This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of law. Essential foundation topics covered include Australias legal system and sources of law while discussion of current issues highlights the context in which our legal system operates and the role and responsibilities of the legal profession. Clear explanations of precedent and statutory interpretation provide a solid basis for legal study and practice, and practical examples and exercises support learning and the development of key skills. A legal toolkit and marginal notes provide additional information to develop understanding of key concepts. The book is supported by a range of online materials to consolidate knowledge and skills. The eleventh edition has been extensively revised throughout, with several chapters substantially re-written. It includes a new chapter on going to law that explains the legal dispute resolution processes in Australia.
Part 4. Legal research contains Ch 16. Legal Research: Approaches and Steps ; Ch 18. Searching for Case Law ; Ch 19. Searching for Legislation.

The movement of evidence-based practices (EBPs) into routine clinical usage is not spontaneous, but requires focused efforts. The field of implementation science has developed to facilitate the spread of EBPs, including both psychosocial and medical interventions for mental and physical health concerns. The authors aim to introduce implementation science principles to non-specialist investigators, administrators, and policymakers seeking to become familiar with this emerging field. This introduction is based on published literature and the authors' experience as researchers in the field, as well as extensive service as implementation science grant reviewers. Implementation science is "the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other EBPs into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services." Implementation science is distinct from, but shares characteristics with, both quality improvement and dissemination methods. Implementation studies can be either assess naturalistic variability or measure change in response to planned intervention. Implementation studies typically employ mixed quantitative-qualitative designs, identifying factors that impact uptake across multiple levels, including patient, provider, clinic, facility, organization, and often the broader community and policy environment. Accordingly, implementation science requires a solid grounding in theory and the involvement of trans-disciplinary research teams. The business case for implementation science is clear: As healthcare systems work under increasingly dynamic and resource-constrained conditions, evidence-based strategies are essential in order to ensure that research investments maximize healthcare value and improve public health. Implementation science plays a critical role in supporting these efforts.

Implementation science (IS) is the study of methods that successfully integrate best evidence into practice. Although typically applied in healthcare settings to improve patient care and subsequent outcomes, IS also has immediate and practical applications to medical education toward improving physician training and educational outcomes. The objective of this article is to illustrate how to build a research agenda that focuses on applying IS principles in medical education. We examined the literature to construct a rationale for using IS to improve medical education. We then used a generalizable scenario to step through a process for applying IS to improve team-based care. IS provides a valuable approach to medical educators and researchers for making improvements in medical education and overcoming institution-based challenges. It encourages medical educators to systematically build upon the research outcomes of others to guide decision-making while evaluating the successes of best practices in individual environments and generate additional research questions and findings. IS can act as both a driver and a model for educational research to ensure that best educational practices are easier and faster to implement widely.

Trust is a critical precondition underpinning successful knowledge exchange among environmental scientists and decision-makers, and thus, evidence-informed decision-making processes. While the importance of trust is well established, however, specific approaches to building, managing and maintaining trust at the interface of environmental science and policy are lacking. Here, we seek to address this gap empirically via in-depth qualitative analysis, using the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) as a case study. Specifically, through interviews with members of the ICES secretariat and scientific community, this study aims to (i) explore the importance of trust for organisations working at the interface of environmental science and policy, (ii) identify a range of strategies that are available for building trust at the interface of science and policy, and (iii) identify specific mechanisms for trust repair in situations where trust has been compromised. Our results show that trust is an essential component of a successful relationship between environmental science and policy, although highly dynamic and fragile. For example, while considerable time and effort is required to build trust, it can be lost in only a matter of days. Further, our results show that for successful knowledge exchange, and the attainment of research impact, trust is needed on three levels: (i) trust in individuals, (ii) trust in the organisation, and (iii) trust in the process by which knowledge is generated and exchanged. We identify 14 strategies to building trust, including the need for transparency, the importance of not advocating for a specific outcome, having a clear process for developing and providing knowledge/advice, having regular contact (preferably face to face) and being able to demonstrate independence. Finally, we identify five steps to repair trust: (i) Do not become defensive, be honest that a mistake has occurred, (ii) identify, and explain, why the mistake occurred, (iii) implement measures to ensure that the mistake does not happen again, (iv) correct the mistake (e.g. by providing updated knowledge/advice), and (v) give the trust re-building process time, and ensure ongoing face to face contact throughout that time. In presenting these insights from ICES, this study seeks to provide practical and implementable strategies that can be used by environmental scientists and/or research institutions to help them foster trust with decision-makers, enable improved knowledge exchange and build capacity for evidence-informed decision-making processes.

Brokers are often portrayed as neutral intermediaries that act as a necessary conduit between the spheres of science and policy. Conceived largely as a task in packaging, brokers are expected to link knowledge producers and users and objectively translate science into policy-useable knowledge. The research presented in this paper shows how brokering can be far more active and precarious. We present findings from semi-structured interviews with practitioners working with community-based groups involved in collaborative water planning in New Zealand’s South Island region of Canterbury. Working in a highly conflicted situation, our brokers had to navigate different knowledges and epistemic practices, highly divergent values and grapple with uncertainties to deliver recommendations for regional authorities to set water quality and quantity limits. Conceiving science and policy as interlinked, mutually constitutive and co-produced at multiple levels, rather than as separate domains, shows how the brokers of this study were not only bridging or blurring science policy boundaries to integrate and translate knowledges. They were also building boundaries between science and policy to foster credibility and legitimacy for themselves as scientists and the knowledge they were brokering. This research identifies further under-explored aspects of brokering expertise, namely, the multiple dimensions of brokering, transdisciplinary skills and expertise, ‘absorptive’ uncertainty management and knowledge translation practices.

Focus on how knowledge could be used in the policy process in context of a case study - suggesting what could happen if better-practice policy processes were to be followed - ways in which the effective use of scholarly research in policy making might be improved.

This paper provides commentary from a policy maker's perspective to researchers seeking to inform public policy and practice. It points to a number of issues that limit the usefulness of researchers' work. These issues are grouped into the two broad areas: format and forum. Format issues include the manner in which research reports are presented, their often equivocal nature, and their failure to take into account the cycles and calendars of executive or legislative policy makers. Forum issues involve, among other things, undertaking a systematic response to substance abuse, and related problems, among adult and juvenile offenders—so as to guide systemic action. The paper ends with some practical steps researchers can take to make their work more accessible, and useful, to policy makers and practitioners.

Examples include interventions in the management of cardiac failure, secondary prevention of heart disease, 1 atrial fibrillation, 2 menorrhagia, 3 and pregnancy and childbirth. 4 In the United Kingdom the advent of the NHS research and development programme has led to greater involvement of NHS personnel in setting priorities 5 and to the establishment of a programme to evaluate different methods of promoting the implementation of research findings. 6 The concept of pay back on research 7 has also been developed, resulting in a framework that can be used to assess the benefits arising from research. Relying on the passive diffusion of information to keep health professionals' knowledge up to date is doomed to failure in a global environment in which about 2 million articles on medical issues are published annually. 8 There is also growing awareness that conventional continuing education activities, such as conferences and courses, which focus largely on the passive acquisition of knowledge have little impact on the behaviour of health professionals. 9 The circulation of guidelines without an implementation strategy is also unlikely to result in changes in practice. 10 Summary points Reasons for failing to get research findings into practice are many and include the lack of appropriate information at the point of decision making and social, organisational, and institutional barriers to change All people within an organisation who will have to implement the change or who can influence change should be involved in developing strategies for change Better links between clinical audit, continuing education, and research and development need to be developed Evidence of the effectiveness of specific interventions to promote change is still incomplete, but a combination of interventions will probably be needed The pressure for more effective and efficient implementation of research findings is likely to grow Health professionals need to plan for rapid changes in knowledge, something that is likely to persist throughout our professional lifetimes and which encompasses not only diagnostic techniques, drug treatment, behavioural interventions, and surgical procedures but also ways of delivering and organising health services and developing health policy.

The importance of health research utilisation in policy-making, and of understanding the mechanisms involved, is increasingly recognised. Recent reports calling for more resources to improve health in developing countries, and global pressures for accountability, draw greater attention to research-informed policy-making. Key utilisation issues have been described for at least twenty years, but the growing focus on health research systems creates additional dimensions.The utilisation of health research in policy-making should contribute to policies that may eventually lead to desired outcomes, including health gains. In this article, exploration of these issues is combined with a review of various forms of policy-making. When this is linked to analysis of different types of health research, it assists in building a comprehensive account of the diverse meanings of research utilisation.Previous studies report methods and conceptual frameworks that have been applied, if with varying degrees of success, to record utilisation in policy-making. These studies reveal various examples of research impact within a general picture of underutilisation.Factors potentially enhancing utilisation can be identified by exploration of: priority setting; activities of the health research system at the interface between research and policy-making; and the role of the recipients, or 'receptors', of health research. An interfaces and receptors model provides a framework for analysis.Recommendations about possible methods for assessing health research utilisation follow identification of the purposes of such assessments. Our conclusion is that research utilisation can be better understood, and enhanced, by developing assessment methods informed by conceptual analysis and review of previous studies.

In healthcare research, results diffuse only slowly into clinical practice, and there is a need to bridge the gap between research and practice. This study elucidates how healthcare professionals in a hospital setting experience working with the implementation of research results. A descriptive design was chosen. During 2014, 12 interviews were carried out with healthcare professionals representing different roles in the implementation process, based on semi-structured interview guidelines. The analysis was guided by a directed content analysis approach. The initial implementation was non-formalized. In the decision-making and management process, the pattern among nurses and doctors, respectively, was found to be different. While nurses' decisions tended to be problem-oriented and managed on a person-driven basis, doctors' decisions were consensus-oriented and managed by autonomy. All, however, experienced a knowledge-based execution of the research results, as the implementation process ended. The results illuminate the challenges involved in closing the evidence-practice gap, and may add to the growing body of knowledge on which basis actions can be taken to ensure the best care and treatment available actually reaches the patient.

This article highlights 10 key strands of continuity and change in the use of evidence over the past two decades. Interest in evidence use continues, as do the many challenges encountered when seeking to deliver on this aspiration. There have been developments in ideas and actions, which foster some optimism that better use of varying forms of evidence can be encouraged. Speaking directly to policy-makers, funders, and users of evidence-based information, this article makes the case for ongoing, multi-actor activity to improve the use of evidence in public policy and service delivery. This involves ensuring definitions of good evidence are fit for purpose; developing inclusive processes that enable evidence to be integrated with other forms of knowledge and ways of knowing; doing more than improving the supply of evidence by building relationships and systems that support evidence use; ensuring sustainable funding models for evidence-use initiatives that have been shown to be effective.

Background: To improve the use of evidence in policy and practice, many organisations and individuals seek to promote research-policy engagement activities, but little is known about what works. Aims and objectives: We sought (a) to identify existing research-policy engagement activities, and (b) evidence on impacts of these activities on research and decision making. Methods: We conducted systematic desk-based searches for organisations active in this area (such as funders, practice organisations, and universities) and reviewed websites, strategy documents, published evaluations and relevant research. We used a stakeholder roundtable, and follow-up survey and interviews, with a subset of the sample to check the quality and robustness of our approach. Findings: We identified 1923 initiatives in 513 organisations world-wide. However, we found only 57 organisations had publicly-available evaluations, and only 6% (141/2321) of initiatives were evaluated. Most activities aim to improve research dissemination or create relationships. Existing evaluations offer an often rich and nuanced picture of evidence use in particular settings (such as local government), sectors (such as policing), or by particular providers (such as learned societies), but are extremely scarce. Discussion and conclusions: Funders, research- and decision-making organisations have contributed to a huge expansion in research-policy engagement initiatives. Unfortunately, these initiatives tend not to draw on existing evidence and theory, and are mostly unevaluated. The rudderless mass of activity therefore fails to provide useful lessons for those wishing to improve evidence use, leading to wasted time and resources. Future initiatives should draw on existing evidence about what works, seek to contribute to this evidence base, and respond to a more realistic picture of the decision-making context. Key messages There has been a huge expansion in research-policy engagement initiatives. These are mostly poorly described, specified, and evaluated. The lack of strategy may lead to significant harms (for example, increased competition, wasted time and resources). Future initiatives should draw on and build the existing evidence about what works.

The well documented academic-practice gap has frequently been viewed as a problem to be solved via evidence-based management. Evidence-based management focuses heavily on aggregating and evaluating research evidence to address practical questions via meta-analysis and other forms of systematic review, as well as educating managers and management students on how to differentiate strong from weak research methods. The assumption has been that if researchers produce stronger research findings and disseminate them in manager- and student-accessible venues, the results will be believed and implemented if appropriate to the context. However, these strategies alone are woefully insufficient, as a growing body of evidence suggests that even when individuals are aware of research findings supported by a vast majority of studies, they often choose not to believe them. Sources of this disbelief include growing public distrust of academics, scientific research, and professional expertise in general, as well as negative emotional reactions to specific research findings that threaten people’s cherished beliefs, self-image, self-interest, or social identity. This editorial takes an interdisciplinary approach to explain why people might not believe management research findings and offers strategies for increasing public trust of academics and reducing resistance to self-threatening research findings.

Transferring healthcare research into policy and practice is a messy and complex process that both policy makers and researchers can struggle with. A potential solution is to use individuals or organisations as knowledge brokers. Using a range of literature, this paper explains the theory behind knowledge brokering, identifies three models of brokering and explores the challenges of brokering. We suggest that clarifying these factors is a significant step towards planning well-designed and rigorously evaluated brokering interventions. We also suggest that a clearly defined theoretical framework could help us to find out more about how brokering works and its effectiveness.

Grading instruments are an important part of evidence-based medicine and are used to inform health policy and the development of clinical practice guidelines. They are extensively used in the development of clinical guidelines and the assessment of research publications, having particular impact on health care and policy sectors. The positive effects of using grading instruments are, however, potentially undermined by their misuse and a number of shortcomings. This review found eight key concerns about grading instruments: (1) lack of information on validity and reliability, (2) poor concurrent validity, (3) may not account for external validity, (4) may not be inherently logical, (5) susceptibility to subjectivity, (6) complex systems with inadequate instructions, (7) may be biased toward randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and (8) may not adequately address the variety of non-RCTs. This narrative review concludes that there is a need to take into account these criticisms and domain-specific limitations, to enable the use and development of the most appropriate grading instruments. Grading systems need to be matched to both the research question being asked and the type of evidence being used.

In the United States, as in other industrialized nations, regulatory decisions to protect the environment and public health depend heavily on scientific information. Yet the process of decision-making places unusual strains on science. Knowledge claims are deconstructed during the rule-making process, exposing areas of weakness or uncertainty and threatening the cognitive authority of science. At the same time, the legitimacy of the final regulatory decision depends upon the regulator's ability to reconstruct a plausible scientific rationale for the proposed action. The processes of deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge claims give rise to competition among scientists, public officials and political interest groups, all of whom have a stake in determining how policy-relevant science should be interpreted and by whom. All of these actors use boundary-defining language in order to distinguish between science and policy, and to allocate the right to interpret science in ways that further their own interests. This paper explores the contours of such boundary disputes in the context of controversies over carcinogen regulation. It focuses on the contested definitions and strategic implications of three groups of concepts: trans-science or science policy, risk assessment and risk management, and peer review.

Evidence-based policy decision-making is a dominant paradigm in health but realizing this ideal has proven challenging. This paper conceptually maps health policy, policy studies and social science literature critically engaged with evidence and decision-making. No new data were generated or analysed in support of this review. Barriers to evidence-based policy have been documented, with efforts made to increase the uptake of evidence. Evident complexities have been regarded as a problem of translation. However, this assumes that policy-making is a process of authoritative choice, and that 'evidence' is inherently valuable policy knowledge, which has been critiqued. Alternative accounts urge consideration of how evidence comes to bear on decisions made within complex systems, and what counts as evidence. An 'evidence-making intervention' approach offers a framework for conceptualizing how evidence and interventions are made relationally in practices, thus working with the politics and contingencies of implementation and policy-making.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus the crucial role of computational modeling and simulation in informing and/or advising governments and societies, demonstrating the profound influence that modelers can have, particularly in times of crisis. This global experience has (re)shaped political and public demands on science and technology and the ways in which we incorporate scientific findings in our everyday lives. Through a brief review of models developed for COVID-19, this paper discusses the urgent need to move towards ‘responsible modeling’ in which social, ethical, and cultural issues claim the same importance as technical aspects. This includes a new social contract between modeler and society on one hand, and science and policy on the other hand. The characteristics of modeling work under this new paradigm, however, are still not well understood and are a topic of debate. This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing a new research agenda that can facilitate the discussion about ‘responsible modeling’ and the overarching principles that underpin the concept’s aims and objectives.

Contested science presents a problem for 'evidence-based' public health intervention. Taking a perspective that treats evidence as constituted through the practices which make it, we treat controversies in public health science as events of 'evidence-making' intervention. We look back on a recent controversy in evidence-making regarding the curative potential of new treatments for hepatitis C. The controversy concerned the publication of a systematic review conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration. We explore how published responses critical of the review enact their evidence-making. We do this to illuminate how moments of controversy offer useful sites of evidencing-making investigation for public health research. We identify four intersecting objects of evidence-making in the published responses: cure; expertise; hope; and morality. We reflect on how different experts perform evidence differently, how these evidence performances are in friction yet incorporate one another, and how such evidence-making practice fuses together different knowledge forms within and beyond science. Controversy makes visible the multiplicity and fluidity of evidence objects which might otherwise be constituted as singular and robust. A prime matter of concern in this exemplar is 'cure' and the protection of curative potential linked to new treatments in the presence of evidence uncertainty. We use our case study to argue for the benefits of an 'evidence-making intervention' approach to the study and use of evidence in critical public health research.

To make sure predictions do not become adjuncts to a political cause, modellers, decision makers and citizens need to establish new social norms. [...]an analysis by three of us (A.Saltelli, A.P., S.L.P.) suggests that estimates of how much land will be irrigated for future crops varies more than fivefold when extant models properly integrate uncertainties on future population growth rates, spread of irrigated areas and the mathematical relationship between the two6. [...]the GENESIS model of shoreline erosion was used by the US Army Corps of Engineers to support cost-benefit assessments for beach preservation projects. Examples of terms that promise uncontested precision include: 'costbenefit', 'expected utility', 'decision theory', 'life-cycle assessment', 'ecosystem services', and 'evidence-based policy'. Or to put it in jargon: qualitative descriptions of multiple reasonable sets of assumptions can be as important in improving insight in decision makers as the delivery of quantitative results.

I use the example of the 2000 US Presidential election to show that political controversies with technical underpinnings are not resolved by technical means. Then, drawing from examples such as climate change, genetically modified foods, and nuclear waste disposal, I explore the idea that scientific inquiry is inherently and unavoidably subject to becoming politicized in environmental controversies. I discuss three reasons for this. First, science supplies contesting parties with their own bodies of relevant, legitimated facts about nature, chosen in part because they help make sense of, and are made sensible by, particular interests and normative frameworks. Second, competing disciplinary approaches to understanding the scientific bases of an environmental controversy may be causally tied to competing value-based political or ethical positions. The necessity of looking at nature through a variety of disciplinary lenses brings with it a variety of normative lenses, as well. Third, it follows from the foregoing that scientific uncertainty, which so often occupies a central place in environmental controversies, can be understood not as a lack of scientific understanding but as the lack of coherence among competing scientific understandings, amplified by the various political, cultural, and institutional contexts within which science is carried out. In light of these observations, I briefly explore the problem of why some types of political controversies become “scientized” and others do not, and conclude that the value bases of disputes underlying environmental controversies must be fully articulated and adjudicated through political means before science can play an effective role in resolving environmental problems.