In all states, child welfare agencies are increasingly challenged to find ways to support staff evidence use so as to improve service delivery and child and family outcomes.1-4 In the U.S., an increasing number of state and local governments now link research evidence regarding ‘effective’ programs and practices to funding decisions or service reimbursement.5 These pressures parallel federal efforts to promote evidence-based policymaking. Yet, currently little is known about strategies for fostering evidence uptake by staff.
The Improving Performance with Evidence (IPWE) study was...
Since its founding, the Mack Center has worked through its research and training programs to improve management practice in the human services. Each of the following areas of inquiry identifies implications for management practice:
Responding to county human service agencies’ critical information needs during the current COVID-19 pandemic on human service organizations. Exploring nonprofit and public sector relationships in the context of human service contracting. Identifying the response to the Great Recession by county human service agencies. Understanding the organizational and...
Pressures from the New Public Management movement have challenged human service managers to adapt to changing environments through innovation. Yet, no research has examined managerial innovation along the spectrum of lower- to upper-level managers. This study analyzed survey data of 466 public human service managers to examine the relationship between individual characteristics and managerial innovation. Results showed that 38% of managers took an innovative approach to their work, and the characteristics of perceived responsiveness to change and evidence-informed practice network...
Emphasis on evidence-informed practice (EIP) in human service organizations aimed at improving service quality and client outcomes has increased in recent decades. Research has suggested that the organizational context shapes EIP, yet few studies have explored the agency-based activities that constitute this form of practice. This survey of 473 managers and frontline practitioners in 11 county human service organizations examines EIP activities in agency settings. Analysis of responses to open-ended questions identifies the specific cognitive, interactive, action, and compliance dimensions...
Promoting the use of evidence by managers is a strategy for enhancing effectiveness in human service organizations, and for responding to the demands of performance management. This study addresses two multipart questions. First, what levels of managerial evidence use exist in public human service organizations and for what purposes is this evidence used? Second, what organizational factors and individual attitudinal characteristics are associated with different levels of evidence use? Based on survey data from a sample of administrators, middle managers, and supervisors in 11 county...
Human service organizations seeking to infuse research and other forms of evidence into their programs often need to expand their knowledge sharing systems in order to build their absorptive capacities for new information. To promote their engagement in evidence-informed practice, human service organizations can benefit from connections with intermediary organizations that assist with the dissemination and utilization of research and the use of internal knowledge brokers, called link officers. These boundaryspanning individuals work to embed external research and internal evidence in order...
At the Mack Center, we define Evidence Informed Practice broadly:
Evidence: Includes multiple sources of internally and externally generated data and information. Informed: Includes staff all levels of the agency Practice: Involves cognitive, relational, action, and compliance oriented activities.
The Mack Center’s most recent research on evidence-informed practices investigates the perceptions and experiences of managers in public sector human service organizations.
Our Evidence-informed Practice initiative began in 2006 with the a Special Issue in the journal of Health and...