The 2019 WTG Knowledge Networks and the Public Policymaking Process Workshop will be an intensive research workshop that will bring together a group of leading experts and practitioners from the fields of communication, education, anthropology, psychology, health, and information to (a) critically assess the current state of social network analysis theory and methods regarding knowledge brokerage and identify critical conceptual and methodological gaps, and (b) collaborate on producing a fully developed conception and robust methodology for studying knowledge brokerage as related to improving policy and practice.
Background and Goals
The intersection of social network analysis and evidence-based policymaking and practitioner decision-making is an emerging area of interest to many fields of practice and there is good reason to believe that the study of knowledge brokerage would benefit from opportunities to interface with research conducted across disciplinary boundaries. For example, in recent years, massive public investments in translational health research resulted in this field making significant strides regarding the design, implementation, and evaluation of systems and strategies for facilitating evidence-based policymaking. In addition, new valuable insights concerning the flow and exchange of evidence through networks of individuals, groups, and organizations has emerged from research conducted within the fields of communication and information, social work , and education, and psychology.
There is much to be gained by means of cross-fertilization from connecting and comparing these disparate bodies of knowledge to delineate mechanisms and processes by which knowledge brokerage can be utilized to better understand and to improve evidence-based policymaking. Accordingly, the specific objectives of the workshop are:
Objective 1: Discuss and formulate clear operational definitions or typologies of knowledge brokerage in the context of evidence-based policymaking.
Objective 2: Compare, assess, and delineate social network approaches to knowledge brokerage in order to explain and predict use of evidence by individual practitioners, groups of practitioners, and organizations.
Objective 3: Devise strategies for implementing social network analysis to collect, map and disseminate tools, interventions, and organizational protocols that can be used to better understand brokering of research evidence.
Objective 4: Propose key research design and measurement considerations using social network analysis to guide rigorous, theory-informed evaluations of knowledge brokerage.
Knowledge Brokerage
Our focus will be on the concept of knowledge brokerage, which has been studied for years in scholarship pertaining to the use of research evidence. Traditional knowledge brokering strategies in dissemination and implementation research center on training brokers to effectively bridge the gap between research producers and users. In the context of policymaking and research implementation, however, research on knowledge brokering has focused primarily on how to better facilitate the knowledge brokering process . Much of this research has taken an intervention-based approach, seeking to train key individuals to occupy knowledge brokerage positions, and identifying those individuals based on the formal roles and positions they occupy within a given organization. Some new approaches, in contrast, seek to ground knowledge brokering more firmly in the actual (or organic) structure of the policy ecosystem and use methods, including mapping and social network analysis , as well as interviews, to identify knowledge brokers. Knowledge brokers that emerge from a networks approach may be organizations and individuals (e.g., policymakers and others) who perform different knowledge brokering functions or who are positioned to influence the flow and exchange of research evidence at different junctures of the policy process.