Applicant Guidance

These resources offer recommendations for applicants seeking to apply for a research or Scholars grant aligned with the Foundation’s focus area on studying ways to improve the use of research evidence to improve the lives of young people.

Annotated Proposals for Research Grants on Improving the Use of Research Evidence

Recommended Reading for Applicants

The following resources address three important considerations in successful proposals for research on improving the use of research evidence: 1) rich conceptualizations of the use of research evidence, 2) theorizing about how to improve, and not simply understand, the use of research evidence, and 3) reliable and valid measures of the use of research evidence. In addition, the Foundation welcomes proposals that incorporate critical perspectives on race to inform studies’ research questions, methods, and analyses. We encourage applicants to read, challenge, and build on the publications listed below as they develop their proposals.


Conceptualizing the Use of Research Evidence

Theorizing Ways to Improve the Use of Research Evidence

  • Revisiting Theory on Research Use: Turning to Policymakers for Fresh Insights

    Karen Bogenschneider, Elizabeth Day, and Emily Parrott, 2019

    This study examines how legislators use research evidence throughout the policymaking process by mapping their uses of research to existing theories of research utilization. The authors offer insights into the uses of research in the policy process that are not predicted by existing theory, and share findings that may be used to predict and improve the use of research evidence in the policy process.

  • Chapter 12: Using Evidence in What Works Now? Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice

    Annette Boaz and Sandra Nutley, 2019

    This book chapter contains a discussion on the identification of promising approaches to promote research use.

  • Reframing Evidence-Based Policy to Align with the Evidence

    Kimberly DuMont, 2018

    This essay draws on insights from the Foundation’s portfolio of work on understanding and improving the use of research evidence to suggest new approaches to promote evidence-based policymaking. It concludes with an agenda for future research on evidence-based policies to understand how these policies achieve their intended outcomes and ultimately improve youth outcomes.

  • Strategies to Improve the Use and Usefulness of Research in Child Welfare

    Lydia F. Killos, Catherine Roller White, Peter J. Pecora, Erin Maher, Kirk O’Brien, Kimberly DuMont, Fred Wulczyn, Bryan Samuels, and Clare Anderson, 2015

    This paper describes examples of strategies that researchers and child welfare system leaders can implement to increase the use of research evidence in the child welfare field, from light-touch approaches to organizational change.

  • Use of Research Evidence and Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices in Youth-Serving Systems

    Lawrence A. Palinkas, Lisa Saldana, Chih-Ping Chou, and Patricia Chamberlain, 2017

    This study examines whether child welfare, mental health, and probation department leaders and managers’ participation in a community development team intervention increased their use of research evidence and likelihood of evidence-based practices.

  • Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: The State of the Field

    Caitlin C. Farrell, William R. Penuel, Cynthia E. Coburn, Julia Daniel, Louisa Steup, 2021

    This paper expands on the 2013 white paper Research-Practice Partnerships: A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts by scanning the current landscape of partnerships, identifying points of variation, and outlining shared principles.

Methods for Studying the Use of Research Evidence

  • Webinar and Workshop: Advancing Methods and Measures for Studying the Use of Research Evidence

    2020

    This half-day series, held in November 2020 in collaboration with the Forum for Youth Investment, includes an overview of four methodological approaches to studying the use of research, as well as a look at an open-access methods repository for assessing the use of research in policy and practice. Four deep-dive workshops into specific methodological approaches offer a hands-on opportunity to understand how each advances research on research use, and the affordances, challenges, and trade-offs inherent in each approach.

  • Building Consensus: Idea Brokerage in Teacher Policy Networks

    Sarah Galey-Horn, Sarah Reckhow, Joseph J. Ferrare, and Lorien Jasny, 2019

    The authors use discourse network analysis to understand how policymakers converge around a specific set of policy ideas in education. The method combines discourse analysis and network analysis to chart how shared policy beliefs and preferences emerge within networks of policymakers, intermediaries, researchers, and education practitioners.

  • Studying the Use of Research Evidence: A Review of Methods

    Drew Gitomer and Kevin Crouse, 2019

    In Studying the Use of Research Evidence: A Review of Methods, Drew Gitomer and Kevin Crouse highlight measures and methods from a range of methodological traditions that have been employed by researchers to assess the use of research evidence in disparate policy and practice domains, including education, child welfare, and public health. The report outlines core methodological issues in the study of the use of research evidence, reviews recent studies that illustrate specific data collection and study design methodologies, and discusses the affordances and limitations of each.

  • Measuring Research Use and The Promise of Big Data

    Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal, 2018

    This blog post describes the development of a measure for the use of research evidence using big-data and offers insight into how a big-data approach can supplement other quantitative and qualitative research techniques.

  • Measuring Use of Research Evidence: The Structured Interview for Evidence Use

    Lawrence A. Palinkas, Antonio R. Garcia, Gregory A. Aarons, Megan Finno-Velasquez, Ian W. Holloway, Thomas I. Mackie, Laurel K. Leslie, and Patricia Chamberlain, 2014

    This paper describes the development and applications of a measure to assess the acquisition, evaluation, and application of research evidence in health and social service settings.

  • To Study Conceptual Use of Research, Consider Tradeoffs Among Methods

    William Penuel and Anna-Ruth Allen, 2016

    This blog post outlines three methodological approaches and associated data sources that the researchers applied to study the conceptual use of research over time within research-practice partnerships.

  • Why Should We Study the Use of Research Evidence as a Behavior?

    Itzhak Yanovitzky, 2018

    This blog post offers insight into how behavioral science can be applied to the measurement and analysis of research evidence use.

Critical Race Perspectives on the Use of Research Evidence

  • Measuring Race and Racism in Studies of Research Use (Webinar Recording)

    2021

  • Centering the Margins: (Re)defining Useful Research Evidence Through Critical Perspectives

    Fabienne Doucet, 2019

    This essay offers an introduction to critical research perspectives, particularly critical race theory, as they apply to the conceptualization and study of the use of research evidence. Doucet outlines three specific strategies for using critical race theory to inform a conceptual framework for studies focused on improving the usefulness of research evidence, wherein useful is considered from the perspective of the communities most affected by policy or practice.

  • Identifying and Testing Strategies to Improve the Use of Antiracist Research Evidence through Critical Race Lenses

    Fabienne Doucet, 2021

    This essay offers guidance for studying strategies to improve the use of antiracist research evidence in ways that benefit youth of color. Doucet outlines the ways that critical race perspectives can shape all aspects of research on research use, offers insight into how studies to improve the use of antiracist research evidence can be designed, and offers key considerations to improve the usefulness and use of antiracist research.

  • No Small Matters: Reimagining the Use of Research Evidence from a Racial Justice Perspective

    David E. Kirkland, 2019

    This essay applies a critical race perspective to examining the fundamental questions of why, how, and for whose benefit research is used in policy and practice. Kirkland encourages the field to understand the use of research evidence as a system of power and outlines considerations for the incorporation of critical, race-conscious perspectives at all stages of research production and use.

  • Panel Discussion: Critical Race Perspectives on the Use of Research Evidence

    Vivian Tseng, Jamila Michener, Janelle Scott, Fabienne Doucet, 2020

    This October 2020 panel discussion offers three researchers’ perspectives on how to center race in efforts to improve the use of research evidence in policy and practice. The speakers draw upon critical race theory as a lens for examining the ways that racism pervades research and policy institutions and share insights on ways that research can inform policies and practices that disrupt racial hierarchies.

  • Webinar: Politics, Power, and the Use of Research Evidence

    Lauren Supplee, Justin Parkhurst, Jamila Michener, Apryl Alexander, Sonya Douglass Horsford, 2021

    This March 2021 webinar continues the conversation from the October 2020 discussion and more deeply questions ideas such as the objectivity of evidence, the positionality of the researcher in policymaking, and the role of power and politics in the use of research evidence. The presenters offer a range of perspectives that underscore the necessity of understanding these ideas when undertaking studies to improve the use of research evidence.

What We’re Reading