WHAT WORKS: EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC SERVICES.

• Author: Lunt, Neil
• Position: Review

WHAT WORKS: EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC SERVICES Edited by H. Davies, S. Nutley and P. Smith, Policy Press, Milton Keynes

What Works and If Only We Knew address a central issue of policy analysis, social policy, and applied sociology -- the status and utilisation of research evidence. The books have different aims and audiences: Davies et al. talk to the researcher and policy maker; Willensky echoes long-standing pleas that social science engage in a broader public debate.

What Works brings together a range of material in the field of evidence-based policy and practice in three complementary sections. The first offers introductory chapters on evidence-based policy, and the place of evidence within the policy process. The second provides an analysis of discrete service areas, with individual chapters addressing health, education, criminal justice, social care, welfare policy, housing, transport and urban policy. Each chapter balances insights on service-specific issues, with reflections on broader themes: the place of evidence, types of evidence, and future opportunities. Section three has contributions on setting research agendas, research design and dissemination. Sections are relevant and well written, with sound editing ensuring they contribute towards a coherent whole.

Given the push for evidence-based activity, both domestically and internationally, the book makes a valuable contribution to ongoing debates. A key strength is the book's juxtaposition of the generic and the specific, although inevitably New Zealand readers will find the book has less direct relevance than for counterparts in the United Kingdom. All service-based chapters contribute to central debates around hierarchies of knowledge, research approaches, the underdevelopment of capacity, and the place of evidence within the "policy soup". The text is a reminder that policy and practice require us to interrogate the relationships between theory, action and evidence.

In exploring evaluation design, experimentation and qualitative research are presented as possible contributors, rather than demonised or dichotomised. Kaplan's aphorism, "When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail", is instructive here. Research questions should not a priori preclude particular methods, so long as ethical considerations are upheld.

In appealing to policy analysts and research commissioners, the book is inevitably state-centred and administratively...