The Role of R3P: Research Practice Policy Partnerships and Evidence Use

Research on evidence use consistently points to the critical role of relationships in facilitating evidence use. Various terms for processes that support these relationships have been used, including co-production , boundary spanning , and research-practice partnerships . These terms all refer to facilitated processes that connect researchers and intended users of research to develop, execute, and interpret evidence. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have gained substantial attention and momentum in the education field. These partnerships are defined by Caitlin Farrell and colleagues as:

A long-term collaboration aimed at educational improvement or equitable transformation through engagement with research. These partnerships are intentionally organized to connect diverse forms of expertise and shift power relations in the research endeavor to ensure that all partners have a say in the joint work.

In this context, RPPs may be a partnership between academic researchers working with school districts or community-based agencies. RPPs may also be embedded research offices in these organizations, such as a state agency’s internal research office, in which internal researchers reach out to and partner with those focused on policy or practice. Several attributes distinguish these partnerships from prior models of research. Of note, research-practice partnerships emphasize long-term collaboration, whereas in other relationships partners may work together in more limited scopes (e.g. a one-time site data collection). Partnerships develop trust over time, and work to answer multiple questions and respond to changing circumstances. These partnerships focus on conducting research of interest to the policy or program partners with the aim of creating more relevant, useful research -- not on research of interest to the researcher only. These partnerships are increasingly focused on strategies to share power and shift relationships to recognize and leverage the expertise held in both the research and practice partner domain. In order for these partnerships to be successful  (PDF) there is need to consider the infrastructure that supports their work. Partnerships require the funding, time, leadership support, humility, trusted relationships, deeply understanding both partners’ priorities, and motivation to engage in the work.

As in the education field, RPPs exist in the human services field. Universities and research firms may partner with states or local communities, as well as with internal embedded research teams in local, state, or federal government. OPRE’s work within ACF is an example of an internal RPP; OPRE partners closely with ACF program colleagues, co-designs learning agendas, conducts research and evaluation focused on answering relevant questions to policy and practice, and works collaboratively to make sense of research and to apply it to policy discussions (one example partnership between OPRE and OFA/HMRF is described here ). OPRE also supports the development of RPPs in the field such as the long-standing investment in child care policy research partnerships (see one example here) and the Head Start/Early Head Start University Partnerships (see one example here) along with newer opportunities such as the Coordinated Evaluations of Child Care and Development Fund Policies and Initiatives.

OPRE has been supporting research practice/policy partnerships in child care since 1995. The projects focused on conducting research of interest to the program or policy partners with the aim of creating more useful, relevant research. OPRE-supported partnerships have implemented diverse approaches to ensure the partnerships are balanced and that planning, implementation, and decision-making are grounded in collaborative and joint efforts. Below are some examples that highlight the work of these partnerships and what the sustained partnership can achieve:

• The Oregon Child Care Research Partnership (OCCRP) has been ongoing for approximately 28 years. The OCCRP includes partners from the Oregon State Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agency, the Early Learning Division of the Oregon Department of Education, the Department of Human Services, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions of higher education, and child care practitioners. The partnership meets bi-monthly to discuss progress on their research efforts, identify new questions, share emerging findings, interpret the findings, and decide how to communicate the findings with key audiences. Over the years they have conducted many different types of research and used mixed methods to gather data from families, providers and other key players in the child care and early education. In conversations through the communities of practice hosted by OPRE, members of the partnership have shared many examples of how Oregon uses the information produced by the partnership in policy and decision-making.
• For over 15 years, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) has collaborated with Child Trends (and other state and private universities) through several OPRE-funded partnerships of the Maryland Child Care Research Partnership. Two current partnership grants include the Assistant State Superintendent for the MSDE Division of Early Childhood, Branch Chiefs within the Maryland Office of Child Care, and Child Trends’ early childhood researchers. These partnerships have supported the state’s capacity to use and understand their data to improve the state’s early care and education system. The state has focused on research to improve the implementation of the Child Care Scholarship Program, enhance the quality of early care and education provided in the state, and better child outcomes. The current partnerships with Child Trends have allowed the state to mine their data in new ways and to use it at critical times to improve their child care and early education system, e.g., implementing changes to their eligibility determination processes for the scholarship program; conducting new data collection with parents in 2020 (right after onset of the COVID-19 pandemic) to assess their needs and access to child care; and producing time-sensitive, public-facing products on findings from analyses of their data that influenced legislators to release ARPA funding to meet the highest needs of families and care providers during and post pandemic.
• The Massachusetts Child Care Policy Research Partnership was first funded in 2013 and included partners from the Massachusetts Department of Early Care and Education (EEC), Brandeis University, and Boston University. Over the years the partnership has addressed many policy questions of interest to the state, including reassessing the state’s voucher eligibility policies, and evaluating policy changes and their effects on vulnerable populations (e.g. Hispanic communities and immigrants) in the state. From its inception, the partnership established procedures for ongoing communication between EEC and the universities’ research teams, involving bi-weekly project team status meetings and biannual in-person meetings with the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) taskforce, as well as including the university research team in other EEC internal policy/data meetings that would be beneficial to the project. A Cross-Agency CCDBG Task Force has been used to discuss key research and policy decisions, including participants such as the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners of EEC, the Director of EEC and Caseload Assistance, and a Workforce Development Specialist. The most recent partnership grant is focusing on assessing the supply of quality care for subsidized families. The project team coordinates planning and decisions closely across the partners and appointed a researcher that is familiar with the policy research and the state’s program administration as a key bridging liaison between the state and university teams, having worked at both Brandeis University and EEC.
• The Georgia CCDF Evaluation Project (GCEP) partnership started in 2016 and is a great example of a research-policy/practice partnership that is embedded within the CCDF State Lead Agency. This project was led by the agency’s Research and Policy Analysis Team and was conducted in partnership with the state’s CCDF program administrators and other Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) leadership. There are several mechanisms by which the GCEP has engaged with program/policy partners: ongoing progress monitoring and project guidance by program leadership and research analysts; meetings with the Quality Rating and Improvement System external advisory committee; annual research summits in which the Research and Policy Analysis Team presented current research, responded to questions from experts in the field, and discussed possible expansions, partnership opportunities, and policy implications. A strength of this project has been the collaboration and communication between agency research analysts and agency leadership that included Professional Learning, Instructional Supports, Federal Programs, and Quality Rated. This collaboration and communication helped shape the research agenda, ensure findings are applied in decision-making, and supports alignment of work across DECAL divisions. 

While the above examples indicate successful partnership resulting in relevant research that is used to inform policy, the field currently doesn’t know much about how, when, and why partnerships may improve evidence use. Research is beginning to emerge on what an effective RPP may look like and how we know if it is achieving its goals. Henrick and colleagues  (PDF) established a framework for the dimensions associated with effective partnerships including building trust and relationships, creating relevant research, facilitating the use of research to achieve partner goals, and supporting capacity building. The Institute for Education Sciences has invested in a formative tool that builds off the Henrick framework to support RPPs assessing how well the partnership is achieving its goals. Similarly, Farrell and colleagues are also developing a measure of RPP effectiveness building from the Henrick framework that can be used formatively within partnerships but also within research to study the conditions under which RPPs improve research use and, ultimately, improve outcomes. These kinds of tools can help partnerships consider how to structure a partnership and how to make midcourse corrections to ensure the partnership is achieving its goals.

On the horizon there are some open questions and opportunities for the next decade of RPPs:

• OPRE has supported a Child Care Research and Evaluation Capacity Building Center. The project will be a product highlighting the benefits of researcher-agency partnerships, the key ingredients for building and sustaining partnerships, and a checklist of conditions to have in place in starting a partnership and for sustaining partnerships. Resources like these and those provided by the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships are important supports to grow and support this promising approach to evidence use.
• More research is needed to examine whether RPPs achieve the goal of producing more relevant, useful research that ultimately is used. Some studies have begun to explore this question. For example, in two different studies Weddle and Yanovitzky are examining whether and how RPPs improve the use of research in state policymaking. These studies will make important contributions but much more research is needed.
• There are important discussions about the power sharing aspect of RPPs and how not to reproduce inequalities. This includes: considering the institutional histories and power asymmetries that exist for researchers and practice partners , ensuring resources and expertise of both researchers and practice partners are respected and rewarded , interactions within partnerships and how joint questions are framed and explored , and how power and funding affects authentic partnership work . Another blog in this series will dig deeper into these questions and issues.
• Finally, we need more research exploring whether the research produced in RPPs is used and, if so, if it improves outcomes . There are some promising findings that RPPs can increase research use from models such as Communities that Care and the use of that evidence, in turn, improves outcomes. Of course, the effectiveness of the work produced by the partnership is likely due in part to the quality of the partnership  (PDF) and to the ability of the organization to facilitate the use of the findings . Given the time and resources it takes to initiate and sustain partnerships, we need to understand when, why, and how the research produced is used and if the use of that research improves outcomes.