The report highlights the importance of the UK’s large longitudinal studies for scientific inquiry, policy and practice, and aims to give researchers insights into policymaking, and to encourage new forms of collaboration between researchers and policymakers to tackle social challenges.
It’s divided into four sections:
- Mobilising knowledge for policy – the unique value of long-term population studies in understanding social change and the changing context for impact generation
- The policy machinery – what researchers need to know about how policy is developed, factors that shape it and the players involved
- Understanding Society and its use in policy – including case studies of how research using our data has been applied in different policy applications
- The opportunity for more radical engineering – including three propositions for how researchers can work together, and with policy audiences, to create transformational change.
Raj Patel, Associate Director of Policy at Understanding Society, says: “This has not been a normal year, but the coronavirus crisis and other ongoing public campaigns open up new possibilities.
“Change is not a given, though. It is usually not lack of knowledge but how to apply it in highly politicised environments or how to use the evidence to generate pressure in the system that can be the biggest challenge.
“The idea of this report is to help all of us in social science to mobilise data and evidence to create policy impact. It’s not simply a problem of translating excellent research for different policy audiences – although storytelling, clear messaging and visualisation are all vital. Knowledge sharing is a social process, and I want to encourage researchers to think about relationship building, understanding how policymakers think and work – and to give practical guidance on how we can create real change.”
Transforming Social Policies: Insights, ideas and challenges for mobilising data and evidence is available now
Politics and social attitudes
