Evidence Use and Evaluation

Challenging current thinking, this important book is the first to focus on the role of area-based initiatives to tackle the link between education, disadvantage and place. Aimed at all those actively seeking to tackle disadvantage, including policymakers, practitioners, academics and students.

Written by key people in the field, this timely and accessible book argues that treating policy’s movement as an active process of ‘translation’, in which policies are interpreted, inflected and re-worked as they change location, is of critical importance for studying policy.

An innovative account of social control and behaviourism within welfare systems and social policies, and the implications for disadvantaged groups.

This unique book presents a new perspective on citizenship by treating it as a continuing focus of dispute. The authors develop a view of citizenship as always emerging from struggle through an exploration of the entanglements of politics, culture and power that are both embodied and contested in forms and practices of citizenship.

Building substantially on the earlier, landmark text, What Works? (Policy Press, 2000), this book brings together key thinkers and researchers to provide a clearly-structured review of the aspirations and contemporary realities of evidence-informed policy and practice.

Demystifying evaluation is an accessible introductory guide explaining the options open to evaluators and how to make appropriate choices of research methods and covering issues such as managing expectations of evaluation, quantitative and qualitative methods, engaging stakeholders and providing action-orientated approaches to help end-users.