Karen Head is writing on behalf of Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Evaluation Working Group. The working group is made up of people across Review Groups, Fields, Geographic Groups and the Central Executive Team. In 2020 the working group has been finding out how to support Cochrane Groups that want to evaluate their knowledge translation work.
Why look at whether Cochrane is making a difference?
Cochrane’s vision is a world of improved health where decisions about health and healthcare are informed by high-quality, relevant and up-to-date synthesized research evidence. We’re striving for this, but it might be difficult to know whether we are helping to achieve it.
The Cochrane community puts a lot of time and resource into knowledge translation, aiming to advocate for, share and support people to use evidence in policy and practice. But is this working? Organisations and researchers around the world have explored how to measure the impact of knowledge translation and the consensus seems to be … there is no easy answer!
But just because this is difficult doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do something to move us in the right direction! It’s important to do this so we know what is working well, what to focus on more and how we can keep developing.
What Cochrane Groups say
During summer 2020, 70 Cochrane Groups shared how they evaluate their knowledge translation work and things that would help.
Groups said it is very important to evaluate knowledge translation work and that it would be useful to have some pointers and simple tools. So, from November 2020 we’ll have some templates available on the Cochrane Community webpages.
Here are some highlights of what Cochrane Groups said:
Get involved
If you want to find out whether your Group’s knowledge translation activities are making a difference, you can:
1. Take part in an introductory two-part webinar series about evaluation approaches:
These are designed as a series for people to take part in both sessions. We’ll be recording these and sharing them online.
2. Express an interest in being part of a learning network / community of practice in 2021 to share skills, ideas and tools.
We look forward to continuing to learn together.
Karen Head
Knowledge Translation Project Manager
Cochrane Central Executive
khead@cochrane.org
Links: