Publications Archive
Project IN4M: Integrating Needs for Mental Well-Being into Human Resource Planning
October 2011
Project IN4M was commissioned by Health Canada to undertake an analysis of the common elements of needs-based human resource planning for mental wellbeing. This represents Phase I of a potentially three phased project. It has been done under the auspices of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
September 2011
The UK Economic and Social Research Council funded exploratory evaluation studies to assess the wider impacts on society of various examples of its research. The Payback Framework is a conceptual approach previously used to evaluate impacts from health research. We tested its applicability to social sciences by using an adapted version to assess the impacts of the Future of Work (FoW) programme. We undertook key informant interviews, a programme-wide survey, user interviews and four case studies of selected projects. The FoW programme had significant impacts on knowledge, research and career development. While some principal investigators (PIs) could identify specific impacts of their research, PIs generally thought they had influenced policy in an incremental way and informed the policy debate. The study suggests progress can be made in applying an adapted version of the framework to the social sciences. However, some impacts may be inaccessible to evaluation, and some evaluations may occur too early or too late to capture the impact of research on a constantly changing policy environment.
September 2011
Understanding the impact of research is important for funding bodies in accounting for funds, advocating additional resources and learning how better to achieve their aims. The Health Research Board (HRB) has funded research in Ireland for over 20 years. We analysed eight examples of HRB grants from between 10 and 15 years earlier using the Payback Framework to catalogue the impacts. They ranged from world-class academic articles and new clinical assays through to improvements in recovery time for acute myocardial infarction and development of a drug company worth over €5 million. Here we first describe the study, then examine the role of the Payback Framework in research impact assessment including examining impacts made by the HRB study itself following its completion in 2008. We discuss how that study has contributed to further development of research impact assessment methods that could be used by the HRB and others.
Aboriginal Community Development Experts Symposium Summary Report
March 2011
This report is a summary of the second of a series of symposiums organized by the Sustainable Communities Directorate of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The purpose of the symposium was to stimulate discussion between community development experts from across the country and to explore strategies to integrate First Nations, Métis, and Inuit community development principles and approaches with government programs and policies.
The standing committee system and how Members of Parliament view its work
January 2011
This paper is a discussion of the current state of the Parliamentary standing committee system. The findings are based on a survey conducted in April, 2010. The survey was sent to the members of six standing committees, a total of 73 Members of Parliament (MPs). 32 Members of Parliament responded, including 15 members of the government and 17 members from the opposition.
Based on the findings of this survey, we observe that there is a slight disconnect between the most important stated goals of MPs and the ability of the committee system to allow MPs to achieve those goals. MPs say that their most important goal is to look after the needs of their constituents, but they note that of all the purposes it might serve, the committee system is least well suited to allowing MPs to do this. While there are certainly other factors at play in the committee system (such as competing priorities, party discipline, and time limitations), this finding suggests that the committee system may be suffering at least in part because it is not seen by MPs as a means to a desirable end.
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