Section 1: Background
The policy research programme is divided between two distinct strands:
- Developing and implementing mixed research methods for the evaluation of complex policy evaluations
- Comparative policy analysis
The research programme developed within the two strands is partly shaped in collaboration with the localities programme and the eight thematic groups:
- Health, wellbeing and social care
- Education and young people
- Language, citizenship & identity
- Employment & training
- Economic development & regeneration
- Crime, public space & policing
- Housing and transport
- Environment, Tourism & leisure
The policy team, based in the WISERD hub at Cardiff University, are responsible for developing this research programme and a range of associated collaborative WISERD activities.
The team has established a highly productive relationship with the Wales Governance Centre focused on a collaborative research agenda and the joint hosting of events, including the major conference ‘Small countries and the global crisis: challenges and opportunities?’, sponsored in partnership with the Welsh Government and held in Cardiff on 1st July 2009.
The team has also worked closely with the WISERD data integration team to establish an archive of “grey materials” relating to Wales. Colleagues are currently engaged in the development of a public policy library, collecting and cataloguing policy documents to be integrated with the WISERD data archive.
The team performs a key role on behalf of WISERD in engaging and building relations with policy-makers within the Welsh Government, local authorities and wider policy community within Wales. This function provides an important stepping stone in enhancing relations and facilitating ‘knowledge transfer’ between the policy and academic sectors.
The policy team is working with colleagues within the Localities team to establish a WISERD Public Policy Forum, bringing together different publics, practitioners and academic participants. The forum, which will move around Wales, including the WISERD localities, will consider a range of issues relating to regeneration, community, locality, citizenship and participation within civil society, as well as the wider WISERD research agenda. These forums will present analyses and policy questions that test out the efficacy of policy development and implementation “on the ground”. In addition the team will use its European and international contacts to bring academics and stakeholders in Wales into contact with comparators overseas and establish a strong comparator basis for public policy evaluation.
1.1. Policy Evaluation
The policy evaluation strand of the policy research programme adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to developing, testing, evaluating and implementing social interventions and draws on a wide range of research methodologies. The collaborative activity of the policy evaluation strand provides a critical mass of expertise for researchers across Wales to build upon, in collaboration with policy and practice partners, to develop large scale funding proposals for intervention and policy development and evaluation.
In recent years, the phased introduction of government policies and programmes have enabled them to be tested, evaluated and adjusted in what have described as ‘natural experiments’. This process has been further facilitated by the introduction of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the decentralisation of administrative functions in England. The establishment of these so called ‘policy laboratories’ and the phased implementation of policies and programmes has meant that evaluation is possible within a limited number of randomly selected areas or institutions or allocated to a small group of individuals in advance of the potential population roll out of best practice.
The policy evaluation strand of the WISERD policy research programme builds on the existing research agenda developed within member institutions, in particular the policy team will engage closely with colleagues within DECIPHer (Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement) in further developing work on public health.
The policy team is also working collaboratively colleagues within the WISERD data integration team to bring together particular strengths in the use of existing datasets and routine data to inform the design and targeting of policies and interventions, and in developing the potential for obtaining outcomes and important contextual data from the co-ordination and integration of routinely collected data.
1.2. Comparative Policy Analysis
The comparative policy analysis strand of the WISERD policy research programme is centred on the development of research utilising the techniques and conceptual lenses of comparative analyses to consider Wales within the wider UK, European and International context.
Theoretically, the strand aims to understand and explain changes within and across European nations, particularly in relation to the design and delivery of public policies/services and the multiple levels of political and administrative governance engaged in these policy areas.
The research agenda focuses on a wide range of cross-cutting themes that can be applied in a range of policy areas, for example, the comparative local and regional governance of public policy, the impact of multi-level governance and Europeanisation on policy making and delivery and the character of territorial politics in the post-devolution setting.
In addition the comparative policy analysis strand contributes to WISERD’s overarching objectives of enhancing research capacity and expertise in qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods. The research programme explores the challenges facing researchers in carrying out comparative research across multiple countries and applying a range of research methods – for example, issues around concept formation and identifying comparable datasets.
