Download Use-of-Research-Evid.. - William T. Grant Foundation

SAMPLE #1: USE OF RESEARCH EVIDENCE PROPOSAL ABSTRACT
Practice/Policy Question: How do research–practice partnerships promote the use of
research evidence in school districts?
Background: The current policy environment encourages evidence-based decision making as a
key strategy for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of schools. Research–practice
partnerships—long-term structured collaborations—are a promising strategy for improving the
use of research evidence in school districts. These partnerships vary in how they define and
tackle problems, how they formalize knowledge and develop tools, and how they work with
districts to use what is learned. This revised proposal will consider two partnership types: a
research alliance and a design-research partnership. In research alliances, school district
officials collaborate with university researchers to define an agenda focused on studying local
problems of policy and practice. In design-research partnerships, researchers and school leaders
develop tools and processes to support educational improvement. The proposed study will
examine these models of partnering to learn how differences in their design and strategy shape
school districts’ capacity to interpret and use research.
Research Aims or Questions: What organizational structures are necessary for school
districts to access, interpret, and use research evidence? Do differences in the design and
strategies of research–practice partnerships shape school districts’ capacity to interpret and use
research? If so, how do they build capacity to create and use research to improve student
outcomes?
Setting and Participants: The first case study will focus on a design-research partnership
among the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), the University of Pennsylvania,
and the Baltimore City Schools. This partnership will enact a program of research to measure
and improve the grit and perseverance of middle school students. The second partnership
involves the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at New York University and the New
York City Department of Education, which traditionally has studied reform efforts, high school
achievement, and college readiness.
Research Methods: The PI will use a longitudinal, qualitative case study design to explore
how variation in the two partnerships bears on the development of each district’s capacity to
interpret and use research. They will observe dialogue and social exchanges during meetings
among partners and with district staff during 12–14 visits over 2.5 years of data collection. These
observations will provide insights about how district staff value, interpret, and use research. The
team will also conduct 10–15 semi-structured interviews with partnership members during each
visit to probe how members make sense of research based on their own experiences, their
colleagues, their position in the organization, and other factors. The investigators will also
review documents and artifacts, produced by the partnerships’ leadership and district staff to
assess how they value, interpret, and use research. The team will analyze the information
gathered to look at organizational structures associated with research use and the partnership’s
role (if any) in advancing these structures and processes.
SAMPLE #2: USE OF RESEARCH EVIDENCE PROPOSAL ABSTRACT
Practice/Policy Question: Will communicating research through narratives have a greater
impact on clinicians’ prescribing behaviors than evidence-based guidelines?
Background: Clinicians are prescribing antipsychotic medications at alarming rates to
children enrolled in Medicaid. The PI and colleagues posit that, consistent with the theory of
planned behavior, clinicians’ prescribing behaviors are influenced by their attitudes, the norms
of their peers, and how easy they think it is to perform the recommended behaviors. The
investigators suggest that these factors are amenable to change, but that standard evidencebased guidelines are static and unlikely to affect clinicians’ behavior. In contrast, narratives—
coherent stories with an identifiable beginning, middle and end, which provide information
about characters, scenes, and conflicts—have been recognized as a persuasive tool to promote
patients’ health behavior change. Narratives have not been tried with experts or practitioners,
but there is reason to believe they have promise. The PI hypothesizes that pairing guidelines
with narratives that engage clinicians in concerns related to the misuse of antipsychotics among
Medicaid-enrolled youth will enhance physicians’ recall of guidelines, and help shift attitudes,
norms, control, and, ultimately, prescribing behaviors. The investigator proposes to test an
approach that may promote the use of research to decrease over-prescribing behaviors by
clinicians.
Research Aims or Questions: Are guidelines accompanied by narratives about patient care
and professional experiences more impactful in shifting prescribing behaviors than standard
evidence-based guidelines alone?
Setting and Participants: The sample for phase one will include at least 30 clinicians serving
youth. The sample will be balanced across clinical specialties (pediatrics, family practice, and
psychiatry) and regions of Pennsylvania. The sample for the second phase will include 3,000–
4,000 clinicians in Pennsylvania who treat Medicaid-enrolled youth ages 5–18 with behavioral
conditions.
Intervention: For six months, providers will receive an email every three months with the
standard evidence-based recommendations or the narrative-enhanced recommendations. The
narratives will seek to maximize clinicians’ identification with characters, imagery of the events,
perceived realism, normative values, and reinforcement of the desired behaviors.
Research Methods: The study will unfold in two phases. In phase one, the research team will
interview clinicians to ascertain the factors motivating their decision-making and prescribing
behaviors. The interviews will probe clinicians’ attitudes, norms, and control related to
guidelines, use of evidence, and prescribing behaviors. The interviews will also elicit patient care
narratives and professional experiences. The researchers will then use focus groups to optimize
the narratives for insertion in the intervention implemented in phase two. Phase two will involve
a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of these narratives in both written and
video form, as compared to standard evidence-based guidelines presented in newsletter form.
Effectiveness of the interventions will be measured using administrative Medicaid claims data
from pharmacy and personal summary files of provider counts of monthly antipsychotic
prescriptions.