action research in translation studies

Action Research in Translation Studies

Self‑reflection in translation research training.

• Maria Piotrowska Pedagogical University of Cracow

Action Research in Translation Studies. Self-reflection in translation research training

Demonstrating a diversity within TS research, the study enquires into ARTS as a new methodology. The aim of the paper is to define ARTS, localize it among major TS research models, present its components and characteristics and argument for its usefulness and relevance in translator training. Basic assumptions of this methodology are illustrated on the chosen example of an M.A. project, namely translation action with critical reflection, implementing the practitioner‑researcher’s knowledge and experience, and strategic translating in a cyclic process. Implementing ARTS in translator education is a methodological response to a greater professionalization of the discipline and Kiraly’s modern educational model with student being an active participant‑translator in the process of training.

PlumX Metrics of this article

Baker, M. (ed.) (2010), Critical Readings in Translation Studies, Routledge, London–New York. View in Google Scholar

Chesterman, A. (2000), “A causal model for translation studies”, in: Olohan, M. (ed.), Intercultural Faultiness – Research Models in Translation Studies I – Textual and Cognitive Aspects, St Jerome, Manchester, pp. 15‑26. View in Google Scholar

Cravo, A., Nevces, J. (2007), “Action Research in Translation Studies”, The Journal of Specialised Translation, 7, pp. 92‑107, [on‑line] http://www.jostrans.org/issue07/art_cravo.pdf – 20 V 2012. View in Google Scholar

Dick, B. (1993), “You want to do an action research thesis?”, [on‑line] http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/art/arthesis.html – 17 I 2011. View in Google Scholar

Hatim, B. (2001), Teaching and Researching Translation, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow. View in Google Scholar

Kiraly, D. (2000), A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education – Empowerment from Theory to Practice, St Jerome, Manchester. View in Google Scholar

Piotrowska, M. (2012), “Methodological value of self‑reflection in Translator Training. Student Empowerment”, in: Zehnalova, J., Molnar, O., Kubanek, M. (eds), Teaching Translation and Interpreting Skills in the 21st Century, Olomouc Modern Language Series, vol. 1, Palacky University, Olomouc, pp. 105‑117. View in Google Scholar

Piotrowska, M., Dybiec‑Gajer, J. (2012), Verbavolant, scriptamanent. How to write an M.A. thesis in Translation Studies, Universitas, Kraków. View in Google Scholar

Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, http://www.nauka.gov.pl/home – 17 III 2012. View in Google Scholar

Reason, P., Hilary B. (eds) (2001), Handbook of Action Research – Participative Inquiry and Practice, Sage, London. View in Google Scholar

Schon, D.A. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books, Inc., USA. View in Google Scholar

Vermeer, H. (1989), “Skopos and commission in translation action”, in: Venuti, L. (ed.) (2000), The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London–New York, pp. 221‑232. View in Google Scholar

Williams, J., Chesterman, A. (2002), The Map – A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies, St Jerome, Manchester. View in Google Scholar

How to Cite

• Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

Current Issue

Między Oryginałem a Przekładem ------ ISSN (print) 1689-9121 ------ ISSN (online) 2391-6745

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 03 August 2021

Translating research for policy: the importance of equivalence, function, and loyalty

• Steve Connelly   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1758-0366 1 ,
• Dave Vanderhoven 2 ,
• Robert Rutherfoord 3 ,
• Liz Richardson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9889-7682 4 &
• Peter Matthews 5  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  191 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

6261 Accesses

6 Citations

1 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Language and linguistics
• Politics and international relations

The question of how to make academic research more useful to government, and frustration over its lack of obvious use, have long been the subject of policy makers’ and scholars’ attention. These have driven the global development of institutionalised links between the two communities, while also leading to a broad consensus as to why the goal is often not realised. In order to better explain the barriers, this paper takes the concept of “translation” very literally, and proposes an innovative approach, which analyses academic and policy practices using ideas from the humanities-based discipline of Translation Studies. This enables an exploration of what constitutes good translation, and in particular of the tension between keeping faith with the original material and users’ understandable emphasis on functionality. The conclusion is that while some aspect of original research content must be maintained, what this is cannot be prescribed: the appropriate equivalence between original and translation is always context-dependent. This throws the emphasis on the relational aspects of translatorial action for promoting “good translation”. The argument follows Christiane Nord in seeing the core issue as the moral one of a translator’s loyalty to original author and user, and so also of mutual trust between academics and civil servants. This raises important questions about how such trust can be cultivated, and so finally leads to an emphasis on the importance of an endeavour shared by researchers and policy makers, which recognises and respects their different environments and the work involved in creating useful meaning from scholarly research.

Similar content being viewed by others

Wicked problems in a post-truth political economy: a dilemma for knowledge translation

The characteristics of contemporary Chinese translation theory development: a systematic review of studies in core Chinese journals (2012–2022)

Translating Earth system boundaries for cities and businesses

Introduction.

The question of how to make academic social science research more useful to governments has been the subject of policy makers’ and scholars’ attention for at least forty years (Weiss, 1975 , 1979 ). Yet despite increasing demands for policy makers to use research, pressures on academics to have “impact” beyond the academy, and the expansion in resources and institutionalisation of links between the “two communities” (Caplan, 1979 ), frustration over “the visible failures of evidence to influence policy” (Gluckman and Wilsdon, 2016 , p. 2) has always dogged this endeavour. The situation seems paradoxical. The very copious research on research use identifies a set of issues remarkably uniform across time, discipline and place: Weiss’s early insights are still influential; the same diagnoses and prescriptions recur across disciplines (Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ); and Court and Young’s ( 2003 ) fifty case studies, ranging from Argentina to Ukraine, suggest that experiences from the global North are broadly replicated across the world. However, while the situation is not hopeless—there is some evidence that research can influence policy (Bandola-Gill and Lyall, 2017 )—in general this research on research use itself seems lacking in influence.

Oliver and Boaz ( 2019 ) identify problems of fragmentation in the creation and sharing of knowledge and a consequent weakness in the research body (which they characterise as being poorly focused on the important issues), overall leading to ineffective impact strategies. Nevertheless they are optimistic, seeing these as essentially soluble problems, needing better capturing and sharing of knowledge, and more focused research to address enduring, genuine knowledge gaps across the entire research/policy interface from “evidence” production through translation and mobilisation, as well as gaps in terms of process and who is involved (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ). The breadth of this apparent ignorance suggests the possibility that new ways of thinking about the process as a whole could be useful, in order to throw light on the systemic nature of the barriers implied by their enduring nature. This paper offers such a way of thinking, and we aim to show the utility of conceptualising issues in ways borrowed from the humanities discipline of Translation Studies. This analysis takes Oliver and Boaz’s agenda forward in two ways, linked by an argument for reconceptualising the idea of research translation .

The first way is to widen the analytical focus. There is a very broad consensus that research effectiveness is most efficiently promoted through personal interactions between researchers and policy makers, reflected in the quantity of scholarship on “knowledge brokers”, “boundary spanners”, “research partnerships” and so on. Oliver and Boaz take for granted that “using research well” requires “both users and producers of knowledge having the capacity and willingness to engage in relationship-building and deliberation” (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 , p. 5).They suggest more needs to be known about “who is involved in shaping and producing the evidence base”, how “evidence is discussed, made sense of, negotiated and communicated” and so “what types of interfacing are effective, and how”. While we of course concur with the normative consensus, given its empirical support, this focus draws critical researchers’ attention away from the more normal situation, which interaction is intended to replace: of researchers and users not engaging in dialogue, but respectively publishing research and drawing on these publications in the policy making process. Research on this situation, and thus prescriptions for improvement, are dominated by an unhelpfully simplistic, linear understanding of research translation (Rushmer et al., 2019 ). Therefore, we aim to broaden the scope of Oliver and Boaz’s questions: we suggest there is a need for more sophisticated analysis, which is applicable to all the ways through which research products reach “users”, whether or not interaction is involved.

Secondly, while recognising the value of social scientific contributions to understanding research use, we take our cue from another of Oliver and Boaz’s proposed avenues for exploration. They ask whether evidence “can…survive the translation process?” (Oliver and Boaz, p. 6) and suggest that understanding this could fruitfully draw on theories of communication—theories of how messages have different meanings for their originator and their audience. These are indeed important, showing how cognitive content is only part of the communication process, along with message design and materiality shaping what is actually understood by the audience (Kress, 2010 ; Connelly et al., 2015 ). Here however, we focus on a different approach to theorising the first, perhaps most obvious of these communicative elements: the fate of the cognitive content of a “text” during translation. The rationale for this is to redress a relative lack of critical focus on this content in research use scholarship. The literature appears to be divided between linear, positivistic approaches, which take as given the idea that a core meaning can be “translated” “from bench to bedside” (Woolf, 2008 ) or similar, and a critical response, which problematises this assumption and engages with the social and political aspects of evidence production and use. As a label for what happens when the outputs of research are taken up by non-academic “users”, “translation” is much-used yet clearly ambiguous (Freeman, 2009 ; Ingold and Monaghan, 2016 ; Nutley et al., 2007 ). The dominance of one conceptualisation in the simplistic, linear understanding of research use has led critical scholarship to be either sceptical of the label’s utility altogether (Greenhalgh and Wieringa, 2011 ; Penuel et al., 2015 ) or to interpret it very differently, inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) to emphasise the transformation and “betrayal” of the source inherent in translation and downplay continuities in what is “carried across” (Callon, 1986 ; Law, 1997 ; Rhodes and Lancaster, 2019 ).

Here, we argue for a middle way: that while linear understandings are clearly inadequate, moving meaningful content from one group to another—from researchers to the users in the non-academic worlds of practice and policy making—is constitutive of the very idea of research use . Our contention is that understanding the work done on, and with, that content by all those involved in this “translation” will help to explain both problems with research use and possible solutions. In this paper we show how concepts drawn from the humanities discipline of Translation Studies can aid such analysis, since for over two thousand years scholars in that discipline have been grappling with what it means to turn texts from one language into another, to move semantic content between cultures, and what is valued in the output of a translation (Munday, 2012 ). We expand on this below, but emphasise here that we are looking beyond the conceptualisations and uses of “translation” which are probably familiar to most scholars of research use. Our explicit aim is to learn from the concept’s original “home” in the humanities, and draw on arguably its least metaphorical, most literal meaning to illuminate analogous processes which take place in research use, and which are not accessible through either linear or transformative conceptualisations.

In this paper, we first set the scene by clarifying our conceptualisation of the research-policy relationship and how this relates to the existing literature and uses of the concept of translation. The bulk of the paper introduces three ideas from Translation Studies—“equivalence”, “function” and “loyalty.” These are linked by their roles in the development of ways of thinking about the desirable relationship between a “source text” and its translation, as theorists and practicing translators explored the dilemma posed by the tension between sustaining fidelity to an original source and producing a translation, which is functional for an audience (Nord, 2018 ; Schäffner, 2018 ). We show how each in turn leads to useful insights into research translation, through exploring empirical material from a pair of research projects concerned with the use of academic social science research by a UK central government ministry. As with any case study, the details are unique to their context. However, given the apparent ubiquity of the issues faced by those attempting to make research more influential, and the nature of the middle-range conceptual development presented, we suggest that the analysis has very general relevance and practical implications.

Taking research into policy making

Despite the fragmentation of the research base noted by Oliver and Boaz, systematic reviews identify a consistent set of enablers and barriers, many first identified by Caplan ( 1979 ) and subsequently widely corroborated empirically. These are principally the importance of political and institutional context, the nature and relevance of evidence, and the nature of links between academic and policy communities (see reviews by Court and Young, 2003 ; Gaudreau and Saner, 2014 ; Mitton et al., 2007 ; Nutley et al., 2007 ; Oliver et al., 2014 ; Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ). Proposed solutions are similarly consistent, with Oliver and her colleagues’ systematic review typically identifying “timely access to good quality and relevant research evidence, collaborations with policymakers and relationship- and skills-building with policymakers” (Oliver et al., 2014 , p. 1) and the “need for high-quality, simple, clear and relevant research summaries, to be delivered by known and trusted researchers” ( 2014 , p. 9).

However, the theoretical underpinning for these is seen to be insufficient to provide a secure base for improvement (Ingold and Monaghan, 2016 ; Boswell and Smith, 2017 ; Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ). The issue of how key elements of the processes are conceptualised is fundamental, in particular the issues of who is involved and the relationships between them, and how research outputs are reworked in the process of being taken into the policy process (Boswell and Smith, 2017 ; Rushmer et al., 2019 ). Two dominant, conflicting positions are clearly visible both in the practical world of research use and in academic analyses, which share frustration over the lack of research “impact” but little else.

The policy world’s self-understanding is still dominated by a linear, rational model (Boswell and Smith, 2017 ; HM Treasury, 2020 ), within which academic research has a clear role in providing evidence about the nature of problems and about “what works.” This conceptualisation underpins much of the research on how to improve researchers’ ability to “push” their knowledge into the world and on policy makers’ ability to “pull” it in effectively (Rushmer et al., 2019 ).

This model has long been criticised on the grounds that it does not accurately describe policy making or the role of knowledge and research in the process (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979 ; Weiss, 1979 ). Despite their differences, alternative analyses concur that policy making is neither rational nor linear, being complex and political, involving many stakeholders with multiple goals operating in contexts of institutional complexity (Boswell and Smith, 2017 ). In parallel, more sophisticated accounts have been developed of how research is actually used, many drawing on Weiss’s suggestions that alongside instrumental uses, research also serves an enlightenment function, through introducing ideas, which change how issues are conceptualised. It is also used politically, to bolster already-taken decisions, and tactically, when the symbolic visibility of the research process itself is what matters (Weiss, 1979 ).

At the heart of the issue of research translation is the idea of distinct groups, the producers and users of research outputs, between whom there are troublesome boundaries, which need to be traversed in some way in order for research to be used. Most of the academic and policy literature is dominated by the idea of “two communities”, which agree on the need for evidence-based policy making, but have very different cultures (Caplan, 1979 ; Wingens, 1990 ). The boundary between them is thus seen as one which presents barriers to intercultural communication, which can be overcome by aligning languages, increasing information about what knowledge is available, coproduction and other means of learning about the others’ domain, and employing individuals who can span boundaries and broker communication (Oliver et al., 2014 ). Despite its domination of the practice of research use, and research on this (Rushmer et al., 2019 ), this conceptualisation is arguably over-individualistic, and neglects more structural factors (Nutley et al., 2007 ; Wingens, 1990 ). An alternative view suggests that there are two systems, with different functions and therefore principal logics.

Wingens ( 1990 ) claims that governments will necessarily use research pragmatically and selectively, given their need to “establish collectively binding decisions” (p. 35) (that is, to govern). In contrast, academic products are generated in a system that (in principle) privileges truth, and will therefore have to be transformed in some way in order to be comprehensible and functional for government. As government researchers writing to an academic audience, Phoenix and her colleagues describe how their world does “not value their research by journal impact and funding. Instead, the value of research is assessed according to its impact in decision making” (Phoenix et al., 2019 , p. 3). This view suggests that the boundary between the systems will not be traversed simply by individuals developing greater intercultural competence. However, positions differ on its permeability. Boswell and Smith ( 2017 ) point to theories that suggest that the systems are too “autonomous” for “flows, diffusion or causality” between them ( 2017 , p. 6); in contrast Smith and Joyce ( 2012 ) point to network theories, which show that much policy making spans organisational boundaries rather easily, among groups, which share interests and values. Wingens argues for a middle ground, recognising the systemic, structural differences but suggesting that communication will be possible, since “neither scientists nor policymakers are completely predetermined by the social systems in which they have to act” and they are likely to have shared experience, insights, and language (Wingens, 1990 , p. 39). We share his position, on both the general theoretical nature of the relationship between actors and institutional contexts, and on empirical grounds: our own research and that of Phoenix and her colleagues points to exactly the kind of shared experiences that Wingens postulates.

Regardless of how the process is conceptualised, there is a consensus that intercultural communication is facilitated by dialogue of some kind across these boundaries. An extensive and varied literature explores ways in which this may be done; while we cannot explore this in detail here, we sketch out some of its contours in order to show how our work complements it through investigating what is involved in the work of translating across boundaries. This literature can be characterised by the organisational form it explores or proposes. The two principal differences are: (a) between whether a “knowledge broker” (often envisaged as a third party, a “boundary spanner”) is seen as valuable in bridging the gap between research producers and users, or if exchanges between members of the two communities are sufficient; and (b) whether the brokering task is individual or collective, to be conducted at an organisational level. The individual knowledge broker is a salient figure in the literature, typically conceived of as a person distinct from either community, with specific intercultural skills. They occupy an intermediary position, which enables them to bridge gaps and connect communities (Kislov et al., 2016 , 2017 ) exactly because the differences between Caplan’s two communities mean that “neither researchers nor decision makers are best placed to drive the translation, transfer and implementation of…research evidence” (Ward et al., 2009 , p. 2). Proponents of boundary spanners in this context suggest that they may improve both the process of creating relevant research and the capacity of users to use it (Bednarek et al., 2018 ) through a combination of working directly with the content of research as “knowledge managers”, working as “linkage agents” facilitating interchange between researchers and users, and as “capacity builders” sharing their expertise with these groups (Ward et al., 2009 ; Kislov et al., 2016 ). How the first of these is conceptualised varies, depending on how knowledge is thought to transfer from one domain to another: it may be about managing existing ideas, “identify[ing], select[ing] and obtain[ing] information from the environment and efficiently transmit[ting] it within and across the organizations according to needs” (Kislov et al., 2016 p. 474), or be a rather more interpretive role in which brokers have some contribution to creating useful knowledge (Ward et al., 2009 ).

While the value of individual brokers is widely recognised, there are also risks associated with them, principally of individuals acting as “policy advocates” rather than “honest brokers” (Pielke, 2007 ), and of creating inefficiencies by not drawing on a wider range of expertise (Bandola-Gill and Lyall, 2017 ; Dewaele et al., 2021 ). Both drawbacks can be avoided, it is claimed, by moving from an individual to a collective, organisational model (Kislov et al., 2017 ), in which members of both communities work across the boundaries. This may be formalised in “research–practice partnerships”—essentially sites of coproduction of knowledge, which require the development of new practices by all those involved as they engage in joint work across the boundaries (Penuel et al., 2015 ; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2017 ). An alternative, individual way of dispensing with third party brokers and achieving direct communication between researchers and users is through embedding researchers in user organisations (Vindrola-Padros et al., 2017 ; Ward et al., 2021 ).

All of these approaches have an obvious appeal, given the persuasiveness of the “wide and interdisciplinary literature that sees effective knowledge production and ‘research use’ as social, situated and contextually mediated processes” (Ward et al., 2021 pp. 17–18). However, none is straightforward, given the differences between communities and systems that dialogue and brokerage are intended to overcome. They all involve new “boundary practices” (Penuel et al., 2015 ), requiring time, energy and skills, delivered either by specialist third parties or achieved through researchers and users developing new capabilities. These include cultural understanding and sensitivity, and interpersonal and communicative skills (Kislov et al., 2017 ). Some of these are learnable, but to some extent they also come down to “personal characteristics and dispositions” (Vindrola-Padros et al., 2017 , p. 74). Given these factors, along with the very real structural constraints, which inhibit many academics from getting involved in knowledge transfer activities (Matthews et al., 2018 ; Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ; Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ), the norm is probably not interaction but the less resource-demanding (and less effective) processes of “pushing” and “pulling” (Rushmer et al., 2019 ) by academics disseminating their results through their own writing, and potential users gathering published information.

Common to all this literature is the taken for granted difference between creators and users of research, and thus of more-or-less easily crossable boundaries between them. While the more simplistic, linear conceptualisations focus on how best to communicate research outputs, more sophisticated approaches are concerned principally with the social processes of interaction involved in the tasks of translation, facilitation, capacity building and joint working, and not with the cognitive content of “evidence.” Yet to respond to Oliver and Boaz’s call for research on “transforming evidence translation and mobilisation”, we contend that understanding “how evidence is discussed, made sense of, negotiated and communicated” (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 p. 5), and how the manifest barriers to translation actually work (Mitton et al., 2007 ; Oliver et al., 2014 ), must involve a closer look at what is actually done to the substantive content of research outputs as they are transferred into the policy realm. In all but the most naïve conceptualisations of this, some degree of transformation will take place in order to make this transfer possible. In order to examine this more closely, we push the common trope of “translation” further than is usual.

Translation as metaphor or practice?

“Translation” has become a widely used metaphor for what happens to research in its passage from academia to users (Freeman, 2009 ). Often used in a very general sense, without theoretical commitments to what translation might actually involve (see e.g., Bednarek et al., 2018 ; Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ), the term also has a range more specific meanings tied closely to the broader conceptualisations of the nature of the research-policy relationship outlined above (Rushmer et al., 2019 ). Where this relationship is seen as simple and linear, translation is effectively a synonym for “transfer”; this conceptualisation underpins the mass of activity on improving the transfer of “what works” from research to practice (Woolf, 2008 ; Rhodes and Lancaster, 2019 ). However, just as the empirical weakness of the rational policy model has led to its widespread critique and rejection by policy scholars, so there have been two broad critical responses to this conception of “translation”.

Some scholars have followed the radical interpretation of the term emerging from actor-network theory (ANT) and science and technology studies (STS), which emphasises change, rather than the simple “carrying over” of a well-defined entity. ANT’s founder claimed that “to translate is to displace” (Callon, 1986 , p. 223)—faithful translation is impossible, as it involves a “necessary betrayal” (Law, 1997 , p. 1). Ingold and Monaghan ( 2016 ) draw on STS-influenced policy theory (Lendvai and Stubbs, 2007 ) to see research translation as something which “does not need to be entirely faithful to the original and involves a process of replication, imitation and differentiation” ( 2016 , p. 173). Rhodes and Lancaster ( 2019 ) take a more radical ANT approach, abandoning the idea of fidelity altogether and explicitly distancing themselves from the idea that anything substantive endures; for them, research outputs are “transformed”, “worked-with into different things” (p. 2).

The alternative critical response has been to view “translation” as irredeemably attached to linear conceptions of research use, and so to reject the term altogether (Greenhalgh and Wieringa, 2011 ; Penuel et al., 2015 ). Penuel et al. ( 2015 ) claim it leads to “an impoverished way of thinking about the relation of research and practice” (p. 183) and so to inappropriate proposals for closing the gap between them. In its place they favour concepts relating to “interaction” (such as partnerships) and “practice” (such as phronesis ) in order to better capture the “complex, non-linear and locally contingent” processes (Greenhalgh and Wieringa, 2011 p. 507) through which knowledge generated by research is related to practice. This reconceptualisation is inextricable from the consequent normative, practical agenda of promoting interactive approaches to enhance research effectiveness.

Both critical responses are unhelpful in two ways. Firstly, the conclusions in favour of interaction remove other practices from critical analysis. Secondly and more fundamentally, both are problematic in that at the core of the idea of research use must be a concern with that which is “carried over”. Some aspects of academic knowledge must be capable of being preserved as it is brought into the realm of policy making, since otherwise there would be no reason to value research—even if this involves more transformation than is envisaged by the everyday positivism of the policy making and implementation science communities. This criticism does not entail a retreat to the linear model, but takes us to a middle ground, which recognises the force of the critical arguments but maintains a realist commitment to the “element of underlying entity” explicitly rejected by Rhodes and Lancaster—the element captured by Steiner’s notion of “invariance within transformation” (Steiner, 1998 ). Steiner was concerned with literary translation, rather than research use: here we are proposing that useful intellectual resources for understanding the latter can be found in Steiner’s humanities discipline of Translation Studies.

This varied and complex discipline sits at the intersection of linguistics, language studies, comparative literature and cultural studies (among others), drawing on all of these for theoretical resources. Its roots are ancient, going back to classical Roman concerns with translating Greek poetry into Latin, and hard-fought early Christian controversies over Biblical interpretation (Munday, 2012 ). Throughout it has inescapably been concerned with how the content of a source is related to its translation, since while some relationship is constitutive of the idea of translation (as opposed to the creation of originals) this cannot be simple transfer, as by definition the original is not readily intelligible to the target audience (Sakai, 2006 ).

The resonances with research translation are clear, and our suggestion is that Translation Studies’ central concern with invariance within transformation complements the research use literature. Yet apart from a very brief paper by Engebretsen et al. ( 2017 ), what the discipline has to offer has been curiously ignored by policy scholars, despite Freeman speculating on its value in 2009 (Freeman, 2009 ). In a single paper we clearly cannot explore the entire discipline, nor claim to have identified all the lessons it might have for research use scholarship and practice. Rather we have selected a set of linked concepts— equivalence , function , and loyalty —which have been central to the core question of what it is that makes a good translation (Schäffner, 1997 ).

Following Siggelkow’s argument ( 2007 ) for linking conceptual development with the exposition of cases in order to show how abstract concepts are manifested in reality, we use the rest of the paper to explore how ideas from Translation Studies provide tools for better understanding “research translation”, in the context of empirical material drawn from two linked research projects. In the next section we describe the projects and methods of data collection and analysis. We then examine Translations Studies’ (ultimately unconvincing) attempts to establish equivalence between source and product as the criterion of translation quality. We follow the discipline’s turn to a focus on a translation’s function, but then suggest, following Nord ( 2018 ), that privileging function is also problematic, and show the value of augmenting this with a concern for loyalty, and so for interpersonal rather than intertextual relationships.

The projects were funded by the UK Research Councils’ Connected Communities programme (AHRC, 2012 ). Working collaboratively with researchers from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG: the ministry then responsible for localism, local and community governance, planning and housing in England), the main project focused on the impact of a set of academically authored policy briefings. It also ranged more widely across the production and use of research by the civil servants. The project team comprised academics involved in producing the policy briefings (including Vanderhoven, Richardson, and Connelly), one who had not been involved (Matthews), and a DCLG social researcher (Rutherfoord). The approach was interpretive and ethnographic, exploring both how academics and civil servants understood their roles, and their actual practices. Vanderhoven, Matthews and Rutherfoord interviewed eleven civil servants and all eleven of the academics who produced the policy briefings. Vanderhoven spent three separate weeks observing and interviewing within DCLG, and we ran four workshops on research translation and use with the same groups of civil servants and academics. The interviews were digitally recorded and professionally transcribed. Detailed field notes were taken at the workshops, and by Vanderhoven to record his observations in the DCLG offices.

A follow-on project involved action research by Connelly and Vanderhoven, working with some of the same civil servants to broker connections between potentially relevant civil service policy teams and a wider set of 25 academics funded by the Connected Communities programme. Successful connections took the form of four face-to-face meetings, which were digitally recorded. We have also drawn on “on the record” email communications between these two authors and academics and civil servants, reflecting on the findings of both projects.

Our principal ethical concern was with confidentiality, both to protect individuals and ongoing policy processes. The overall management of this risk was done through continuous discussion about risk between academics and the civil servants most closely connected with the project, minimising individual identifiers in published material, and checking the use of all quotations from civil servants. At the individual level, informed consent for interviews and for the use of emails was obtained through sharing an information sheet and then confirming consent on a standard form. For meetings and participant observation, individual consent forms were not used, but agreement was obtained from all those involved at the outset. Precautions to protect individuals included sharing transcripts and other materials only among the academic team and not with the civil servants most closely involved. Overall ethics approval for the project was obtained from the University of Sheffield Research Ethics Committee.

A first inductive analysis, drawing out insights into how research use was conceptualised and practiced by those involved, and the structural constraints on this, was carried out through manual thematic coding (Braun and Clarke, 2006 ) of all the interview transcripts, field notes and reflective emails. This formed the basis for the project reports. We then reinterpreted the data using a new conceptual framing drawn from Translation Studies, for the reasons outlined above. This re-coding was thus more directed (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005 ) than the original analysis, using as core themes the three concepts taken from Translation Studies theory introduced briefly above and which structure the discussion below: equivalence, function, and loyalty. Sub-codes within this framework, such as ways of dealing with academic texts and judging research quality, were developed inductively. In presenting this we include some quotations taken from the interviews and emails to illustrate the case being made. These are relatively sparse and mainly brief, partly because in the nature of the discussions in the meetings and interviews there were rarely self-explanatory passages, and partly because of the need to protect the individuals and policy processes concerned. They are thus selected to be both representative and intelligible to illustrate and reinforce the points being made. The observational data is presented particularly sparingly: it turned out that the most useful data directly concerned with translation came from the action research, which was also the most sensitive in terms of preserving confidentiality around ongoing policy initiatives.

Taking translation theory seriously

Can “equivalence” be the goal.

We start with the concept of equivalence. On the one hand this resonates with everyday understandings of “translation” and with simple notions of research use, while on the other within Translation Studies it gets to the heart of the difficulties of defining what is carried over, and how this might be done well. Translators’ traditional focus was on preserving as much of the content of a “source text” as possible, but how to do this faithfully was a matter of longstanding debate over whether translation should be word-for-word or “sense-for-sense”—a debate which in the twentieth century matured into a focus on the concept of “equivalence” (Munday, 2012 ). Unsurprisingly, we found the expectation of equivalence (in a rather naïve sense) in good currency in the policy world. We were told by one government social researcher (GSR) that the need for “some sort of translation of these ideas into language and concepts that policymakers can understand” should be met “without losing the richness and the nuance of your findings—we don’t ever want to lose that at all”. This is straightforwardly linear: as noted above, this assumption that academic knowledge can and should be accessible through translation without loss of content is characteristic of policy makers, and built into official accounts of the role of research in policy making.

However, according to Translation Studies, achieving equivalence of every aspect of a source is impossible (Sakai, 2006 ): translation necessarily involves some degree of change, and loss, from the original. What remains “invariant” cannot even be an entirely shared meaning ( contra Freeman, 2009 ), given the different cultural and linguistic settings of the source and target texts (Sakai, 2006 ). Elaborating the concept of equivalence thus involved identifying what is significant in a source and therefore must be maintained (Nida, 1964 ). Within the academic discipline this spawned many different categorisations of equivalence, and the recognition that what was to be preserved differed between types of source text. For research-based texts the idea that a translation should provoke a similar response, an “equivalent effect”, in the target group as the original did for its audience (Nida, 1964 ), seems particularly helpful. Fundamentally such a response should be to comprehend the core ideas and trust them on the basis of some kind of warrant: the translation should make the same case as the original. Newmark ( 1981 ) adds a cultural aspect, suggesting that while a translation of a non-literary text should be accurate in conveying the content of the source, it should also be oriented towards the target audience’s linguistic, stylistic and cultural norms.

However, the fact that within the discipline there was no resolution of the multiplicity of possible choices over what equivalence could mean (Adamska-Sałaciak, 2010 ), and so no consensus over what should be preserved or abandoned in translation, points to a fundamental problem with the approach. In part this arises because the idea of equivalence rests on the challengeable assumption that meaning (as pure content) can be transferred between languages and cultures, independent of the communicative and wider context. This may sometimes be a reasonable approximation: in the research use context, a single simple quantitative “finding” may be easily transferred. For example, the “number of neighbourhood planning projects initiated” has much the same content whether in an academic publication (e.g., Wargent and Parker, 2018 ) or on an infographic poster on a DCLG office wall. Such transfer cannot, however, be generally achievable, as any interpretation of such a finding (or of any more complex idea) depends on the audience’s understanding and needs. In this example, while this number figures in academic discussions on local democracy (e.g., Bradley, 2015 ), for the civil servants its key meaning is to show that the neighbourhood planning policy was successful.

The debates continue within Translation Studies, driven by the irresolvable tension between resistance to sacrificing the “richness of the meaning” and “authority” of the source (Newmark, 1991 p. 106) and equivalence’s common-sense attractiveness, and the apparent impossibility of specifying what constitutes equivalence (Adamska-Sałaciak, 2010 ). For us, the concept usefully reinforces a focus on how translation conveys something , and prompts consideration of which aspects of a piece of research are essential for a given audience, as well of that audience’s communicative norms. Yet the lack of resolution within the discipline suggests that seeking an a priori definition of equivalence between source and target texts is ultimately unworkable, and that alternative criteria are needed to characterise and evaluate this elusive thing which is carried over. Within Translation Studies these concerns, reinforced by broader cultural and systems “turns” in the discipline, prompted a reorientation away from a linguistic approach (focused on texts themselves) towards viewing translation as a social practice driven by its function for the target audience (Munday, 2012 ).

Functional translation

The possibility of maintaining equivalent content and also being functional for the user underpins the linear conception of translation in the research use literature. In contrast, functionalist Translation Studies theorising rejects the possibility of specifying what equivalence should mean independent of context. Instead it defines a good translation principally in terms of utility—one which is adequate and appropriate, given its function for the audience (Schäffner, 1997 ). “Adequacy”, “appropriateness” and “function” are seen as always contextualised, determined by a “situation-in-culture” (Nord, 2018 ), and therefore needing to be assessed by translators as knowledgeable actors. One aspect of the context is the broader power structures and externally imposed norms within which translators work, theorised within the discipline by Chesterman ( 1997 ), Lefevere ( 1992 ) and Hermans ( 2000 ) in ways broadly similar to social scientific accounts of power within institutions, including in the context of research translation (see e.g., Freeman, 2009 ; Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ). Our focus here is therefore on an aspect less visible in social scientific accounts, but highlighted by Translation Studies with its focus on the practices of translation. This is the set of norms about the translation process itself, which govern what counts as appropriate translation (Toury, 1995 ).

The core of the functionalist approach is a hierarchical set of rules laid out by Reiss and Vermeer ( 2013 , p. 90). The first of these rules establishes the primacy of function: everything else is secondary to the utility of the translation to the end user. This includes the nature of the relationship between a source text and its translation, which is covered by subordinate rules: Rule 2 defines translation as an “offer of information” in the target language and culture “concerning” an offer of information in the source language; Rule 4 requires “coherence” between the information received by the translator, their interpretation of this and the final text. The obvious vagueness of “concerning” and “coherence” is deliberate, and allows the relationship between the content of a source and its translation to be context-dependent, determined solely by the function (or skopos , in these theorists’ terms) (Nord, 2018 ). “Equivalence” as a requirement has disappeared.

In these terms, the linear policy making model assumes a single skopos uniting impact-hungry scholars and rational, evidence-led policy makers, all seeking to give government policy the best possible knowledge base. However, in the UK central government policy context, there is a third group involved. These are the GSRs or “analysts”, a civil service cadre distinct from the policy teams, who officially “provide government with objective, reliable, relevant and timely social research; support the development, implementation, review and evaluation of policy and delivery; [and] ensure policy debate is informed by the best research evidence and thinking from the social sciences” Civil Service, 2021 ) Footnote 1 .

The GSRs are curiously absent from most accounts of the research-policy relationship (Phoenix et al., 2019 ; Hampton and Adams, 2018 ). Their official role as neutral conveyors of knowledge fits neatly into the government’s linear conception of research transfer, but our own research corroborates that of the few other researchers who have paid attention to the GSRs in showing their creative agency (Cooper, 2016 ; Hampton and Adams, 2018 ; Ingold and Monaghan, 2016 ; Nutley et al., 2007 ; Kattirtzi, 2016 ; Phoenix et al., 2019 ). They are not passive transmitters of material but have important roles as “knowledge managers” (Ward et al., 2009 ) in matching up relevant research findings with policy needs, and in turning research outputs into material usable by the policy teams. They are thus clearly knowledge brokers of a sort, part of whose role is as translators (Mulgan, 2013 ) in the strict sense of people turning material from one language into another. They see themselves as brokers (Phoenix et al., 2019 ), and often have educational and professional backgrounds outside the civil service, which provide the necessary cultural and linguistic competence for this role. Corroborating Wingens’ dismissal of the idea that “social scientists and policy-makers inhabit two separate worlds” ( 1990 , p. 33), many GSRs have academic backgrounds: as one GSR with a doctorate said to us, “Before I was a civil servant? I taught Philosophy”.

However, as civil servants the GSRs are rather unusual brokers, compared to the independent third parties envisaged by the literature discussed above. Although they act as intermediaries between academics and policy teams they are also part of the government system, and so are constrained by its orientation towards decision making (Wingens, 1990 ). So while their skills may enable them to “effectively construct a bridge between the research and policy communities” (Phoenix et al., 2019 , p. 2, quoting Nutley et al., 2007 ) and provide a more permeable boundary between academia and government than might be expected, the Civil Service Code (Civil Service, 2015 ) is very clear that they must be neutral within government: the GSRs are not neutrally positioned between the two communities and are prohibited from working as “issue advocates” (Pielke, 2007 ). Their role involves working across the spectrum from the very interactive (and resource-intensive) engagement envisaged by the boundary spanning and research partnership literature, through to “pulling in” published material (Rushmer et al., 2019 ).

Despite the complexity added by the intermediary role of the GSRs, in practice we found a broadly shared skopos across the three groups. The policy teams were genuinely interested in using research to inform their work. One characteristically described their task as "to be able to marshal the evidence for and against options that are within the sphere of the possible… [When] a minister asks “can we do X? Why can’t we do Y? What are the options for addressing Z?” …we have to come up with a list of bright ideas. Having an easily-accessible and then relatively easily-digestible evidence base to inform that thinking is valuable.”

The GSRs’ purpose was clear, and complemented the policy teams’ aspirations. It was given typical expression by two GSRs: “my ambition is really to make sure the policy team have access to the latest relevant evidence to underpin the policy details” and “we want to be as useful to [the policy teams] as possible and to make things as easy as possible. So it is trying to interpret things and what this could mean”. There were nuances in their aspirations. While for one “whether they choose to use [the ‘latest relevant evidence’] or not use it, that is at their discretion, but at least I’m doing my job to make sure they have access to it”, for others the point was to influence policy making, whether directly or through “enlightenment” effects (Weiss, 1979 ). In pursuit of making the mass of available evidence useful, the analysts deliberately offered new information, in Reiss and Vermeer’s sense, for instance valuing conceptual work such as “think[ing] a bit more creatively and put[ting] a framework around things” in order to stabilise and bring order to the policy teams’ “amorphous and changing” issues.

The extent to which academics’ skopos actually matters depends on how they engage with the policy process. Academics’ aspirations for their scholarly outputs are in principle irrelevant: as source texts, which the GSRs translate, they are simply raw material. However, researchers seeking impact often translate their own work from their academic source languages into something intended to be comprehensible and influential in the policy community—as, for example, some of this paper’s authors did with the policy briefings produced for DCLG. Their purposes may range from the most instrumental desire to communicate specific findings through to changing how the government conceptualises particular issues. Working interactively with the policy world also presupposes similar intentions to inform and influence, as academics enter conversations with policy makers and strive to be understood.

However, while we generally found this shared, broad purpose of using research to inform policy, at a more detailed level this is insufficient as a guide to achieving adequate translations. For research to be useful it must be translated to fit specific needs of the policy teams, and these are typically precise, dynamic, and unpredictable. So how might this be achieved?

Functionalist translation theory emphasises the role of the target text receiver in setting the skopos for the translation, ideally through explicit instructions defining a context-specific relationship between source and translated material. The necessity for such a “brief” seems obvious: unless a translator is very familiar with the needs and conventions of the target group, “translating without clear instructions is like swimming without water” (Nord, 2018 , p. 72). Yet academics, including ourselves and many of those with whom we worked in the action research project, are often in this situation. Without a detailed grasp of the policy fields to which they might contribute, or of the complexity of the GSRs’ and policy teams’ worlds (Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ; Phoenix et al., 2019 ), they are unable to produce useful translations of their work. Footnote 2 This is why the GSRs’ role is central, as they search for relevant academic texts and rework these for the policy teams. Their knowledge of both systems is crucial to this translation work: as well as having detailed knowledge of the policy teams’ interests, one GSR described how “I’ve always thought it’s an analyst’s job to be on top of the academic literature”, by, for instance, following relevant journals and academics on social media.

Yet even for well-informed and interculturally competent GSRs, attempting to be more proactive by producing briefs for academics may be challenging. Language and cultural issues can create barriers to communication into the academic world: writing a brief requires an understanding of that world and translation of policy needs into language intelligible to academics. So, for example, an analyst’s attempt to define for us their immediate research needs contained (from our academic perspective) a mix of genuinely researchable questions, questions which would require unfeasibly large resources to answer, and normative/evaluative questions, which are not easily researched (such as “how can we best support the creation of more integrated communities?”).

Nord’s proposed solution to the problem of inadequate briefs is clarity through dialogue (Nord, 2018 ), in the same way that interactive approaches should enhance research translation. The GSRs saw interaction as core to their effectiveness in translating for the policy teams, since “if we don’t understand the policy issues they’re facing on a day-to-day basis, we can’t respond.” Interaction across this boundary was relatively simple, particularly when GSRs and policy teams were co-located. Academics may mirror this through sustained partnerships (Penuel et al., 2015 ) or in the role of embedded researchers, able to interact regularly, both formally and informally, with users and so produce relevant research (Vindrola-Padros et al., 2017 ). Less formally, the DCLG GSRs had close relationships with a very few academics, like the one characterised as being “really good at coming in and just having a chat and offering to do seminars and that kind of thing.” As noted above, however, resource and other constraints preclude this for many, probably most, academics.

Face to face meetings are seen as a more feasible, albeit second-best, alternative for enabling academics to keep abreast of policy developments. However, neither meetings nor co-location and coproduction remove the process of translation from the process, but rather make it oral (rather than written) and immediate. Even where there is a shared language (or at least mutual comprehension) between academics and civil servants, the differences in their primary concerns (Wingens, 1990 ) still affect how they can make sense of each other. This was very visible in the meetings we organised bringing academics, GSRs and policy teams together. When (following normal practice) academics presented first, translating their own work without a detailed brief, civil servants almost always struggled to see its relevance. In contrast, when we reorganised and started with civil servants presenting their current concerns, academics generally were better able to respond by translating their knowledge instantly into something comprehensible and useful.

When research is commissioned or coproduced, the closer relationship between academics and civil servants might plausibly help the former to be more adept at translating their own work. Yet even then they may struggle to write effectively. Doing so requires making the relevance to the civil servants’ work obvious. A GSR contrasted two of our responses to the same brief: one which in setting out “principles of democratic problem solving…is potentially very helpful to guide policy”, while the other was criticised for being “out of step with current policy debates…For the unfamiliar reader, why is Truth relevant?” Where the academic authors of the latter had aimed for a major reframing of the issue, through unsettling existing conceptualisations, the GSR response was to ask “whether some more thought could go into making the policy recommendations more in tune with where local and national policy makers see their key problems at the present time”. Even clear briefs can be interpreted in ways which lead to inadequate translations of academic knowledge.

Being functional also means aligning with the civil servants’ language (Reiss and Vermeer, 2013 ), and even the most policy-oriented academics may find this hard, in part because of concerns over what is lost in translation (Freeman, 2009 ). One such scholar reflected that “you default to these modes of communication and structures of communication like the report or a journal article. Moreover, actually presenting it in a different way [to policy makers] can be quite a challenge”. Another similarly reported how, in producing a policy briefing, their team “struggled…because they were trying to keep the clever and cultivated phrases…rather than just taking little bits and saying ‘look, these are the key points, that bit doesn’t matter’”. The GSRs recognised these concerns, even as they wrestled with “interesting” work in which they could see “academics trying to protect their intellect and not distil their findings into sort of ten key bullet points”.

Overall, from this functionalist perspective the quality of a translation depends on its utility for the end user. The parallels between this idea, from Translation Studies, and the context of research use are obvious. In the latter, this means not only sharing the broad purpose of improving policy making, but also detailed knowledge of context and the possible function that translated research could serve. Empirically we saw how this was challenging for academics, and the difficulties involved in the normal, less interactive and unbriefed attempts to make research relevant show why ongoing engagement and dialogue are so important both for mutual understanding and feedback on translations. It is clear that translation takes place, however research use is organised. The difference between push/pull and interactive approaches is in who is involved, and so exactly where the boundary is across which translation takes place, and the extent to which the approach facilitates more or less functional translation.

However, functionalist translation theory has been criticised for over-emphasising the importance of the target audience’s purposes (Nord, 2018 ). While it recognises the need for coherence, and the possibility that this might be based on equivalence, the hierarchy is clear: how much equivalence, and of what, is defined by the criterion of producing a functional translation. Judging and acting on this is a task for the translator, working with the users’ needs in mind, with no in-principle restriction on creative license (Nord, 2018 ). One can easily see why academics have similar concerns about “policy-based” (Marmot, 2004 ) or “political” (Weiss, 1979 ) uses of their research—concerns reinforced by theorising which emphasises the idea of “betrayal” inherent in translation (Law, 1997 ; Rhodes and Lancaster, 2019 ).

A senior GSR summarised the ideal translation, suggesting the need to resolve the dilemma between the problems of privileging either equivalence or function:

The trick is to get the right balance between substance (showing that this is based on good evidence and/or theory), accessibility (making it easy for a busy person to get the most important messages out of a summary), and policy relevance (what does this mean for what we, or communities, actually do?) [email, original emphasis].

Trustworthiness is what matters here. Another GSR suggested that achieving this ideal does not mean that translations have to be complete: “What you’re getting across often is the kind of tip of the iceberg, and you’ll focus on that tip, but you’re also conscious that you’ve got to have a very deep foundation that underpins that advice”. This returns us to the question of what links source and target text: what might guarantee reliability, particularly in the absence of evidence contained within the translation itself?

Resolving the dilemma: function plus loyalty

Writing from within the Translation Studies functionalist tradition, Nord’s response seems apposite in the context of research translation, providing both insight and guidance. Addressing the situation in which the author’s and user’s purposes are different, she invokes the concept of “loyalty” (Nord, 2018 ). In contrast to the inter-textual concept of equivalence, this is inter-personal “responsibility” towards translators’ “partners in translational interaction”, which takes into account the cultural expectations and “legitimate interests” of all those involved—author, translator and users (Nord, 2018 , p. 117). It thus morally constrains a translator’s freedom, to produce a text “compatible with the original author’s intentions” (p. 115). Loyalty is closely bound to trust and reliability but is not the same: it is a moral orientation, which underlies, and is the precondition for, a trusting relationship.

This gets to the heart of why “relationships, trust, and mutual respect” (Oliver et al., 2014 , p. 4) are found to be so important in successful research use (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ). This was exemplified by one GSR’s first question about us to his colleague, who was acting as our gatekeeper: “how do you know you can trust these people?” Interviewees’ reasons for trusting, even where personal relationships were absent, included a generalised faith in academia as a system oriented towards objectivity and truth (in contrast to think tanks and other “evidence” sources, which were seen as being more politically motivated and biased) (cf. Wingens, 1990 ). There was also an explicit reliance on academics’ descriptions of their research methodology, which are generally comprehensible to the GSRs, if not to the policy teams. In contrast, a generalised lack of trust in government precludes policy engagement for some academics (Pain, 2006 ), such as one who responded to a presentation of findings from this project by characterising the project team as “like Stasi informants”.

Where interaction is involved, rather than merely translation of published research outputs, the personal issues go beyond methodological competence and again take on a moral tone. Sensitivity to the other’s context, and particularly risks, were salient. Academics have to trust the GSRs and policy teams not to misrepresent their research, either with respect to its substantive claims or its validity and scope. Conversely, a policy team member told us

if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, then that’s a vulnerable, vulnerable thing. So there’s a thing about trust there…And where we have kind of developed relationships, so, you know, we’ve worked with you before, that trust emerges over time doesn’t it? And so we know we can say things to you guys that we might not say to just anyone I walked into, on entering a university building.

So why might translators be loyal in Nord’s sense? There is obvious instrumental gain for GSRs in being seen to be purveying good research to the policy teams, but for many of those we interviewed the reasons went beyond this. Overlapping identities mattered for the civil servants who had been academics, and, crucially, there was something akin to Pain and her colleagues’ “agreed common purpose” (Pain et al., 2015 , p.11), though with a stronger moral connotation. This was captured by one GSR in the notion of a “shared endeavour”: many in both “communities” believed academics and GSRs to be participating in the same project of helping make better policy. Cultivating such an ethos is clearly supported by face to face interaction (Oliver and Boaz, 2019 ) but this is not just about simple contact: personal characteristics and dispositions are important and there is often something intangible about how effective translational relationships are created. One participant in an academic/civil service “speed dating” event summed it up: “it’s intellectual but it’s also personal: it’s ‘who do I connect with?’”.

Conclusions

Overall, our empirical findings are unsurprisingly consistent with many other scholars’ conclusions about the barriers to, and enablers of, the effective use of academic research. The purpose of this paper is, however, to further Oliver and Boaz’s agenda in two linked ways: to broaden the scope of analytical attention beyond interactive approaches (such as knowledge brokering, partnerships and so on) to cover the normal (less than ideal) conditions of research translation, and to do this by putting at the centre of our attention the content, which is translated. We have done this by drawing on concepts drawn from the humanities discipline of Translation Studies, the home of much scholarship on the nature of translation yet almost entirely ignored by the research use community. We have necessarily been selective, and hope that this paper will serve as an introduction, which will prompt other scholars to use these and other ideas and approaches from Translation Studies Footnote 3 .

Of course, the details of how people behave—in our case in one division of one UK government ministry—are context (and thus case study) specific. Steiner ( 1998 ) was right that there can be no general theory of what is done at the moment of translation : it is situated practice, varying between organisational and normative contexts, and between policies and policy fields. However, there was nothing obviously special about the context we studied, and the insights into the nature of translation are very general: the same issues can be expected to recur elsewhere (Maxwell, 2012 ). This enables progress beyond merely providing “narratives of translational praxis” (Steiner, 1998 , p. viii) to a set of middle-range concepts useful for investigating any research translation process. These are both analytical in that they should prompt questions about functions, equivalences and loyalties (and tensions between these), and normative in that these three concepts each lead to evaluative criteria. Future research could very usefully expand the range of our investigation to other fields and institutional settings, and also probe more deeply the nature of translational action in interactive settings involving partnerships and brokers.

Overall we argue that “translation” can be useful in understanding processes of research use, and should not be abandoned, as has been argued by scholars critical of simplistic, linear uses of the metaphor (Greenhalgh and Wieringa, 2011 ). Rather, drawing on the concepts from Translation Studies enables us to contribute to the already extensive research use literature, and in particular to augment the sophisticated study and promotion of interactive approaches. On the one hand, we deepen the analysis of what brokers, embedded researchers or participants in research partnerships actually do with the substantive content of research outputs. On the other, we broaden it to include the empirically dominant but much-criticised non-interactive forms of research transfer, suggesting that all “carrying across” between the academic and policy systems involves similar translation issues. What differs is exactly how the border is crossed, by whom, and what practices are possible to mitigate the inevitable challenges.

The conceptual argument can be summarised in terms of a dilemma and its proposed resolution. Thinking about equivalence between a source and its translation usefully emphasises what remains when a text is translated, and so what might be valued and justify the whole research translation endeavour. Despite its common-sense appeal, specifying what equivalence might entail in any context-independent way is problematic, and led Translation Studies scholars to appeal to function for the end-user as the guide for practice, with the appropriate equivalence between source and translation entirely context-dependent. This second horn of the dilemma is equally problematic, since in principle it allows a complete abandonment of fidelity to the content of a source. We find Nord’s moral (rather than linguistic or semantic) resolution in terms of interpersonal loyalty persuasive and helpful, both in making sense of the importance of human relationships in research translation and in highlighting a more general moral commitment of the translator to all those involved, even in the least interactive research translation practices. By this account, a “good” translation of research would be sufficiently equivalent to the original ideas to be both functional for policy and respectful of the intentions and context of the researcher.

The analysis has practical implications, though we note that the collective understanding of research use tells us that our research will not straightforwardly influence practice. So while we suggest what might be done, we are under no illusions that actioning this will be easy! These implications are the importance of mutual and detailed understanding of, and empathy with, the needs, institutional context and risks of all involved, along with broadly shared fluency in each other’s languages. This explains why face to face meetings and other forms of close interactions are so useful, and in contrast why academics translating their own material and disseminating it often do poorly both in terms of policy relevance and in building relationships. Both could be improved by paying attention to the micro-organisation of interactions to facilitate translation, and by the civil service providing readily accessible briefs on its pressing policy-relevant questions. These, along with some of the solutions frequently proposed in the research use literature (such as academics using more intelligible language) are likely to be necessary but not sufficient, unless academics also align themselves to the function of the civil service, or someone in the latter domain is able to take up academic research products and reorient them. Such intercultural communication work is difficult, and it is not obvious that academics should do it: they may well lack the specialist skills and capacity, and, despite the salience of the “impact agenda”, there are career and reputational risks attached to engaging too closely with the policy world (Oliver and Cairney, 2019 ; Oliver and Boaz, 2019 .)

In the UK context one implication of this is that the GSR profession should be more valued and more widely known within academia. More generally, investment to promote more effective research transfer should increase (and incentivise) opportunities for all those involved in research translation, as authors, translators or users, to learn about and (wherever possible) to meet the others, with the goals of promoting interpersonal relationships, generalised understanding and trust, and so of developing a basis for mutual loyalty and commitment to a shared endeavour.

Data availability

The materials generated and analysed during the current study are not publicly available, due to the sensitivity of some of the content and the need to preserve the anonymity of the civil servants involved.

More or less similar cadres provide economic and scientific advice. Our research engaged exclusively with the GSRs, and it would be useful to explore the roles of the other specialisms in brokering other forms of knowledge and evidence.

Policy fields differ. While this lack of interaction seems normal in DCLG’s areas of responsibility, in the health and education fields user-defined problems and interactive engagement seem more routine (Penuel et al., 2015 ; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2017 ; Ward et al., 2009 ).

Munday ( 2012 ) is a useful introduction and guide to the breadth of the discipline.

Adamska-Sałaciak A (2010) Examining equivalence. Int J Lexicogr 23(4):387–409

Article   Google Scholar  

AHRC (2012) Connected communities. Arts & humanities research council, Swindon. https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/crosscouncilprogrammes/connectedcommunities . Accessed 13 Jul 2021

Bandola-Gill J, Lyall C (2017) Knowledge brokers and policy advice in policy formulation. Handbook of policy formulation. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, pp. 249–264

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Bednarek AT, Wyborn C, Cvitanovic C, Meyer R, Colvin RM, Addison PFE, Close SL, Curran K, Farooque M, Goldman E (2018) Boundary spanning at the science–policy interface: the practitioners’ perspectives.’. Sustain Sci 13(4):1175–1183

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Boswell C, Smith K (2017) Rethinking policy ‘impact’: Four models of research-policy relations. Palgrave Commun 3.44:1–10

Google Scholar  

Bradley Q (2015) The political identities of neighbourhood planning in England. Space Polity 19(2):97–109

Braun V, Clarke V (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol 3(2):77–101

Callon M (1986) Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In: Law J (ed.) Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? Routledge, London, pp. 196–223

Caplan N (1979) The two-communities theory and knowledge utilization. Am Behav Scientist 22(3):459–470

Chesterman A (1997) Memes of translation: the spread of ideas in translation theory. John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam

Book   Google Scholar  

Civil Service (2015) Civil Service Code. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-code/the-civil-service-code . Accessed 28 May 2021

Civil Service (2021) About the Government Social Research profession. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/civil-service-government-social-research-profession/about . Accessed 13 Jul 2021

Connelly S, Vanderhoven D, Durose C, Richardson L, Matthews P, Rutherfoord R (2015) Translation across borders: exploring the use, relevance and impact of academic research in the policy process. In: O’Brien D, Matthews P (eds) After urban regeneration: communities, policy and place. Policy Press, Bristol, pp. 181–198

Cooper AC (2016) Exploring the scope of science advice: social sciences in the UK government. Palgrave Commun 2(1):1–9

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

Court J, Young J (2003) Bridging research and policy in international development: an analytical and practical framework. Overseas Development Institute, London

Dewaele A, Vandael K, Meysman S, Buysse A (2021) Understanding collaborative interactions in relation to research impact in social sciences and humanities: A meta-ethnography. Res Eval, rvaa033. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa033

Engebretsen E, Sandset T, Ødemark J (2017) Expanding the knowledge translation metaphor. Health Res Policy Syst 15(19):1–4

Freeman R (2009) What is ‘translation’? Evid Policy 5(4):429–447

Gaudreau M, Saner M (2014) Researchers are from mars; policymakers are from venus: collaboration across the system. Institute for Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa, Ottawa

Gluckman P, Wilsdon J (2016) From paradox to principles: where next for scientific advice to governments? Palgrave Commun 2, https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.77

Greenhalgh T, Wieringa S (2011) Is it time to drop the ‘knowledge translation’ metaphor? A critical literature review. J R Soc Med 104(12):501–509

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Hampton S, Adams R (2018) Behavioural economics vs social practice theory: perspectives from inside the United Kingdom government. Energy Res Soc Sci 46:214–224

Hermans T (2000) Norms of translation. In: France P (ed.) The oxford guide to literature in english translation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 10–15

HM Treasury (2020) The Green Book: Central Government guidance for evaluation. HM Treasury, London

Hsieh H-F, Shannon SE (2005) Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qual Health Res 15(9):1277–1288

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Ingold J, Monaghan M (2016) Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers’ use of evidence. Policy Polit 44(2):171–190

Kattirtzi M (2016) Providing a ‘challenge function’: Government social researchers in the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (2010–2015). Palgrave Commun 2, https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.64

Kislov R, Hodgson D, Boaden R (2016) Professionals as knowledge brokers: the limits of authority in healthcare collaboration. Public Admin 94(2):472–489

Kislov R, Wilson P, Boaden R (2017) The ‘dark side’ of knowledge brokering. J Health Serv Res Policy 22(2):107–112

Kress G (2010) Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge, London

Law J (1997) Traduction/trahison: Notes on ANT. Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster

Lefevere A (1992) Translation, rewriting, and the manipulation of literary fame. Routledge, London

Lendvai N, Stubbs P (2007) Policies as translation: situating transnational social policies. In: Hodgson SM, Irving Z (eds) Policy reconsidered: Meanings, politics and practices. Policy Press, Bristol, p 173–189

Lindblom CE, Cohen DK (1979) Usable knowledge: Social science and social problem solving. Yale University Press, Cambridge

Marmot MG (2004) Evidence based policy or policy based evidence? Willingness to take action influences the view of the evidence—look at alcohol. BMJ 328:906

Matthews P, Rutherfoord R, Connelly S, Richardson L, Durose C, Vanderhoven D (2018) Everyday stories of impact: interpreting knowledge exchange in the contemporary university. Evid Policy 14(4):665–682

Maxwell JA (2012) Qualitative research design. SAGE, Thousand Oaks

Mitton C, Adair CE, McKenzie E, Patten SB, Perry BW (2007) Knowledge transfer and exchange: review and synthesis of the literature. Milbank Q 85(4):729–768

Mulgan G (2013) Experts and experimental government. In: Doubleday R, Wilsdon J (eds) Future directions for scientific advice in Whitehall. Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy, Cambridge, pp. 32–38

Munday J (2012) Introducing translation studies: theories and applications, 3rd edn. Routledge, London

MATH   Google Scholar  

Newmark P (1981) Approaches to translation. Pergamon Press, Oxford

Newmark P (1991) The curse of dogma in translation studies. Lebende Sprachen 36(3):105–108

Nida EA (1964) Toward a science of translating. Brill Archive, Leiden

Nord C (2018) Translating as a purposeful activity: Functionalist approaches explained, 2nd edn. Routledge, London

Nutley SM, Walter I, Davies H (2007) Using evidence: How research can inform public services. Policy Press, Bristol

Oliver K, Boaz A (2019) Transforming evidence for policy and practice: creating space for new conversations. Palgrave Commun 5:60. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0266-1

Oliver K, Cairney P (2019) The dos and don’ts of influencing policy: a systematic review of advice to academics. Palgrave Commun 5:21. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0232-y

Oliver K, Innvar S, Lorenc T, Woodman J, Thomas J (2014) A systematic review of barriers to and facilitators of the use of evidence by policymakers. BMC Health Serv Res 14(2):1–12

Pain R (2006) Social geography: seven deadly myths in policy research. Prog Human Geogr 30(2):250–259

Pain R, Askins K et al. (2015) Mapping alternative impact: alternative approaches to impact from co-produced research. N8/ESRC Research Programme and Durham University, Manchester and Durham

Penuel WR, Allen A-R, Coburn CE, Farrell C (2015) Conceptualizing research–practice partnerships as joint work at boundaries. J Educ Stud Placed Risk (JESPAR) 20(1-2):182–197

Phoenix J, Atkinson L, Baker H (2019) Creating and communicating social research for policymakers in government. Palgrave Commun 5:98. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0310-1

Pielke RA (2007) The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Reiss K, Vermeer HJ (2013) English edition: Towards a general theory of translational action. Routledge, London, (trans: Nord C) Original: Reiss K, Vermeer HJ (1984) Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie. Niemayer, Tübingen

Rhodes T, Lancaster K (2019) Evidence-making interventions in health: a conceptual framing. Soc Sci Med 238:112488

Rushmer R, Ward V, Nguyen T, Kuchenmüller T (2019) Knowledge translation: key concepts, terms and activities. In: Verschuuren M, van Oers H (eds) Population health monitoring. Springer, Cham, p 127–150

Sakai N (2006) Translation. Theory, culture and society 23(2-3):71–78

Schäffner C (1997) From ‘good’ to ‘functionally appropriate’: Assessing translation quality. Curr Issue Lang Soc 4(1):1–5

Schäffner C (2018) Translation and institutions. The Routledge handbook of translation and politics. Routledge, London, p 204–220

Siggelkow N (2007) Persuasion with case studies. Academy of Management Journal 50(1):20–24

Smith KE, Joyce KE (2012) Capturing complex realities: understanding efforts to achieve evidence-based policy and practice in public health. Evid Policy 8(1):57–78

Steiner G (1998) After babel: aspects of language and translation, 3rd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Toury G (1995) Descriptive translation studies-and beyond. John Benjamins Publishing, Philadelphia

Vindrola-Padros C, Pape T, Utley M, Fulop NJ (2017) The role of embedded research in quality improvement: a narrative review. BMJ Qual Safety 26(1):70–80

Ward VL, House AO, Hamer S (2009) Knowledge brokering: exploring the process of transferring knowledge into action. BMC Health Serv Res 9(1):1–6

Ward V, Tooman T, Reid B, Davies H, Marshall M (2021) Embedding researchers into organisations: a study of the features of embedded research initiatives. Evid Policy https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16165177580453

Wargent M, Parker G (2018) Re-imagining neighbourhood governance: the future of neighbourhood planning in England. Town Plann Rev 89(4):379–402

Weiss CH (1975) Evaluation research in the political context. Handbook of evaluation research. SAGE, London, p 13–25. Vol 1

Weiss CH (1979) The many meanings of research utilization. Public Admin Rev 39(5):426–431

Wingens M (1990) Toward a general utilization theory: a systems theory reformulation of the two-communities metaphor. Sci Commun 12(1):27–42

Woolf SH (2008) The meaning of translational research and why it matters. JAMA 299(2):211–213

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the civil servants involved in this study for their time and commitment, and their willingness to go “on the record” about their practices. Jane Woodin of the University of Sheffield’s School of Languages and Cultures provided the all-important introduction to Translation Studies. We also acknowledge the support from the UK Research Councils who funded the Translation across Borders project through Connected Communities grant AH/L013223/1.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Steve Connelly

Independent Researcher, Sheffield, UK

Dave Vanderhoven

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, London, UK

Robert Rutherfoord

University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Liz Richardson

University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

Peter Matthews

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steve Connelly .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Connelly, S., Vanderhoven, D., Rutherfoord, R. et al. Translating research for policy: the importance of equivalence, function, and loyalty. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 191 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00873-z

Download citation

Received : 29 June 2020

Accepted : 19 July 2021

Published : 03 August 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00873-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Bursting the bubble: why sustainability initiatives often lack adequate intention to action translation.

• Lubna Rashid

Small Business Economics (2022)

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Application of Action Research in Translation Teaching

• Conference paper
• Cite this conference paper

• Ying Wang 3  

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing ((AINSC,volume 108))

1617 Accesses

1 Citations

Action research is a kind of systematical reflective activity and a recycle process as well, including planning, acting, observing and reflecting. Aiming at improving students’ poor translation ability, the author has conducted a series of empirical translation teaching experiments based on the application of action research theory. Through the description and analysis of the process of this action research, this thesis reflects on the findings and insufficiency of this action research and works out the translation teaching strategies in the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

Wang, Q.: English Teachers’ Action Research. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Beijing (2002)

Google Scholar  

McNiff, J.: Action Research: Principles and Practice, pp. 6–7. Macmillan Education (1988)

Hu, M.: Developing Translation Ability and College English Teaching. Chinese Translation 6, 52–52 (2002)

Sui, H.: Action Research in English Teaching. Liaoning Normal University Journal (Social Science Edition) 5, 53–55 (2003)

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Foreign Languages, Harbin University of Commerce, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, 150028

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Anqing Teachers College, 128#, Linghu S Road, Anqing, Anhui Province, China

Yuanzhi Wang

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Wang, Y. (2011). Application of Action Research in Translation Teaching. In: Wang, Y. (eds) Education and Educational Technology. Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, vol 108. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24775-0_112

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24775-0_112

Publisher Name : Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

Print ISBN : 978-3-642-24774-3

Online ISBN : 978-3-642-24775-0

eBook Packages : Engineering Engineering (R0)

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Action research

Related Papers

SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks

Davydd J Greenwood

Stephen Kemmis

Peg Lonnquist

Teacher research has emerged in the last decade as a potential source for improving education. Teachers, who work with students daily, have a unique perspective on educational problems. Practitioner, or action, research is defined as trying out ideas in practice to increase knowledge about curriculum, teaching, and learning. Unlike traditional research that has uniform, external guidelines, action research is frequently localized and has limited applicability. The results of action research usually are not published or shared widely. Reviewing literature on action research is complicated by its broad definition and by the variability of research. In the future, action research may become a viable tool for educational research, help transform teachers into political actors, and be quantitatively and qualitatively measured over time. This review of action-research literature uses three criteria to determine if documents are included: the term "action research" must be used, ...

Studies in Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Languages and Culture, Kyushu University, no. 28

Dixie Massey

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)

IJRASET Publication

Research identifies Teacher Quality as the most important school related factor influencing student achievement. As rightly stated in NEP,2020 that the role of teacher is to shape the minds of younger generation. Teacher must be passionate, motivated, well qualified and well trained in content, pedagogy and practice. This paper presents the glimpse of the process and documentation of Action Researches by Pre-service trainees and practicing teachers of a district as to how it has enabled them to improve their practices and helped them grow professionally. An innovative project on' Action Research' by Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers have brought radical changes in School related Practices by developing a scientific attitude of solving the problems and becoming a researcher on their own .A Handbook on Innovative Practices Based on Action Research Projects by ETE and D.El.Ed students during their School Experience Programme has been published by us. It is an ongoing project and it emphasises on developing scientific temper among teacher-trainees and develop an inquiring mind. Action Research Proposals were developed by teachers and these were executed and published for wide sharing. Action Research practices are the worldwide global practices that are undertaken as quality initiatives. It is practiced globally in all areas including education for seeking solutions scientifically for improving the existing practices. Action Research should form an integral component of teacher education as envisioned in NEP to attract, build and sustain the best, passionate minds in teaching profession. This Paper gives a detailed account of how these action researches proposals were developed and executed by trainees and practicing teachers in the field and abstracts were written and documented based on the completed action research reports. The copies were disseminated in project schools for continuing such educational endeavours. It set an exemplar for teacher educators, teachers and students for evidence-based practices and motivated all to continue to explore, experiment and reflect on their school /classroom practices. I.

Journal of Philosophy of Education

Ruth Heilbronn , Lorraine Foreman-Peck

This paper presents a view of action research (AR) as a valuable way in which teachers can pose fertile questions and engage in inquiry with transformative possibilities. This counters claims of its being at best a sterile method of teacher research and at worst a perilous trap for teachers. Chris Higgins has argued that AR has lost its original intention of empowering teachers and sealing the theory practice divide. He claims that it has degenerated into a method devoid of thought. In its social science versions, it is harmful to the teacher–student relationship and teachers have been mislead into an impoverished idea of professional development. The impossible challenge for action research is to recover its original intention; impossible because the landscape of educational policy militates against it. The authors challenge Higgin’s deep pessimism, his versions of AR and his negative account of the intellectual capacity of teachers. We argue that AR does empower teachers, integrates theory and practice and is alive and well, even though conditions in schools are not optimum. This argument is exemplified with numerous illustrations of actual AR projects, which evidence teachers’ participatory and collaborative work, in which they engage in positive change. There is scope for teachers wishing to develop ‘customised’ AR projects of their own in current conditions which have transformative potential in changing the practice of the individual teacher. This in turn supports building and participating in a ‘community of practice’, which strengthens the communal endeavour to contribute to good teaching and good education.

Branko Bognar

There is a growing literature about conducting an action research that could help achieving significant changes in teachers' practices. Although an action research can contribute obtaining improvements, this process is not straight-line and without obstacles. The text elaborates three problems the author faced with while dealing with the action research in his practice. Firstly, he realized that teachers can hardly become the agents of change without the assistance of others. Actually, teachers who got used to working in a traditional school find it hard to make the first step towards professional emancipation without an experienced leader--be it school pedagogues, advisors, experienced teachers, or even university professors. However, their role is not only to teach teachers how to make changes, but also to be actively involved, as practitioners, in the process of change and in their own learning. Second presumption was that the learning communities can encourage teachers to change. However, the author realized that despite the positive influence the learning community can provide imaginary safe haven to those who are not ready for assuming an active role in the process, hoping that there will always be someone else who will take the initiative. In addition, the sequential process of change, which started with the professional development in learning communities, then continued by introducing changes through action research, and finished with the presentations of good-practice examples and publishing the research results, appeared to be insufficient for accomplishing significant changes. Instead, it is much better to start immediately with making changes through action research, and during the process to intensify the education and critical friendship. In this case, learning communities have much more impact. Finally, author inferred that it is not easy for the teachers to assume the role of a critical friend or an action researcher. The process of casting off the old roles and assuming the new ones takes time and patience and has to overcome the resistance within others, but primarily within ourselves. However, it would be wrong to expect that teachers develop all the necessary competences first and then begin with their research. On the contrary, the action research is an excellent opportunity for learning in different ways. In spite of the problems experienced, the new roles for teachers as critical friends and action researchers could be fruitful in making significant changes. This requires the active involvement of different social factors. Although assuming those new professional roles is not easily achievable, it is worth trying.

Educational Action Research

Eleni Katsarou

Hossein Azadi , K. Zarafshani

RELATED PAPERS

The Journal of Urology

Bodo Knudsen

Juracy Lins

Todorka Glushkova

Glenda Morandi

Shirley Monteiro

World Journal of Clinical Cases

Dimitra Lambropoulou

Mohammed KOUADRI

V. Vrangalas

• Mathematics

Cristina Ticala

Journal of the American Ceramic Society

Rishu Kumar

Artery Research

Lisandra de Castro Brás

Nucleic Acids Research

David Zarling

Journal of Childhood, Education & Society

Debbie Sonu

Educação (UFSM)

CONSUELO SCHLICHTA

Revista Brasileira de Educação Médica

Francisco Job

Sapienza: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Ronald Ramos

Optical and Quantum Electronics

Kavintheran Thambiratnam

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences

Urania Jurnal Ilmiah Daur Bahan Bakar Nuklir

Tri Yulianto

Behavioural brain research

AAPG Bulletin

Halfdan Carstens

买悉尼科技大学毕业证书成绩单 办理澳洲UTS文凭学位证书

Anesthesiology

Pascal Thomas

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Open access
• Published: 29 April 2024

What is context in knowledge translation? Results of a systematic scoping review

• Tugce Schmitt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6893-6428 1 ,
• Katarzyna Czabanowska 1 &
• Peter Schröder-Bäck 1  

Health Research Policy and Systems volume  22 , Article number:  52 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Knowledge Translation (KT) aims to convey novel ideas to relevant stakeholders, motivating their response or action to improve people’s health. Initially, the KT literature focused on evidence-based medicine, applying findings from laboratory and clinical research to disease diagnosis and treatment. Since the early 2000s, the scope of KT has expanded to include decision-making with health policy implications.

This systematic scoping review aims to assess the evolving knowledge-to-policy concepts, that is, macro-level KT theories, models and frameworks (KT TMFs). While significant attention has been devoted to transferring knowledge to healthcare settings (i.e. implementing health policies, programmes or measures at the meso-level), the definition of 'context' in the realm of health policymaking at the macro-level remains underexplored in the KT literature. This study aims to close the gap.

A total of 32 macro-level KT TMFs were identified, with only a limited subset of them offering detailed insights into contextual factors that matter in health policymaking. Notably, the majority of these studies prompt policy changes in low- and middle-income countries and received support from international organisations, the European Union, development agencies or philanthropic entities.

Peer Review reports

Few concepts are used by health researchers as vaguely and yet as widely as Knowledge Translation (KT), a catch-all term that accommodates a broad spectrum of ambitions. Arguably, to truly understand the role of context in KT, we first need to clarify what KT means. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines KT as ‘the synthesis, exchange and application of knowledge by relevant stakeholders to accelerate the benefits of global and local innovation in strengthening health systems and improving people’s health’ [ 1 ]. Here, particular attention should be paid to ‘innovation’, given that without unpacking this term, the meaning of KT would still remain ambiguous. Rogers’ seminal work ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ [ 2 ] defines innovation as an idea, practice or object that is perceived as novel by individuals or groups adopting it. In this context, he argues that the objective novelty of an idea in terms of the amount of time passed after its discovery holds little significance [ 2 ]. Rather, it is the subjective perception of newness by the individual that shapes their response [ 2 ]. In other words, if an idea seems novel to individuals, and thereby relevant stakeholders according to the aforementioned WHO definition, it qualifies as an innovation. From this perspective, it can be stated that a fundamental activity of KT is to communicate ideas that could be perceived as original to the targeted stakeholders, with the aim of motivating their response to improve health outcomes. This leaves us with the question of who exactly these stakeholders might be and what kind of actions would be required from them.

The scope of stakeholders in KT has evolved over time, along with their prompted responses. Initially, during the early phases of KT, the focus primarily revolved around healthcare providers and their clinical decisions, emphasising evidence-based medicine. Nearly 50 years ago, the first scientific article on KT was published, introducing Tier 1 KT, which concentrated on applying laboratory discoveries to disease diagnosis or treatment, also known as bench-to-bedside KT [ 3 ]. The primary motivation behind this initial conceptualisation of KT was to engage healthcare providers as the end-users of specific forms of knowledge, primarily related to randomised controlled trials of pharmaceuticals and evidence-based medicine [ 4 ]. In the early 2000s, the second phase of KT (Tier 2) emerged under the term ‘campus-to-clinic KT’ [ 3 ]. This facet, also known as translational research, was concerned with using evidence from health services research in healthcare provision, both in practice and policy [ 4 ]. Consequently, by including decision-makers as relevant end-users, KT scholars expanded the realm of research-to-action from the clinical environment to policy-relevant decision-making [ 5 ]. Following this trajectory, additional KT schemes (Tier 3–Tier 5) have been introduced into academic discourse, encompassing the dissemination, implementation and broader integration of knowledge into public policies [ 6 , 7 ]. Notably, the latest scheme (Tier 5) is becoming increasingly popular and represents the broadest approach, which describes the translation of knowledge to global communities and aims to involve fundamental, universal change in attitudes, policies and social systems [ 7 ].

In other words, a noticeable shift in KT has occurred with time towards macro-level interventions, named initially as evidence- based policymaking and later corrected to evidence- informed policymaking. In parallel with these significant developments, various alternative terms to KT have emerged, including ‘implementation science’, ‘knowledge transfer’, and ‘dissemination and research use’, often with considerable overlap [ 8 ]. Arguably, among the plethora of alternative terms proposed, implementation science stands out prominently. While initially centred on evidence-based medicine at the meso-level (e.g. implementing medical guidelines), it has since broadened its focus to ‘encompass all aspects of research relevant to the scientific study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine settings in clinical, community and policy contexts’ [ 9 ], closely mirroring the definition to KT. Thus, KT, along with activities under different names that share the same objective, has evolved into an umbrella term over the years, encompassing a wide range of strategies aimed at enhancing the impact of research not only on clinical practice but also on public policies [ 10 ]. Following the adoption of such a comprehensive definition of KT, some researchers have asserted that using evidence in public policies is not merely commendable but essential [ 11 ].

In alignment with the evolution of KT from (bio-)medical sciences to public policies, an increasing number of scholars have offered explanations on how health policies should be developed [ 12 ], indicating a growing focus on exploring the mechanisms of health policymaking in the KT literature. However, unlike in the earlier phases of KT, which aimed to transfer knowledge from the laboratory to healthcare provision, decisions made for public policies may be less technical and more complex than those in clinical settings [ 3 , 13 , 14 ]. Indeed, social scientists point out that scholarly works on evidence use in health policies exhibit theoretical shortcomings as they lack engagement with political science and public administration theories and concepts [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]; only a few of these works employ policy theories and political concepts to guide data collection and make sense of their findings [ 19 ]. Similarly, contemporary literature that conceptualises KT as an umbrella term for both clinical and public policy decision-making, with calls for a generic ‘research-to-action’ [ 20 ], may fail to recognise the different types of actions required to change clinical practices and influence health policies. In many respects, such calls can even lead to a misconception that evidence-informed policymaking is simply a scaled-up version of evidence-based medicine [ 21 ].

In this study, we systematically review knowledge translation theories, models and frameworks (also known as KT TMFs) that were developed for health policies. Essentially, KT TMFs can be depicted as bridges that connect findings across diverse studies, as they establish a common language and standardise the measurement and assessment of desired policy changes [ 22 ]. This makes them essential for generalising implementation efforts and research findings [ 23 ]. While distinctions between a theory, a model or a framework are not always crystal-clear [ 24 ], the following definitions shed light on how they are interpreted in the context of KT. To start with, theory can be described as a set of analytical principles or statements crafted to structure our observations, enhance our understanding and explain the world [ 24 ]. Within implementation science, theories are encapsulated as either generalised models or frameworks. In other words, they are integrated into broader concepts, allowing researchers to form assumptions that help clarify phenomena and create hypotheses for testing [ 25 ].

Whereas theories in the KT literature are explanatory as well as descriptive, KT models are only descriptive with a more narrowly defined scope of explanation [ 24 ]; hence they have a more specific focus than theories [ 25 ]. KT models are created to facilitate the formulation of specific assumptions regarding a set of parameters or variables, which can subsequently be tested against outcomes using predetermined methods [ 25 ]. By offering simplified representations of complex situations, KT models can describe programme elements expected to produce desired results, or theoretical constructs believed to influence or moderate observed outcomes. In this way, they encompass theories related to change or explanation [ 22 ].

Lastly, frameworks in the KT language define a set of variables and the relations among them in a broad sense [ 25 ]. Frameworks, without the aim of providing explanations, solely describe empirical phenomena, representing a structure, overview, outline, system or plan consisting of various descriptive categories and the relations between them that are presumed to account for a phenomenon [ 24 ]. They portray loosely-structured constellations of theoretical constructs, without necessarily specifying their relationships; they can also offer practical methods for achieving implementation objectives [ 22 ]. Some scholars suggest sub-classifications and categorise a framework as ‘actionable’ if it has the potential to facilitate macro-level policy changes [ 11 ].

Context, which encompasses the entire environment in which policy decisions are made, is not peripheral but central to policymaking, playing a crucial role in its conceptualisation [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. In the KT literature, the term ‘context’ is frequently employed, albeit often with a lack of precision [ 35 ]. It tends to serve as a broad term including various elements within a situation that are relevant to KT in some way but have not been explicitly identified [36]. However, there is a growing interest in delving deeper into what context refers to, as evidenced by increasing research attention [ 31 , 32 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. While the definition of context in the transfer of knowledge to healthcare settings (i.e. implementing health policies, programmes or measures at the meso-level) has been systematically studied [ 36 , 37 , 42 , 43 ], the question of how KT scholars detail context in health policymaking remains unanswered. With our systematic scoping review, we aim to close this gap.

While KT TMFs, emerged from evidence-based medicine, have historically depicted the use of evidence from laboratories or healthcare organisations as the gold standard, we aimed to assess in this study whether and to what extent the evolving face of KT, addressing health policies, succeeded in foregrounding ‘context’. Our objective was thus not to evaluate the quality of these KT TMFs but rather to explore how scholars have incorporated contextual influences into their reasoning. We conducted a systematic scoping review to explore KT TMFs that are relevant to agenda-setting, policy formulation or policy adoption, in line with the aim of this study. Therefore, publications related to policy implementation in healthcare organisations or at the provincial level, as well as those addressing policy evaluation, did not meet our inclusion criteria. Consequently, given our focus on macro-level interventions, we excluded all articles that concentrate on translating clinical research into practice (meso-level interventions) and health knowledge to patients or citizens (micro-level interventions).

Prior systematic scoping reviews in the area of KT TMFs serve as a valuable foundation upon which to build further studies [ 44 , 45 ]. Using established methodologies may ensure a validated approach, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of KT TMFs in the context of existing scholarly work. Our review methodology employed a similar approach to that followed by Strifler et al. in 2018, who conducted a systematic scoping review of KT TMFs in the field of cancer prevention and management, as well as other chronic diseases [ 44 ]. Their search strategy was preferred over others for two primary reasons. First, Strifler et al. investigated KT TMFs altogether, systematically and comprehensively. Second, unlike many other review studies on KT, they focused on macro-level KT and included all relevant keywords useful for the purpose of our study in their Ovid/MEDLINE search query [ 44 ]. For our scoping review, we adapted their search query with the assistance of a specialist librarian. This process involved eliminating terms associated with cancer and chronic diseases, removing time limitation on the published papers, and including an additional language other than English due to authors’ proficiency in German. We included articles published in peer-reviewed journals until November 2022, excluding opinion papers, conference abstracts and study protocols, without any restriction on publication date or place. Our search query is presented in Table  1 .

Following a screening methodology similar to that employed by Votruba et al. [ 11 ], the first author conducted an initial screening of the titles and abstracts of 2918 unique citations. Full texts were selected and scrutinised if they appeared relevant to the topics of agenda-setting, policy formulation or policy adoption. Among these papers, the first author also identified those that conceptualised a KT TMF. Simultaneously, the last author independently screened 2918 titles and abstracts, randomly selecting 20% of them to identify studies related to macro-level KT. Regarding papers that conceptualised a KT TMF, all those initially selected by the first author underwent a thorough examination by the last author as well. In the papers reviewed by these two authors of this study, KT TMFs were typically presented as either Tables or Figures. In cases where these visual representations did not contain sufficient information about ‘context’, the main body of the study was carefully scrutinised by both reviewers to ensure no relevant information was missed. Any unclear cases were discussed and resolved to achieve 100% inter-rater agreement between the first and second reviewers. This strategy resulted in the inclusion of 32 relevant studies. The flow chart outlining our review process is provided in Fig.  1 .

Flow chart of the review process

According to the results of our systematic scoping review (Table  2 ), the first KT TMF developed for health policies dates back to 2003, confirming the emergence of a trend that expanded the meaning of the term Knowledge Translation to include policymakers as end-users of evidence during approximately the same period. In their study, Jacobson et al. [ 46 ] present a framework derived from a literature review to enhance understanding of user groups by organising existing knowledge, identifying gaps and emphasising the importance of learning about new contexts. However, despite acknowledging the significance of the user group context, the paper lacks a thorough explanation of the authors’ understanding of this term. The second study in our scoping review provides some details. Recognising a shift from evidence-based medicine to evidence-based health policymaking in the KT literature, the article by Dobrow et al. from 2004 [ 30 ] emphasises the importance of considering contextual factors. They present a conceptual framework for evidence-based decision-making, highlighting the influence of context in KT. Illustrated through examples from colorectal cancer screening policy development, their conceptual framework emphasises the significance of context in the introduction, interpretation and application of evidence. Third, Lehoux et al. [ 47 ] examine the field of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and its role in informing decision and policymaking in Canada. By developing a conceptual framework for HTA dissemination and use, they touch on the institutional environment and briefly describe contextual factors.

Notably, the first three publications in our scoping review are authored by scholars affiliated with Canada, which is less of a coincidence, given the role of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the federal funding agency for health research: The CIHR Act (Bill C-13) mandates CIHR to ensure that the translation of health knowledge permeates every aspect of its work [ 48 ]. Moreover, it was CIHR that coined the term Knowledge Translation, defining KT as ‘a dynamic and iterative process that includes the synthesis, dissemination, exchange and ethically sound application of knowledge to improve health, provide more effective health services and products, and strengthen the health care system’ [ 49 ] . This comprehensive definition has since been adapted by international organisations (IOs), including WHO. The first document published by WHO that utilised KT to influence health policies dates back to 2005, entitled ‘Bridging the “know-do” gap: Meeting on knowledge translation in global health’, an initiative that was supported by the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research, the Canadian International Development Agency, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation and the WHO Special Programme on Research and Training in Tropical Diseases [ 1 ]. Following this official recognition by WHO, studies in our scoping review after 2005 indicate a noticeable expansion of KT, encompassing a wider geographical area than Canada.

The article of Ashford et al. from 2006 [ 50 ] discusses the challenge of policy decisions in Kenya in the health field being disconnected from scientific evidence and presents a model for translating knowledge into policy actions through agenda-setting, coalition building and policy learning. However, the framework lacks explicit incorporation of contextual factors influencing health policies. Bauman et al. [ 51 ] propose a six-step framework for successful dissemination of physical activity evidence, illustrated through four case studies from three countries (Canada, USA and Brazil) and a global perspective. They interpret contextual factors as barriers and facilitators to physical activity and public health innovations. Focusing on the USA, Gold [ 52 ] explains factors, processes and actors that shape pathways between research and its use in a summary diagram, including a reference to ‘other influences in process’ for context. Green et al. [ 4 ] examine the gap between health research and its application in public health without focusing on a specific geographical area. Their study comprehensively reviews various concepts of diffusion, dissemination and implementation in public health, proposing ways to blend diffusion theory with other theories. Their ‘utilization-focused surveillance framework’ interprets context as social determinants as structures, economics, politics and culture.

Further, the article by Dhonukshe-Rutten et al. from 2010 [ 53 ] presents a general framework that outlines the process of translating nutritional requirements into policy applications from a European perspective. The framework incorporates scientific evidence, stakeholder interests and the socio-political context. The description of this socio-political context is rather brief, encompassing political and social priorities, legal context, ethical issues and economic implications. Ir et al. [ 54 ] analyse the use of knowledge in shaping policy on health equity funds in Cambodia, with the objective of understanding how KT contributes to the development of health policies that promote equity. Yet no information on context is available in the framework that they suggest. A notable exception among these early KT TMFs until 2010 is the conceptual framework for analysing integration of targeted health interventions into health systems by Atun et al. [ 55 ], in which the authors provide details about the factors that have an influence on the process of bringing evidence to health policies. Focusing on the adoption, diffusion and assimilation of health interventions, their conceptual framework provides a systematic approach for evaluating and informing policies in this field. Compared to the previous studies discussed above, their definition of context for this framework is comprehensive (Table  2 ). Overall, most of the studies containing macro-level KT TMFs published until 2010 either do not fully acknowledge contextual factors or provide generic terms such as cultural, political and economic for brief description (9 out of 10; 90%).

Studies published after 2010 demonstrate a notable geographical shift, with a greater emphasis on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). By taking the adoption of the directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) strategy for tuberculosis control in Mexico as a case study, Bissell et al. [ 56 ] examine policy transfer to Mexico and its relevance to operational research efforts and suggest a model for analysis of health policy transfer. The model interprets context as health system, including political, economic, social, cultural and technological features. Focusing on HIV/AIDS in India, Tran et al. [ 57 ] explore KT by considering various forms of evidence beyond scientific evidence, such as best practices derived from programme experience and disseminated through personal communication. Their proposed framework aims to offer an analytical tool for understanding how evidence-based influence is exerted. In their framework, no information is available on context. Next, Bertone et al. [ 58 ] report on the effectiveness of Communities of Practice (CoPs) in African countries and present a conceptual framework for analysing and assessing transnational CoPs in health policy. The framework organises the key elements of CoPs, linking available resources, knowledge management activities, policy and practice changes, and improvements in health outcomes. Context is only briefly included in this framework.

Some other studies include both European and global perspectives. The publication from Timotijevic et al. from 2013 [ 59 ] introduces an epistemological framework that examines the considerations influencing the policy-making process, with a specific focus on micronutrient requirements in Europe. They present case studies from several European countries, highlighting the relevance of the framework in understanding the policy context related to micronutrients. Context is interpreted in this framework as global trends, data, media, broader consumer beliefs, ethical considerations, and wider social, legal, political, and economic environment. Next, funded by the European Union, the study by Onwujekwe et al. [ 60 ] examines the role of different types of evidence in health policy development in Nigeria. Although they cover the factors related to policy actors in their framework for assessing the role of evidence in policy development, they provide no information on context. Moreover, Redman et al. [ 61 ] present the SPIRIT Action Framework, which aims to enhance the use of research in policymaking. Context is interpreted in this framework as policy influences, i.e. public opinion, media, economic climate, legislative/policy infrastructure, political ideology and priorities, stakeholder interests, expert advice, and resources. From a global perspective, Spicer et al. [ 62 ] explore the contextual factors that influenced the scale-up of donor-funded maternal and newborn health innovations in Ethiopia, India and Nigeria, highlighting the importance of context in assessing and adapting innovations. Their suggested contextual factors influencing government decisions to accept, adopt and finance innovations at scale are relatively comprehensive (Table  2 ).

In terms of publication frequency, the pinnacle of reviewed KT studies was in 2017. Among six studies published in 2017, four lack details about context in their KT conceptualisations and one study touches on context very briefly. Bragge et al. [ 5 ] brought for their study an international terminology working group together to develop a simplified framework of interventions to integrate evidence into health practices, systems, and policies, named as the Aims, Ingredients, Mechanism, Delivery framework, albeit without providing details on contextual factors. Second, Mulvale et al. [ 63 ] present a conceptual framework that explores the impact of policy dialogues on policy development, illustrating how these dialogues can influence different stages of the policy cycle. Similar to the previous one, this study too, lacks information on context. In a systematic review, Sarkies et al. [ 64 ] evaluate the effectiveness of research implementation strategies in promoting evidence-informed policy decisions in healthcare. The study explores the factors associated with effective strategies and their inter-relationship, yet without further information on context. Fourth, Houngbo et al. [ 65 ] focus on the development of a strategy to implement a good governance model for health technology management in the public health sector, drawing from their experience in Benin. They outline a six-phase model that includes preparatory analysis, stakeholder identification and problem analysis, shared analysis and visioning, development of policy instruments for pilot testing, policy development and validation, and policy implementation and evaluation. They provide no information about context in their model. Fifth, Mwendera et al. [ 66 ] present a framework for improving the use of malaria research in policy development in Malawi, which was developed based on case studies exploring the policymaking process, the use of local malaria research, and assessing facilitators and barriers to research utilisation. Contextual setting is considered as Ministry of Health (MoH) with political set up, leadership system within the MoH, government policies and cultural set up. In contrast to these five studies, Ellen et al. [ 67 ] present a relatively comprehensive framework to support evidence-informed policymaking in ageing and health. The framework includes thought-provoking questions to discover contextual factors (Table  2 ).

Continuing the trend, studies published after 2017 focus increasingly on LMICs. In their embedded case study, Ongolo-Zogo et al. [ 68 ] examine the influence of two Knowledge Translation Platforms (KTPs) on policy decisions to achieve the health millennium development goals in Cameroon and Uganda. It explores how these KTPs influenced policy through interactions within policy issue networks, engagement with interest groups, and the promotion of evidence-supported ideas, ultimately shaping the overall policy climate for evidence-informed health system policymaking. Contextual factors are thereby interpreted as institutions (structures, legacies, policy networks), interests, ideas (values, research evidence) and external factors (reports, commitments). Focusing on the ‘Global South’, Plamondon et al. [ 69 ] suggest blending integrated knowledge translation with global health governance as an approach for strengthening leadership for health equity action. In terms of contextual factors, they include some information such as adapting knowledge to local context, consideration of the composition of non-traditional actors, such as civil society and private sector, in governance bodies and guidance for meaningful engagement between actors, particularly in shared governance models. Further, Vincenten et al. [ 70 ] propose a conceptual model to enhance understanding of interlinking factors that influence the evidence implementation process. Their evidence implementation model for public health systems refers to ‘context setting’, albeit without providing further detail.

Similarly, the study by Motani et al. from 2019 [ 71 ] assesses the outcomes and lessons learned from the EVIDENT partnership that focused on knowledge management for evidence-informed decision-making in nutrition and health in Africa. Although they mention ‘contextualising evidence’ in their conceptual framework, information about context is lacking. Focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, Varallyay et al. [ 72 ] introduce a conceptual framework for evaluating embedded implementation research in various contexts. The framework outlines key stages of evidence-informed decision-making and provides guidance on assessing embeddedness and critical contextual factors. Compared to others, their conceptual framework provides a relatively comprehensive elaboration on contextual factors. In addition, among all the studies reviewed, Leonard et al. [ 73 ] present an exceptionally comprehensive analysis, where they identify the facilitators and barriers to the sustainable implementation of evidence-based health innovations in LMICs. Through a systematic literature review, they scrutinise 79 studies and categorise the identified barriers and facilitators into seven groups: context, innovation, relations and networks, institutions, knowledge, actors, and resources. The first one, context, contains rich information that could be seen in Table  2 .

Continuing from LMICs, Votruba et al. [ 74 ] present in their study the EVITA (EVIdence To Agenda setting) conceptual framework for mental health research-policy interrelationships in LMICs with some information about context, detailed as external influences and political context. In a follow-up study, they offer an updated framework for understanding evidence-based mental health policy agenda-setting [ 75 ]. In their revised framework, context is interpreted as external context and policy sphere, encompassing policy agenda, window of opportunity, political will and key individuals. Lastly, to develop a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework for evidence-to-policy networks, Kuchenmüller et al. [ 76 ] present the EVIPNet Europe Theory of Change and interpret contextual factors for evidence-informed policymaking as political, economic, logistic and administrative. Overall, it can be concluded that studies presenting macro-level KT TMFs from 2011 until 2022 focus mainly on LMICs (15 out of 22; close to 70%) and the majority of them were funded by international (development) organisations, the European Commission and global health donor agencies. An overwhelming number of studies among them (19 out of 22; close to 90%) provide either no information on contextual details or these were included only partly with some generic terms in KT TMFs.

Our systematic scoping review suggests that the approach of KT, which has evolved from evidence-based medicine to evidence-informed policymaking, tends to remain closely tied to its clinical origins when developing TMFs. In other words, macro-level KT TMFs place greater emphasis on the (public) health issue at hand rather than considering the broader decision-making context, a viewpoint shared by other scholars as well [ 30 ]. One reason could be that in the early stages of KT TMFs, the emphasis primarily focused on implementing evidence-based practices within clinical settings. At that time, the spotlight was mostly on content, including aspects like clinical studies, checklists and guidelines serving as the evidence base. In those meso-level KT TMFs, a detailed description of context, i.e. the overall environment in which these practices should be implemented, might have been deemed less necessary, given that healthcare organisations, such as hospitals to implement medical guidelines or surgical safety checklists, show similar characteristics globally.

However, as the scope of KT TMFs continues to expand to include the influence on health policies, a deeper understanding of context-specific factors within different jurisdictions and the dynamics of the policy process is becoming increasingly crucial. This is even more important for KT scholars aiming to conceptualise large-scale changes, as described in KT Tier 5, which necessitate a thorough understanding of targeted behaviours within societies. As the complexity of interventions increases due to the growing number of stakeholders either affecting or being affected by them, the interventions are surrounded by a more intricate web of attitudes, incentives, relationships, rules of engagement and spheres of influence [ 7 ]. The persisting emphasis on content over context in the evolving field of KT may oversimplify the complex process of using evidence in policymaking and understanding the society [ 77 ]. Some scholars argue that this common observation in public health can be attributed to the dominance of experts primarily from medical sciences [ 78 , 79 , 80 ]. Our study confirms the potential limitation of not incorporating insights from political science and public policy studies, which can lead to what is often termed a ‘naïve’ conceptualisation of evidence-to-policy schemes [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. It is therefore strongly encouraged that the emerging macro-level KT concepts draw on political science and public administration if KT scholars intend to effectively communicate new ideas to policymakers, with the aim of prompting their action or response. We summarised our findings into three points.

Firstly, KT scholars may want to identify and pinpoint exactly where a change should occur within the policy process. The main confusion that we observed in the KT literature arises from a lack of understanding of how public policies are made. Notably, the term ‘evidence-informed policymaking’ can refer to any stage of the policy cycle, spanning from agenda-setting to policy formulation, adoption, implementation and evaluation. Understanding these steps will allow researchers to refine their language when advocating for policy changes across various jurisdictions; for instance, the word ‘implementation’ is often inappropriately used in KT literature. As commonly known, at the macro-level, public policies take the form of legislation, law-making and regulation, thereby shaping the practices or policies to be implemented at the meso- and micro-levels [ 81 ]. In other words, the process of using specific knowledge to influence health policies, however evidence-based it might be, falls mostly under the responsibility and jurisdiction of sovereign states. For this reason, macro-level KT TMFs should reflect the importance of understanding the policy context and the complexities associated with policymaking, rather than suggesting flawed or unrealistic top-down ‘implementation’ strategies in countries by foregrounding the content, or the (public) health issue at hand.

Our second observation from this systematic scoping review points towards a selective perception among researchers when reporting on policy interventions. Research on KT does not solely exist due to the perceived gap between scientific evidence and policy but also because of the pressures the organisations or researchers face in being accountable to their funding sources, ensuring the continuity of financial support for their activities and claiming output legitimacy to change public policies [ 8 ]. This situation indirectly compels researchers working to influence health policies in the field to provide ‘evidence-based’ feedback on the success of their projects to donors [ 82 ]. In doing so, researchers may overly emphasise the content of the policy intervention in their reporting to secure further funding, while they underemphasis the contextual factors. These factors, often perceived as a given, might actually be the primary facilitators of their success. Such a lack of transparency regarding the definition of context is particularly visible in the field of global health, where LMICs often rely on external donors. It is important to note that this statement is not intended as a negative critique of their missions or an evaluation of health outcomes in countries following such missions. Rather, it seeks to explain the underlying reason why researchers, particularly those reliant on donors in LMICs, prioritise promoting the concept of KT from a technical standpoint, giving less attention to contextual factors in their reasoning.

Lastly, and connected to the previous point, it is our observation that the majority of macro-level KT TMFs fail to give adequate consideration to both power dynamics in countries (internal vs. external influences) and the actual role that government plays in public policies. Notably, although good policymaking entails an honest effort to use the best available evidence, the belief that this will completely negate the role of power and politics in decision-making is a technocratic illusion [ 83 ]. Among the studies reviewed, the framework put forth by Leonard et al. [ 73 ] offers the most comprehensive understanding of context and includes a broad range of factors (such as political, social, and economic) discovered also in other reviewed studies. Moreover, the framework, developed through an extensive systematic review, offers a more in-depth exploration of these contextual factors than merely listing them as a set of keywords. Indeed, within the domains of political science and public policy, such factors shaping health policies have received considerable scholarly attention for decades. To define what context entails, Walt refers in her book ‘Health Policy: An Introduction to Process and Power’ [ 84 ] to the work of Leichter from 1979 [ 85 ], who provides a scheme for analysing public policy. This includes i) situational factors, which are transient, impermanent, or idiosyncratic; ii) structural factors, which are relatively unchanging elements of the society and polity; iii) cultural factors, which are value commitments of groups; and iv) environmental factors, which are events, structures and values that exist outside the boundaries of a political system and influence decisions within it. His detailed sub-categories for context can be found in Table  3 . This flexible public policy framework may offer KT researchers a valuable approach to understanding contextual factors and provide some guidance to define the keywords to focus on. Scholars can adapt this framework to suit a wide range of KT topics, creating more context-sensitive and comprehensive KT TMFs.

Admittedly, our study has certain limitations. Despite choosing one of the most comprehensive bibliographic databases for our systematic scoping review, which includes materials from biomedicine, allied health fields, biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science in relation to medicine and healthcare, we acknowledge that we may have missed relevant articles indexed in other databases. Hence, exclusively using Ovid/MEDLINE due to resource constraints may have narrowed the scope and diversity of scholarly literature examined in this study. Second, our review was limited to peer-reviewed publications in English and German. Future studies could extend our findings by examining the extent to which contextual factors are detailed in macro-level KT TMFs published in grey literature and in different languages. Given the abundance of KT reports, working papers or policy briefs published by IOs and development agencies, such an endeavour could enrich our findings and either support or challenge our conclusions. Nonetheless, to our knowledge, this study represents the first systematic review and critical appraisal of emerging knowledge-to-policy concepts, also known as macro-level KT TMFs. It successfully blends insights from both biomedical and public policy disciplines, and could serve as a roadmap for future research.

The translation of knowledge to policymakers involves more than technical skills commonly associated with (bio-)medical sciences, such as creating evidence-based guidelines or clinical checklists. Instead, evidence-informed policymaking reflects an ambition to engage in the political dimensions of states. Therefore, the evolving KT concepts addressing health policies should be seen as a political decision-making process, rather than a purely analytical one, as is the case with evidence-based medicine. To better understand the influence of power dynamics and governance structures in policymaking, we suggest that future macro-level KT TMFs draw on insights from political science and public administration. Collaborative, interdisciplinary research initiatives could be undertaken to bridge the gap between these fields. Technocratic KT TMFs that overlook contextual factors risk propagating misconceptions in academic circles about how health policies are made, as they become increasingly influential over time. Research, the systematic pursuit of knowledge, is neither inherently good nor bad; it can be sought after, used or misused, like any other tool in policymaking. What is needed in the KT discourse is not another generic call for ‘research-to-action’ but rather an understanding of the dividing line between research-to- clinical -action and research-to- political -action.

Availability of data and materials

Available upon reasonable request.

WHO. Bridging the ‘Know-Do’ Gap: Meeting on Knowledge Translation in Global Health : 10–12 October 2005 World Health Organization Geneva, Switzerland [Internet]. 2005. https://www.measureevaluation.org/resources/training/capacity-building-resources/high-impact-research-training-curricula/bridging-the-know-do-gap.pdf

Rogers EM. Diffusion of innovations. 3rd ed. New York: Free Press; 1983.

Google Scholar  

Greenhalgh T, Wieringa S. Is it time to drop the ‘knowledge translation’ metaphor? A critical literature review. J R Soc Med. 2011;104(12):501–9.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Green LW, Ottoson JM, García C, Hiatt RA. Diffusion theory and knowledge dissemination, utilization, and integration in public health. Annu Rev Public Health. 2009;30(1):151–74.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Bragge P, Grimshaw JM, Lokker C, Colquhoun H, Albrecht L, Baron J, et al. AIMD—a validated, simplified framework of interventions to promote and integrate evidence into health practices, systems, and policies. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2017;17(1):38.

Zarbin M. What Constitutes Translational Research? Implications for the Scope of Translational Vision Science and Technology. Transl Vis Sci Technol 2020;9(8).

Hassmiller Lich K, Frerichs L, Fishbein D, Bobashev G, Pentz MA. Translating research into prevention of high-risk behaviors in the presence of complex systems: definitions and systems frameworks. Transl Behav Med. 2016;6(1):17–31.

Tetroe JM, Graham ID, Foy R, Robinson N, Eccles MP, Wensing M, et al. Health research funding agencies’ support and promotion of knowledge translation: an international study. Milbank Q. 2008;86(1):125–55.

Eccles MP, Mittman BS. Welcome to Implementation Science. Implement Sci. 2006;1(1):1.

Article   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Rychetnik L, Bauman A, Laws R, King L, Rissel C, Nutbeam D, et al. Translating research for evidence-based public health: key concepts and future directions. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2012;66(12):1187–92.

Votruba N, Ziemann A, Grant J, Thornicroft G. A systematic review of frameworks for the interrelationships of mental health evidence and policy in low- and middle-income countries. Health Res Policy Syst. 2018;16(1):85.

Delnord M, Tille F, Abboud LA, Ivankovic D, Van Oyen H. How can we monitor the impact of national health information systems? Results from a scoping review. Eur J Public Health. 2020;30(4):648–59.

Malterud K, Bjelland AK, Elvbakken KT. Evidence-based medicine—an appropriate tool for evidence-based health policy? A case study from Norway. Health Res Policy Syst. 2016;14(1):15.

Borst RAJ, Kok MO, O’Shea AJ, Pokhrel S, Jones TH, Boaz A. Envisioning and shaping translation of knowledge into action: a comparative case-study of stakeholder engagement in the development of a European tobacco control tool. Health Policy. 2019;123(10):917–23.

Liverani M, Hawkins B, Parkhurst JO. Political and institutional influences on the use of evidence in public health policy: a systematic review. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(10): e77404.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Cairney P. The politics of evidence-based policy making, 1st ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK: Imprint: Palgrave Pivot, Palgrave Macmillan; 2016.

Parkhurst J. The Politics of Evidence: From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence [Internet]. Routledge; 2016. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315675008

Cairney P, Oliver K. Evidence-based policymaking is not like evidence-based medicine, so how far should you go to bridge the divide between evidence and policy? Health Res Policy Syst. 2017;15(1):35.

Verboom B, Baumann A. Mapping the Qualitative Evidence Base on the Use of Research Evidence in Health Policy-Making: A Systematic Review. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2020;16.

Ward V, House A, Hamer S. Developing a framework for transferring knowledge into action: a thematic analysis of the literature. J Health Serv Res Policy. 2009;14(3):156–64.

Swinburn B, Gill T, Kumanyika S. Obesity prevention: a proposed framework for translating evidence into action. Obes Rev. 2005;6(1):23–33.

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Damschroder LJ. Clarity out of chaos: Use of theory in implementation research. Psychiatry Res. 2020;283: 112461.

Birken SA, Rohweder CL, Powell BJ, Shea CM, Scott J, Leeman J, et al. T-CaST: an implementation theory comparison and selection tool. Implement Sci. 2018;13(1):143.

Nilsen P. Making sense of implementation theories, models and frameworks. Implement Sci. 2015;10(1):53.

Rapport F, Clay-Williams R, Churruca K, Shih P, Hogden A, Braithwaite J. The struggle of translating science into action: foundational concepts of implementation science. J Eval Clin Pract. 2018;24(1):117–26.

Hagenaars LL, Jeurissen PPT, Klazinga NS. The taxation of unhealthy energy-dense foods (EDFs) and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs): An overview of patterns observed in the policy content and policy context of 13 case studies. Health Policy. 2017;121(8):887–94.

Sheikh K, Gilson L, Agyepong IA, Hanson K, Ssengooba F, Bennett S. Building the field of health policy and systems research: framing the questions. PLOS Med. 2011;8(8): e1001073.

Tran NT, Hyder AA, Kulanthayan S, Singh S, Umar RSR. Engaging policy makers in road safety research in Malaysia: a theoretical and contextual analysis. Health Policy. 2009;90(1):58–65.

Walt G, Gilson L. Reforming the health sector in developing countries: the central role of policy analysis. Health Policy Plan. 1994;9(4):353–70.

Dobrow MJ, Goel V, Upshur REG. Evidence-based health policy: context and utilisation. Soc Sci Med. 2004;58(1):207–17.

Barnfield A, Savolainen N, Lounamaa A. Health Promotion Interventions: Lessons from the Transfer of Good Practices in CHRODIS-PLUS. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(4).

van de Goor I, Hämäläinen RM, Syed A, Juel Lau C, Sandu P, Spitters H, et al. Determinants of evidence use in public health policy making: results from a study across six EU countries. Health Policy Amst Neth. 2017;121(3):273–81.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ornstein JT, Hammond RA, Padek M, Mazzucca S, Brownson RC. Rugged landscapes: complexity and implementation science. Implement Sci. 2020;15(1):85.

Seward N, Hanlon C, Hinrichs-Kraples S, Lund C, Murdoch J, Taylor Salisbury T, et al. A guide to systems-level, participatory, theory-informed implementation research in global health. BMJ Glob Health. 2021;6(12): e005365.

Pfadenhauer LM, Gerhardus A, Mozygemba K, Lysdahl KB, Booth A, Hofmann B, et al. Making sense of complexity in context and implementation: the Context and Implementation of Complex Interventions (CICI) framework. Implement Sci. 2017;12(1):21.

Rogers L, De Brún A, McAuliffe E. Defining and assessing context in healthcare implementation studies: a systematic review. BMC Health Serv Res. 2020;20(1):591.

Nilsen P, Bernhardsson S. Context matters in implementation science: a scoping review of determinant frameworks that describe contextual determinants for implementation outcomes. BMC Health Serv Res. 2019;19(1):189.

Arksey H, O’Malley L, Baldwin S, Harris J, Mason A, Golder S. Literature review report: services to support carers of people with mental health problems. 2002;182.

Tabak RG, Khoong EC, Chambers D, Brownson RC. Bridging research and practice. Am J Prev Med. 2012;43(3):337–50.

O’Donovan MA, McCallion P, McCarron M, Lynch L, Mannan H, Byrne E. A narrative synthesis scoping review of life course domains within health service utilisation frameworks. HRB Open Res. 2019.

Michie S, Johnston M, Abraham C, Lawton R, Parker D, Walker A, et al. Making psychological theory useful for implementing evidence based practice: a consensus approach. Qual Saf Health Care. 2005;14(1):26–33.

Bate P, Robert G, Fulop N, Øvretviet J, Dixon-Woods M. Perspectives on context: a collection of essays considering the role of context in successful quality improvement [Internet]. 2014. https://www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/PerspectivesOnContext_fullversion.pdf

Ziemann A, Brown L, Sadler E, Ocloo J, Boaz A, Sandall J. Influence of external contextual factors on the implementation of health and social care interventions into practice within or across countries—a protocol for a ‘best fit’ framework synthesis. Syst Rev. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-019-1180-8 .

Strifler L, Cardoso R, McGowan J, Cogo E, Nincic V, Khan PA, et al. Scoping review identifies significant number of knowledge translation theories, models, and frameworks with limited use. J Clin Epidemiol. 2018;100:92–102.

Esmail R, Hanson HM, Holroyd-Leduc J, Brown S, Strifler L, Straus SE, et al. A scoping review of full-spectrum knowledge translation theories, models, and frameworks. Implement Sci. 2020;15(1):11.

Jacobson N, Butterill D, Goering P. Development of a framework for knowledge translation: understanding user context. J Health Serv Res Policy. 2003;8(2):94–9.

Lehoux P, Denis JL, Tailliez S, Hivon M. Dissemination of health technology assessments: identifying the visions guiding an evolving policy innovation in Canada. J Health Polit Policy Law. 2005;30(4):603–42.

Parliament of Canada. Government Bill (House of Commons) C-13 (36–2) - Royal Assent - Canadian Institutes of Health Research Act [Internet]. https://parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/36-2/bill/C-13/royal-assent/page-31 . Accessed 1 Apr 2023.

Straus SE, Tetroe J, Graham I. Defining knowledge translation. CMAJ Can Med Assoc J. 2009;181(3–4):165–8.

Ashford L. Creating windows of opportunity for policy change: incorporating evidence into decentralized planning in Kenya. Bull World Health Organ. 2006;84(8):669–72.

Bauman AE, Nelson DE, Pratt M, Matsudo V, Schoeppe S. Dissemination of physical activity evidence, programs, policies, and surveillance in the international public health arena. Am J Prev Med. 2006;31(4):57–65.

Gold M. Pathways to the use of health services research in policy. Health Serv Res. 2009;44(4):1111–36.

Dhonukshe-Rutten RAM, Timotijevic L, Cavelaars AEJM, Raats MM, de Wit LS, Doets EL, et al. European micronutrient recommendations aligned: a general framework developed by EURRECA. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2010;64(2):S2-10.

Ir P, Bigdeli M, Meessen B, Van Damme W. Translating knowledge into policy and action to promote health equity: The Health Equity Fund policy process in Cambodia 2000–2008. Health Policy. 2010;96(3):200–9.

Atun R, de Jongh T, Secci F, Ohiri K, Adeyi O. Integration of targeted health interventions into health systems: a conceptual framework for analysis. Health Policy Plan. 2010;25(2):104–11.

Bissell K, Lee K, Freeman R. Analysing policy transfer: perspectives for operational research. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis Off J Int Union Tuberc Lung Dis. 2011;15(9).

Tran NT, Bennett SC, Bishnu R, Singh S. Analyzing the sources and nature of influence: how the Avahan program used evidence to influence HIV/AIDS prevention policy in India. Implement Sci. 2013;8(1):44.

Bertone MP, Meessen B, Clarysse G, Hercot D, Kelley A, Kafando Y, et al. Assessing communities of practice in health policy: a conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research. Health Res Policy Syst. 2013;11(1):39.

Timotijevic L, Brown KA, Lähteenmäki L, de Wit L, Sonne AM, Ruprich J, et al. EURRECA—a framework for considering evidence in public health nutrition policy development. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2013;53(10):1124–34.

Onwujekwe O, Uguru N, Russo G, Etiaba E, Mbachu C, Mirzoev T, et al. Role and use of evidence in policymaking: an analysis of case studies from the health sector in Nigeria. Health Res Policy Syst. 2015;13(1):46.

Redman S, Turner T, Davies H, Williamson A, Haynes A, Brennan S, et al. The SPIRIT action framework: a structured approach to selecting and testing strategies to increase the use of research in policy. Soc Sci Med. 2015;136–137:147–55.

Spicer N, Berhanu D, Bhattacharya D, Tilley-Gyado RD, Gautham M, Schellenberg J, et al. ‘The stars seem aligned’: a qualitative study to understand the effects of context on scale-up of maternal and newborn health innovations in Ethiopia, India and Nigeria. Glob Health. 2016;12(1):75.

Mulvale G, McRae SA, Milicic S. Teasing apart “the tangled web” of influence of policy dialogues: lessons from a case study of dialogues about healthcare reform options for Canada. Implement Sci IS. 2017;12.

Sarkies MN, Bowles KA, Skinner EH, Haas R, Lane H, Haines TP. The effectiveness of research implementation strategies for promoting evidence-informed policy and management decisions in healthcare: a systematic review. Implement Sci. 2017;12(1):132.

Houngbo PTh, Coleman HLS, Zweekhorst M, De Cock Buning TJ, Medenou D, Bunders JFG. A Model for Good Governance of Healthcare Technology Management in the Public Sector: Learning from Evidence-Informed Policy Development and Implementation in Benin. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(1):e0168842.

Mwendera C, de Jager C, Longwe H, Hongoro C, Phiri K, Mutero CM. Development of a framework to improve the utilisation of malaria research for policy development in Malawi. Health Res Policy Syst. 2017;15(1):97.

Ellen ME, Panisset U, de AraujoCarvalho I, Goodwin J, Beard J. A knowledge translation framework on ageing and health. Health Policy. 2017;121(3):282–91.

Ongolo-Zogo P, Lavis JN, Tomson G, Sewankambo NK. Assessing the influence of knowledge translation platforms on health system policy processes to achieve the health millennium development goals in Cameroon and Uganda: a comparative case study. Health Policy Plan. 2018;33(4):539–54.

Plamondon KM, Pemberton J. Blending integrated knowledge translation with global health governance: an approach for advancing action on a wicked problem. Health Res Policy Syst. 2019;17(1):24.

Vincenten J, MacKay JM, Schröder-Bäck P, Schloemer T, Brand H. Factors influencing implementation of evidence-based interventions in public health systems—a model. Cent Eur J Public Health. 2019;27(3):198–203.

Motani P, Van de Walle A, Aryeetey R, Verstraeten R. Lessons learned from Evidence-Informed Decision-Making in Nutrition & Health (EVIDENT) in Africa: a project evaluation. Health Res Policy Syst. 2019;17(1):12.

Varallyay NI, Langlois EV, Tran N, Elias V, Reveiz L. Health system decision-makers at the helm of implementation research: development of a framework to evaluate the processes and effectiveness of embedded approaches. Health Res Policy Syst. 2020;18(1):64.

Leonard E, de Kock I, Bam W. Barriers and facilitators to implementing evidence-based health innovations in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic literature review. Eval Program Plann. 2020;82: 101832.

Votruba N, Grant J, Thornicroft G. The EVITA framework for evidence-based mental health policy agenda setting in low- and middle-income countries. Health Policy Plan. 2020;35(4):424–39.

Votruba N, Grant J, Thornicroft G. EVITA 2.0, an updated framework for understanding evidence-based mental health policy agenda-setting: tested and informed by key informant interviews in a multilevel comparative case study. Health Res Policy Syst. 2021;19(1):35.

Kuchenmüller T, Chapman E, Takahashi R, Lester L, Reinap M, Ellen M, et al. A comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework for evidence to policy networks. Eval Program Plann. 2022;91: 102053.

Ettelt S. The politics of evidence use in health policy making in Germany—the case of regulating hospital minimum volumes. J Health Polit Policy Law. 2017;42(3):513–38.

Greer SL, Bekker M, de Leeuw E, Wismar M, Helderman JK, Ribeiro S, et al. Policy, politics and public health. Eur J Public Health. 2017;27(suppl 4):40–3.

Fafard P, Cassola A. Public health and political science: challenges and opportunities for a productive partnership. Public Health. 2020;186:107–9.

Löblová O. Epistemic communities and experts in health policy-making. Eur J Public Health. 2018;28(suppl 3):7–10.

Maddalena V. Evidence-Based Decision-Making 8: Health Policy, a Primer for Researchers. In: Parfrey PS, Barrett BJ, editors. Clinical Epidemiology: Practice and Methods. New York, NY: Springer; 2015. (Methods in Molecular Biology).

Louis M, Maertens L. Why international organizations hate politics - Depoliticizing the world [Internet]. London and New York: Routledge; 2021. (Global Institutions). https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/47578/1/9780429883279.pdf

Hassel A, Wegrich K. How to do public policy. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2022.

Book   Google Scholar  

Walt G. Health policy: an introduction to process and power. 7th ed. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press; 2004.

Leichter HM. A comparative approach to policy analysis: health care policy in four nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1979.

Download references

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of International Health, Care and Public Health Research Institute – CAPHRI, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Tugce Schmitt, Katarzyna Czabanowska & Peter Schröder-Bäck

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

TS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft; KC: Writing—Review & Editing; PSB: Validation, Formal analysis, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tugce Schmitt .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, competing interests, additional information, publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Schmitt, T., Czabanowska, K. & Schröder-Bäck, P. What is context in knowledge translation? Results of a systematic scoping review. Health Res Policy Sys 22 , 52 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01143-5

Download citation

Received : 26 June 2023

Accepted : 11 April 2024

Published : 29 April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01143-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Knowledge Translation
• Evidence-informed policymaking
• Health systems

Health Research Policy and Systems

ISSN: 1478-4505

• Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us
• General enquiries: [email protected]