Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Policymakers and program operators who aim to address economic security and well-being for families and individuals need evidence about what works. However, decision-makers do not always know where to find evidence, how to make sense of it, or how to assess its relative strength. The recent movement towards evidence-based decision making in public policy has encouraged the growth of several federally sponsored systematic evidence reviews in the United States. These reviews comb through available research to identify well-executed studies that have reliable conclusions. For instance, evidence reviews typically emphasize the findings of well-designed random assignment studies and quasi-experimental designs. Some evidence reviews also examine and summarize findings from implementation research. This presentation will draw on the practices of three systematic reviews (the Employment Strategies for Low-Income Adults Evidence Review, the Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness review, and the Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research). It will describe and contrast the experience of each review with identifying, reviewing, and communicating the results of high quality studies. The presentation will also discuss challenges that systematic reviewers face and best practices researchers can use when reporting study methodology so that the information be easily used by systematic reviews and, therefore, summarized for use by federal policymakers.