This paper critically explores how survey and routinely collected data could aid in assessing the generalisability of public health evidence. We propose developing approaches that could be employed in understanding the relevance of public health evidence, and investigate ways of producing meta-analytic estimates tailored to reflect local…

Social essentialism, the belief that members of certain social categories share unobservable properties, licenses expectations that those categories are natural and a good basis for inference. A challenge for cognitive developmental theory is to give an account of how children come to develop essentialist beliefs about socially important…

Rapid reviews of research are a key way in which policy makers use research. This paper examines 74 rapid reviews commissioned by health policy agencies through the Sax Institute's Evidence Check programme. We examine what prompted policy makers to commission rapid reviews, their purpose, how and when they intended to use them, and how this varied…

Policy scoping reviews are an effective method for generating evidence-informed policies. However, when applying guiding methodological frameworks to complex policy evidence, numerous, unexpected challenges can emerge. This paper details five challenges experienced and addressed by a policy trainee-led, multi-disciplinary research team, while…

The last 20 years have seen significant international shifts towards greater patient and public involvement (PPI) in health research and development (R and D). In England, then first health R and D strategy in 1991 did not mention PPI. Twenty years later, PPI is deeply embedded within the National Institute for Health Research. This article…

This address was given as the final-day keynote of the Sixth International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI) in Sydney, 2009. Using the Institute's title as his theme, O'Toole briefly surveys the growth of drama education research of the last two decades, and the changing landscape of practice and research. He then conducts an…

Preliminary efficacy data are reported for a research-based reading intervention designed for struggling readers in high school. PHAST PACES teaches (a) word identification strategies, (b) knowledge of text structures, and (c) reading comprehension strategies. In a quasi-experimental design, 268 intervention and 83 waiting list control students…

This report presents findings from a review of the best evidence on narrowing the gap in outcomes across the five Every Child Matters (ECM) areas for vulnerable groups in the context of improving outcomes for all. The review was commissioned to prepare the ground for work on "Narrowing the Gap" with participating local authorities (LAs).…

The evaluation of systematic review as part of the evidence-based or evidence-informed practice movement is a dominant theme in current debates in educational research. This article contributes to the debate by offering a personal, reflexive narrative on the process of doing systematic review, relating some of the arguments regarding the merits…

This report evaluates the evidence on how migration may promote or hinder development in countries of origin, and explores possible win-win solutions for both sending and receiving countries. The analysis of recent OECD data of foreign-born nationals into Europe documents the presence of multiple migration patterns and reveals that the EU lags…

This article explores how the evidence base for aspects of early childhood has been explored using systematic research synthesis methods developed at the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre). Three early childhood systematic reviews have been carried out using EPPI-Centre procedures and tools. The…