Evidence case study

The Alliance for Useful Evidence champions the use of evidence in social policy and practice. We are an open-access network of more than 2,000 individuals from across government, universities, charities, business and local authorities in the UK and internationally. This autumn, we will be publishing a free handbook on using research evidence, designed with policy makers and practitioners in mind. We want to gather specific examples of when and why organisations (particularly charities) have used research evidence, and what the impact was for them. The best case studies will be included in the published guide. (NB, we're just interested in when you've used external, pre-existing research rather than internally conducted evaluations or your own data.)

The case study questions should take about 15 minutes to complete, depending on how much detail you'd like to give.

We will not share or publish any case studies without your explicit consent.

To find out more about the Alliance, or join our network (it's free!) visit www.alliance4usefulevidence.org

1. Please tell us your name

2. What organisation does your case study relate to?

Please select country

5. What was the context in which you used research evidence in your organisation? For example, when looking to run a new programme or service (or to stop running one), campaigning, policy writing, applying for or awarding funding.

6. What type(s) of research data and study designs did you look at? For example, qualitative or quantitative data, systematic reviews, randomised control trials, cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental or quasi-experimental. (Describe as best you can, but don't worry if you're not sure exactly what type of research it was).

7. How did you go about finding the research that you used? For example, libraries, journals, online databases and helpdesks, speaking to experts and academics.

Did you look at research (or speak to academics/experts) from other jurisdictions of the United Kingdom, or from overseas? Which jurisdictions or countries were they from?

8. How did you use the research to help you in the situtation described above? What were the outcomes? For example, we decided to stop running the programme, we wrote a policy based on the evidence, we were able to make a credible case in a funding application.

9. What was your experience of using evidence in this example? For example, was it interesting, time consuming, informative, difficult?

10. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about this case study?

Please include an email address so we can contact you. This question requires a valid email address.