Knowledge exchange strategies for policymaking

Description

The views and practices of policy-makers and researchers were explored to develop knowledge exchange strategies to increase the use of research evidence in policy making. This study, designed to inform initiatives of the Sax Institute, Australia, reveals that although research evidence is being used to inform policy making, there are opportunities to improve knowledge exchange between policy-makers and researchers.

This study examined the views of 38 senior policy-makers from New South Wales Health and 41 senior researchers from public health and health service research groups.

Key learnings from this study include:

• Both policy-makers and researchers felt that there was a high need to increase the use of research in policy making.
• Policy-makers had difficulty accessing research summaries, and believed that findings from local research were often not presented in a useful way.
• Policy-makers frequently used research evidence to inform policy content and direction, but were less likely to use research for agenda setting or evaluation of policy.
• Only one-third of researchers reported developing targeted strategies to share their findings with policy-makers.
• Most policy-makers had acted in an advisory role in research or contributed to developing research questions.
• Participants suggested creating an infrastructure to increase access to research and research evidence and increase the use of research in policy making.

The Sax Institute builds partnerships between health policy and service delivery agencies and researchers, including facilitating rapid reviews and evidence summaries (Evidence Check), and PulsE (Policy-relevant Evidence), an e-bulletin of systematic reviews of public health and health services interventions.

Steps for Using Method/Tool

This study describes four knowledge exchange strategies to increase the use of research in policy:

1. Make research findings more accessible—Very brief summaries of research findings are a preferred way to receive information to inform policy making (see CHSRF's 1:3:25 format).
2. Increase opportunities for interaction and exchange between policy-makers and researchers—For an example of a partnership model between policy-makers and researchers, see Partnerships for policymaking.
3. Address structural barriers such as research receptivity in policy agencies.
4. Increase the relevance of research to policy.