policy making during research production. For an example, see Partnerships for policymaking.
Push—methods often used by researchers to direct their information and efforts toward those involved in public policy making.
Facilitating user pull—methods that enhance the accessability of research, as well as those that assist public policy-makers in identifying high quality, high relevance research. To facilitate the use of research in decision making, see questions listed in Understanding user context in knowledge translation.
User pull—methods to enhance public policy organizations' capacity to acquire, assess, adapt and apply research evidence (e.g., CHSRF self assessment tool).
Exchange—methods to establish and sustain partnerships and two-way communication between researchers and policy-makers.
These summaries are written by the NCCMT to condense and to provide an overview of the resources listed in the Registry of Methods and Tools and to give suggestions for their use in a public health context. For more information on individual methods and tools included in the review, please consult the authors/developers of the original resources.
We have provided the resources and links as a convenience and for informational purposes only; they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by McMaster University of any of the products, services or opinions of the external organizations, nor have the external organizations endorsed their resources and links as provided by McMaster University. McMaster University bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external sites.