Overcoming Common Anxieties in Knowledge Translation: Advice for Scholarly Issue Advocates

Thank you for another year of reading knowledge mobilization Journal Club posts. We take a break in December so please come back to this space at the end of January for the next Journal Club, which will be on a Swiss approach to research impact. But until then, read on to find out more about Common Anxieties in Knowledge Translation.

Kershaw P. Rossa-Roccor V.(2024)  Overcoming Common Anxieties in Knowledge Translation: Advice for Scholarly Issue Advocates. MilbankQuarterly. 102(2):0227. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12694

Policy Points

  • Faced with urgent threats to human health and well-being such as climate change, calls among the academic community are getting louder to contribute more effectively to the implementation of the evidence generated by our research into public policy.
  • As interest in knowledge translation (KT) surges, so have a number of anxieties about the field’s shortcomings. Our paper is motivated by a call in the literature to render useful advice for those beginning in KT on how to advance impact at a policy level.
  • By integrating knowledge from fields such as political science, moral psychology, and marketing, we suggest that thinking and acting like marketers, lobbyists, movements, and political scientists would help us advance on the quest to bridge the chasm between evidence and policy.

This paper provides advice for researchers who want to go beyond traditional academic dissemination and become “issue advocates who see shaping public policy as their responsibility as scholars and citizens”. The authors summarize their own paper by stating “issue advocates combine these passive knowledge translation (KT) tactics with more active strategies that tailor evidence mobilization for the realities and vagaries of the world of politics.6 It is this constituency for whom we pen this paper. We seek to equip the budding issue advocate with high-level advice on where to begin when one seeks to mobilize evidence into policy.”

This high level advice recommends that scholars step out of their comfort zones of traditional publishing to think and act like a marketer, a movement and a lobbyist. The authors admit this this might feel uncomfortable to traditional scholars who are used to more passive forms of knowledge mobilization such as publication (i.e. dissemination) and who “presume that evidence alone will be  powerful enough to win the day in the world of politics – no matter how well it is summarized and communicated”. This reminds me of what a Deputy Minister of Education said to me years ago, “just remember, evidence doesn’t vote”. Evidence is rarely the only thing that drives a decision.

This high level advice addresses three anxieties:

  1. Evidence is not the primary factor influencing human decisions. Therefore, we mist think and act like a marketer.
    1. Understand that morals, intuitions and emotions guide decision making
    1. Seek to change morals, intuitions and emotions as marketers do (although personally I think it better to accept these morals, intuitions and emotions and meet them where they are, don’t try to change them. It’s the difference between making them come to you and you going to them).
  2. Insufficient attention is given to the role of power in obstructing or supporting evidence implementation. Therefore, we must think and act like a lobbyist or a movement.
    1. I believe this is important but power is something that few scholars have written about except Sandra Nutley. The authors suggest integrated KT (iKT – see another journal club) can be a form of sustained lobbying since the decision maker is part of the evidence generation
    1. iKT rarely works with an elected official because they don’t have time to collaborate on research
  3. Current theories of policy change in KT are too simplistic. Therefore, we mist think like a political scientist.
    1. “information deficit theories of change are simplistic because they fail to engage sufficiently with the reality that evidence competes with or is interpreted through, value-driven intuitions, institutional momentum, and powerful interest groups.”

On this third anxiety the authors present a logic model of policy influence: “if we (1) make meaning of the evidence in light of our target audience’s values in order to (2) shape public opinion, (3) frame policy beliefs about problems and evidence-based solutions, (4) identify a policy agenda with specific changes to achieve these solutions, and (5) build a coalition around that agenda, then policymakers are more likely to act on our evidence-based recommendations because politics responds to those who organize and show up.”

Questions for brokers:

  1. This paper is about using academic scholarship/expertise to shape public policy. Will the same methods work if the end goal is shaping professional practice or social services?
  2. Advice is high level even the logic model above. The remaining question is how. How do you go beyond high level advice and tailor this to your context?
  3. What do you think: try to change morals, intuition and emotions or work with them and meet them where they’re at?

Research Impact Canada is producing this journal club series to make evidence on KMb more accessible to knowledge brokers and to create online discussion about research on knowledge mobilization. It is designed for knowledge brokers and other people interested in knowledge mobilization. Read this open access article. Then come back to this post and join the journal club by posting your comments

© Research Impact Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission.