London Evidence Syntheses and Research Use Seminars
The EPPI Centre at UCL and The Centre for Evaluation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) are joining efforts to revive the ‘London Systematic Reviews and Research Use Seminars’.
The series been renamed the ‘London Evidence Syntheses and Research Use Seminars’ to reflect the wide range of types of evidence syntheses that are conducted. These seminars aim to encourage discussion and information-sharing on challenges and innovations in evidence syntheses methods and the study of evidence use.
The seminars will continue to be hosted in London but they will now be offered in a hybrid format to increase accessibility and reach.
Seminars will take place every other month on a Wednesday between 12.30 and 13.45. They include 25-30 min presentations and plenty of time for discussion.
Contact ioe.SSRUAdmin@ucl.ac.uk to be added or removed from the seminar mailing list.
Next event:
- Date and time: Wednesday 23 November 2022 12:30 - 13:45
- Location: Room LG6, LSHTM, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT
- Remote access: Click here to access the webiner
Jonathan Breckon, Senior Visiting Lecturer, EPPI Centre; POST Fellow, UK Parliament
Bio: Jonathan is Director of Breckon Consulting Ltd. He is currently working on two projects that have informed this seminar: firstly, in the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology developing rapid review methods for select committees; and, secondly, for Campbell Collaboration UK and Ireland, on a series of seminars and podcasts on what works in communicating systematic reviews. Previously, he led the Alliance for Useful Evidence for 9 years, and is currently a Senior Visiting Lecturer at the EPPI Centre, Senior Associate for Transforming Evidence (based at LSHTM), and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Session details: What are the best ways to communicate systematic reviews?
Our default - across all of research - is the so-called ‘deficit model’ that has persisted in science communication for decades (Simis et al, 2016). In this traditional model, research findings are pushed out to fill perceived gaps in knowledge amongst the public, policymakers, and practitioners. For example, research is packaged up in bite-sized summaries, colourful websites, or accessible guidelines. But this rarely works in practice. Research shows that disseminating evidence alone does little to improve its use, and is likely to fail to address practical, cultural or institutional barriers to engagement (Langer, Tripney, and Gough 2016).
So what are the best approaches to communicating research - and what sorts of research might we learn from? As well as learning from health scholarship - which has dominated the field of implementation and research use - there is much we can learn from across the social sciences and other disciplines (Oliver and Boaz, 2019). This lunchtime session will outline actionable insights from a range of fields, including: cognitive psychology and behavioural science; communication studies; science and technology studies; political science; arts and design. The session will also see if there are any fields that are missing - and how these insights from different disciplines might inform our future culture and practice of research synthesis.