NCJ Number
195741
Date Published
2001
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the growing interest in and challenges facing an evidence-based approach to the development of public policy and practice.
Abstract
This article discusses the significant challenges that face evidence-based policymaking. The quality of the evaluation evidence is one major challenge that can be effectively addressed by rigorous syntheses of the systematic reviews chosen. There is also the problem of the range of quality in the systematic reviews and lack of being kept up to date with new information or being distributed beyond the research community. The article describes the goal of the newly formed Campbell Collaboration, in order to aid in the development of evidence-based policymaking, as preparing, maintaining, and making accessible systematic reviews of research on the effects of social and educational interventions, utilizing rigorous quality control, electronic publication, and worldwide coverage of the literature. The surge in interest in evidence-based policy is evident in the increase of academic writing on the subject, and in the impact it has had on government initiatives since the late 1990's. This article discusses the challenges faced in conducting systematic-review studies culled from worldwide sources and evaluated for methodological quality. It was found that some of these challenges could be overcome by using systematic reviews. The similarity of goals, methodology, and results of the Cochrane Collaboration, focused on health care evaluations, and the Campbell Collaboration, focused on social and educational evaluations, both in the United Kingdom, are discussed with the critical products being high quality systematic reviews. Flow charts describing the steps taken in the Campbell quality control and systematic review processes are available as appendixes.