Community-based research – article in Social Policy & Administration

Posted by on November 4, 2005

[posted from CCPH listserv via Social Determinants of Health list]

For those on the SDOH list who followed the discussion of ‘community-based’ research and questions about the meaning of citizen engagement, this article by Rachel Laforest and Michael Orsini is a must read. Up to now it’s only been available as a draft, but as of October 2005, Michael Orsini and Rachel Laforest’s discussion of the marginalizing impacts of evidence based policy making (which translate in the end to evidence based politics, which Laforest has written something else about) on community-based organizations in the voluntary sector will appear in the journal, Social Policy and Administration (see the full reference and abstract below).. The article highlights the marginalizing, silencing, and exclusionary impacts being experienced by grassroots community activists and community developers. These are important observations which should be receiving much more public attention and debate than they are. Linda Evidence-based Engagement in the Voluntary Sector: Lessons from Canada

Authors: Rachel Laforest and Michael Orsini
Journal: Social Policy & Administration, 2005, October, Volume 39, Issue 5 Page 481 –
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9515.2005.00451.x

The shift towards governance and greater reliance on third parties in the design, implementation and evaluation of policy has created new pressures to ensure that policies are designed and delivered in a consistent and effective manner. In the interest of improving transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency, governments in Canada and in the UK, as in many industrialized countries, have begun to emphasize the need for evidence-based policy-making. As a result, knowledge and research have become key assets in the production of policy.

Yet, with their current capacity and knowledge base wanting, governments have increasingly relied on the knowledge and information of external actors and have afforded greater authority to them on this basis. This has created a situation in which evidence-based inputs are given greater weight. This shift has particular implications for voluntary sector organizations whose basis for intervention has lain historically with the interests that they represent. Already, in the Canadian case many national organizations have seen their focus shift to research activities under the impetus of new funding initiatives explicitly encouraging activities grounded in knowledge and policy analysis.

Moreover, policy guidelines have been elaborated in order to enhance the sector’s capacity to contribute to the development of policy in a depoliticized manner. Using a series of interviews conducted with representatives from national voluntary organizations in Canada, this article explores the implications of such a shift for the voluntary sector in Canada, and asks whether the Canadian case holds some lessons for voluntary sector-state relations in other jurisdictions.