Past events

Evaluation – making it timely, useful, independent and rigorous

Friday 04 July 2014, 10:00am - 4:30pm

Jerry Morris Room, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9SH

Policy-makers and researchers are struggling to identify approaches to evaluation that maximise its usefulness in the policy-making process, while also supporting its independence and rigour.

This one-day conference, the first in a series on different aspects of policy and programme evaluation, brings together researchers and policy-makers committed to using evaluation to improve the quality of policy and practice. It aims to focus their knowledge and insights to identify the ingredients of ‘success’ as well as case studies of ‘good practice’.

A short report will be published capturing insights from the meeting, as well as commentaries from the main speakers. The aim is to link this to articles in the specialist and mainstream media with the highlights from the conference concerning the opportunities and challenges offered by evaluation as one important way of improving policy making.

This conference is sponsored by PIRU along with the Public Health Research Consortium and the NIHR School for Public Health Research.

**Programme** - precise titles to be confirmed
Time	Details
10.00	Registration and coffee
10.30	Welcome – Nicholas Mays, LSHTM and Director, PIRU
10.35	Responsiveness and involvement with policy and policy-makers Chair: James Barlow, Imperial College London and PIRU Real-time evaluation: a trade-off between timeliness and rigour? Derek Bell, Director, North West London CLAHRC) How, when and whether to feedback interim findings: the case of drug trials Oona Campbell, LSHTM Evaluation between objectivity and engagement: reflections on three years of PIRU Nicholas Mays, LSHTM and Director, PIRU
12.05	General discussion
12.35	Lunch
13.30	Generalisability and transferability of findings from evaluation Chair: Stefanie Ettelt, LSHTM and PIRU What is context and when and why does it matter for evaluation? Mark Petticrew, LSTHM, PIRU/NSPHR/PHRC Modelling and simulation in evaluation as a tool for decision-making Michael Pidd, Lancaster University, and Sally Brailsford, University of Southampton Policy development and the politics of evaluation? Gerald Wistow, Personal Social Services Research Unit, London School of Economics & Political Science and PIRU
15.00	General discussion, including potential topics for future meetings on evaluation
15.30	The role of evaluation in health policy-making Anna Dixon, Chief Analyst and Director of Strategy, Department of Health

To register for this event, please click here>>