This program supports research on strategies focused on improving the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States.
To learn more about applying for a research grant on improving the use of research evidence, please join us for an informational webinar on Thursday, December 12, 2024, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
Research grants on improving the use of research evidence fund research studies on strategies focused on improving the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We want to know what it takes to get research used by decision-makers and what happens when research is used. We welcome letters of inquiry for studies that pursue
one of these broad aims.
Research evidence can be a powerful resource for policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, and others who make high-stakes decisions that shape youth-serving systems. In addition to informing policy formation and service delivery, evidence from systematic research can deepen decision-makers’ understanding of issues, generate reliable assessment tools, support strategic planning, and guide program improvement. But only if it is used.
While prevailing strategies to bring research evidence into policy and practice rest on models that increase decision-makers’ access to rigorous evidence and incentivize or mandate the adoption of programs with evidence of effectiveness, research evidence remains under-used. Yet, there is a growing body of evidence on the science of using research evidence.
We strongly encourage applicants to review the previously funded grants and other resources for applicants on our website to ensure their proposed study is grounded in and engaging with the existing empirical literature on the use of research evidence.
Recent scholarship points to the limitations of models that prioritize research production and dissemination without adequate attention to would-be users’ realities. Decision-makers may be experts on their systems, but, even with access to rigorous research, they may not have the capacity or resources to critically evaluate, prioritize, and apply the findings. What’s more, the research may not be relevant to their specific contexts or communities.
In order to harness the full power of research evidence, decision-makers need deep engagement and support. Across disciplines and policy areas, studies are remarkably consistent in their identification of specific conditions that enable the use of research evidence:
While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.
Replicable methods, activities, or policies intended to improve the use of research evidence or to maximize its positive impact on decision-making and youth outcomes.
A type of evidence derived from studies that apply systematic methods and analyses to address predefined questions or hypotheses. These includes descriptive studies, intervention or evaluation studies, meta-analyses, and cost-effectiveness studies conducted within or outside research organizations.
The use of research evidence refers to the multiple ways research can be used, including: applying research evidence directly to a decision (instrumental use), the influence of research evidence on decision-makers’ understanding of problems and potential solutions (conceptual use), supporting existing stances or positions (strategic use), building trust with colleagues or educating constituents (relational use) or mandating decision-makers to engage with research (imposed use).
To learn more about the Foundation’s thinking about data vs. research evidence, see “Studying Ways to Improve the Use of Research Evidence: Distinguishing Data from Research Evidence,” by former Senior Program Officer Lauren Supplee.
Those who create policies or make other high-level decisions that shape practice in youth-serving systems. Decision-makers include but are not limited to individuals or agencies with formal policymaking or policy implementation authority (e.g., school district leaders, state child welfare agency managers, county legislators, etc.); advocates who influence policymaking or policy implementation; or intermediaries such as professional associations (e.g., National Conference of State Legislatures, Council of Great City Schools, etc.) that provide information, consultation, and technical assistance to inform their members’ decision-making.
This program supports research on strategies focused on improving the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.
We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education. Previous studies have drawn on conceptual and empirical work from political science, communication science, knowledge mobilization, implementation science, and organizational psychology, among other areas.
Finally, we welcome critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings.
We welcome studies that pursue one of three aims:
This may include:
For example, prior work suggests that decision-makers often lack the institutional resources and some of the requisite skills to seek out and use research, and certain organizational norms and routines can help overcome those barriers. Studies might examine efforts to alter the decision-making environment by comparing the effectiveness of different ways (e.g., technical assistance, research-practice partnerships, cross-agency teams, etc.) to connect existing research with decision-makers, or by exploiting natural variation across decision-making environments to identify the conditions that improve research use.
This may include:
For example, recent federal policies have instituted mandates and incentives to increase the adoption of programs with evidence of effectiveness from randomized controlled trials, with the expectation that the use of these programs will lead to better outcomes. Do these policies actually increase the use of those programs and improve child outcomes?
These research interests call for a range of methods, including experimental or observational research designs, comparative case studies, or systematic reviews.
All letters of inquiry are initially reviewed by internal staff with social science expertise. On occasion, internal reviewers will request more information from applicants or solicit expert opinions to better assess a project. In general, however, given the breadth of studies proposed in letters of inquiry, internal reviewers may lack deep knowledge of an applicant’s specific area of work, so avoid disciplinary jargon and use language appropriate for an educated lay audience.
We begin application reviews by looking at the importance of the research questions or hypotheses. Then we evaluate whether the proposed research designs and methods will provide strong empirical evidence on those questions.
