Policy Research Community Research Articles

Reviewing and assessing emerging trends and needs for research, development and innovation (RDI) and capacity building in a short, medium and long-term perspective

Abstract An important aim of the Partnership is to identify current and future health services and systems priorities and to identify capacity building and training needs to support RDI activities in health and care systems in the Partnership countries and the EU as a whole. This is being done by means of periodical reviews, among others building on scientific research literature, strategic and policy documents and consultations of stakeholders. At the conference workshop, results of the mapping are presented, with a special focus on priority areas that can contribute to health systems transformation towards sustainable and people-centred health and care systems accessible to all. The session will allow participants provide reflections on and refinements to potential common priorities across national RDI agendas. This will provide direction for future research calls, based on an inventory of priorities that are considered by both policy audiences, research and wider stakeholder communities that should be addressed at EU and national levels.

Monitoring the progress and impact of a multicountry, interdisciplinary research project on childhood stunting: the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub MEL protocol

IntroductionMonitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) is an integral part of research, programme and policy development and implementation. However, MEL methods used to monitor and evaluate interdisciplinary research projects are often...

Development and validation of the Trust in Multidimensional Healthcare Systems Scale (TIMHSS)

ContextThe COVID-19 pandemic has reignited a commitment from the health policy and health services research communities to rebuilding trust in healthcare and created a renewed appetite for measures of trust for system monitoring and evaluation. The aim of the present paper was to develop a multidimensional measure of trust in healthcare that: (1) Is responsive to the conceptual and methodological limitations of existing measures; (2) Can be used to identify systemic explanations for lower levels of trust in equity-deserving populations; (3) Can be used to design and evaluate interventions aiming to (re)build trust.MethodsWe conducted a 2021 review of existing measures of trust in healthcare, 72 qualitative interviews (Aug-Dec 2021; oversampling for equity-deserving populations), an expert review consensus process (Oct 2021), and factor analyses and validation testing based on two waves of survey data (Nov 2021, n = 694; Jan-Feb 2022, n = 740 respectively).FindingsWe present the Trust in Multidimensional Healthcare Systems Scale (TIMHSS); a 38-item correlated three-factor measure of trust in doctors, policies, and the system. Measurement of invariance tests suggest that the TIMHSS can also be reliably administered to diverse populations.ConclusionsThis global measure of trust in healthcare can be used to measure trust over time at a population level, or used within specific subpopulations, to inform interventions to (re)build trust. It can also be used within a clinical setting to provide a stronger evidence base for associations between trust and therapeutic outcomes.

In Memory of Caroline Pauwels: Pioneer and Mentor of European Media Policy Research

Caroline Pauwels was one of the pioneers of communication and media policy research and a leading expert in her field. She was a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium and a mentor to many scholars interested in this field both in her own country and abroad. Her death from cancer at the age of 58 has left the European academic community with great sadness.

Investigating the spatiotemporal pattern of urban vibrancy and its determinants: Spatial big data analyses in Beijing, China

Investigating urban vibrancy and factors that impact urban vibrancy aids the understanding of urban land use policies, provides solid foundation for scientific urban planning. The boom in information and communication technologies and the advancement of big data extraction provides new sources of data and make it possible to measure and analyze urban vibrancy at a finer spatial and temporal scale. This study aims to portray the spatiotemporal variation patterns of urban vibrancy in 24 h and investigate the potential influence mechanism of it. The central districts of Beijing consisting of 135 subdistricts are selected as the study area. Massive and spontaneous geo-tagged check-in data released from social media platforms has attracted increasing attentions in urban vibrancy studies because it reflects well people’s activities at a certain time, which is a good proxy for urban vibrancy. This study hence uses the check-in data from Weibo, the largest microblogging platform in China, to proxy urban vibrancy. We also extract from multisource spatial big data to explore potential determinants of urban vibrancy. This study seeks to reveal the global and local varying impacts of different factors on urban vibrancy by employ spatial lag model (SLM) and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model. Results show that the increase in the number of different point of interests (POIs) improves urban vibrancy. Their effects on vibrancy vary at different times but have no obvious spatial scale variation. Splitting effect and attraction effect of land use diversity are introduced to explain its significantly negative effect on the intensity and fluctuation of urban vibrancy. It requires the wisdom of urban planners to balance these two effects of land use diversity in the process of urban construction. The guidance strategy of “highlighting the main functions and enriching the auxiliary functions” is helpful to build vibrant cities. Socioeconomical conditions, location and accessibility have different spatial scale effects on urban vibrancy at subdistrict level. These findings enable us to have a deeper understanding of the variation patterns and influence mechanism of urban vibrancy in China’s megacities and benefit the urban land use policy research and management community.

Situ Tunggilis Spatial Planning for Community Participation-Based Tourism Development in Order to Improve Welfare

Situ Tunggilis is located in Desa Situsari Village, Kecamatan Cileungsi, is one of the 96 lakes in the Kab. Bogor. Currently, it has not provided benefits for the community even though there are development directions according to the Spatial Plan as desa wisata, this requires optimizing the use of the area. Community service activities aim to develop the site as a tourist attraction in the context of a tourist village and improve the community's ability to manage tourism objects there and to realize the policy of MBKM program. PKM is funded by the MBKM policy research assistance program and community service based on research results and prototypes of the Directorate General of Research, Technology and Higher Education. The implementation method is through field surveys, Focus Group Discussions and training. PKM produces a site development Master Plan with animations and regional icons, HR training, finance and digital marketing. The implications of PKM are having a lake development plan, increasing the ability of the community and BUMDesa to manage the lake as a tourist attraction and creating a tourist village and improving community welfare.

50th Anniversary of TPRC—Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy: Looking Ahead to the Next 50 Years

50th Anniversary of TPRC—Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy: Looking Ahead to the Next 50 Years

Editor’s Note: Staying at the Forefront of Communication Law and Policy Research

Editor’s Note: Staying at the Forefront of Communication Law and Policy Research

Intensified Smallholder Pig Farming in Rural Yunnan: Implications for Livelihood, Culture, Gender, Health and Environment

The aim of this paper is to draw the attention of policy makers and research communities to the critical but often ignored relationships between intensified smallholder pig farming, livelihood, poverty alleviation, culture, gender, health and environment in mountainous areas of Yunnan Province, China. It documents changes in how pigs are farmed in one county of Yunnan over the last four decades and analyzes the impact of pig rearing on local livelihood, culture and gender as well as its implications for health and environment. It concludes that modern pig rearing techniques that are intended to be used in large-scale industry pig farming operations have been partially adopted by poor farmers in smallholder pig farming settings, and this has generated a wide spectrum of different pig production systems and also changed disease risks associated with pig farming. It is hard to predict and manage the risks given the rapid, diverse, complex and dynamic changes in the intensified smallholder pig farming systems. The environmental pollution associated with these pig production systems is also different to that caused by major pig production companies, and also calls for new management approaches.

Euro Communications Policy Research Conference (EuroCPR): A note on its history

Euro Communications Policy Research Conference (EuroCPR): A note on its history

Forming Policy Intellectuals in the Asia Pacific and Africa: the Story of Communication Policy Research South, 2006-2018

Forming Policy Intellectuals in the Asia Pacific and Africa: the Story of Communication Policy Research South, 2006-2018

New Multilevel Partnerships and Policy Perspectives on Active Ageing in Italy: A National Plan of Action.

Active ageing (AA) policies aim to improve quality of life of older people by enabling better social participation and inclusion. Despite many international initiatives to promote AA undertaken in recent years, Italy did not systematically address this policy challenge until very recently. This paper presents the first national Plan-of-Action (PoA) (2019–2022) adopted by this country for supporting policy design and recommendation in this field. The PoA aims to create a multilevel, co-managed coordination of AA policies, by involving a network of national and regional policy makers, experts, researchers and stakeholders in civil society. The ad-hoc consultation process established for this purpose helps the recognition of different interests and expectations on AA, fostering new solutions by involvement, consultation and joint discussion of policy options. The PoA is designed to cover the traditional policy cycle, including the stages of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation and monitoring. At the end of the period covered by the PoA, an Italian AA Strategy will be launched to achieve systematic impact in this field, thus ensuring a long-term, sustainable impact on national and regional policy makers, civil society and research community.

Communication Law and Policy Research in Non-Law Peer-Reviewed Journals, 2010-2019: Trends and Observations

Started in 1995, Communication Law and Policy is a premier outlet for peer-reviewed research on communication law and policy. But what other outlets are there for research on communication law and policy topics? In particular, which non-law, peer-reviewed journals are publishing articles on communication law and policy? And what topics do these journals cover? The purpose of this essay is to examine communication law and policy research that is being published in non-law, peer-reviewed journals. Examining the past ten years of publications in thirty-six journals, the essay documents the journals that have published research on communication law and policy topics and attempts to analyze these articles to provide a snap shot of the state of research in these journals. Finally, the essay attempts — albeit briefly — to address the direction in which communication law and policy research seems to be progressing in this set of journals and to detail some of the trends we see.

China’s ‘New-Type’ Private Think Tanks: Is ‘New’ Better?

China’s public policy research community has long been dominated by large state-run research institutes, but in recent years financially and bureaucratically independent think tanks have played a more prominent role. While private think tanks have used a variety of strategies to secure funding and access to officials, a major constraint is the continuing influence of their state-run counterparts. What are the conditions under which private institutes can prosper in this environment, both in terms of providing meaningful advice and developing prestigious brands? This essay theorizes that these goals can be achieved under three conditions: when human capital is leveraged to provide new advice, when networks are deployed to build bridges between scholarly communities, and when effective use of information technology supports the dissemination of research outputs. An organization’s ability to meet those criteria depends both on resource endowments and on willingness to buck the conventional wisdom.

Politics and Policymaking in Medicare Part C.

Once just a small part of the Medicare program, private managed care plans now cover over one-third of all Medicare beneficiaries and cost the Federal government ~$210 billion each year. Importantly, the evolution of Medicare managed care policy has been far from linear; for several decades there have been dramatic shifts in the payment and regulatory policies facing private Medicare managed care plans. This article presents a critical review of the history of Medicare managed care payment and regulatory policies and discusses the role of political ideology and stakeholder influence in shaping the direction of policy over time. As Medicare Advantage becomes an increasingly prominent area of focus for the health services, health policy, and medical research communities, it is important to bear in mind the highly political history of the program, the role of stakeholder influence in shaping the direction of policy, and to understand the historic barriers to evidence-based policymaking.

This Bridge Feels Like a Tightrope: For Critical Scholars Who Engage in Policy Research

There is a widespread belief among academic researchers and academic journal editors that policy audiences prefer positivist research, despite evidence that policy makers would prefer to see researchers engage more with case studies, historical analyses, and compelling voices. This belief inevitably shapes the culture of the educational policy research community and bleeds into the academic socialization of novice educational policy researchers. In this article, I use autoethnography to explore the methodological tensions I encountered as an untrained critical researcher participating in a postpositivist multicase research study that privileged large data sets, quantified qualitative findings, and entitled majority viewpoints. Through this exploration, I seek to advocate for deeper reflexivity and transparency among qualitative researchers who encounter moments of conflict and doubt in the research process. A list of recommendations for novice and seasoned educational policy researchers are provided.

Race, ethnicity, and telecommunications policy issues of access and representation: Centering communities of color and their concerns

This paper examines how and why activist groups representing marginalized communities of color are increasingly engaging in communications technology policy issues, particularly in relation to issues of digital access and representation. It explores three distinct but related case studies to disentangle the issues and concerns of a range of communities of color, and the challenges and opportunities for their advocates in navigating the highly technical communications technology policy arena: the first case study, which centers on the NAACP's original opposition to net neutrality, reveals the primacy of issues surrounding the “digital divide” to populations of color, and the difficulties of engaging in technical conversations surrounding Internet governance when issues of access persist. Meanwhile, the second case reviews the campaign by Free Press to promote set-top box liberalization as an issue of representation and diversity to both policymakers and citizens. The final case, which examines the work of the Tribal International Carrier to build an alternative internet service network for Native populations, highlights the precarity which organizations must strategically navigate in order to mitigate the influence of both the state and large corporations over Internet policy issues in order to both serve and represent their constituents. In all, this paper presents and extends upon a novel approach to communications policy research, foregrounding the need to integrate critical race frameworks and, relatedly, to center the breadth, depth, and lived experiences of communities of color, which can therein facilitate more inclusive digital media and communication environments and policy structures.

Mass Communication Law and Policy Research and the Values of Free Expression

Mass communication law and policy research, including on values and theory of freedom of expression, has played an important role in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly for decades. Mass communication law research in Quarterly reached a high point with a special issue on the First Amendment in 1992 and numerous articles in the decade that followed. A relationship is explored between First Amendment theory and structural archetypes of constitutional argument. Future research could focus on international law and contemporary challenges involving technology, surveillance and changes in democratic citizenship.

The role of Quality of Place factors in expatriate international relocation decisions: A case study of Suzhou, a globally-focused Chinese city

The role of ‘quality of place’ (QoP) in attracting and retaining workers has been a significant concern of urban related policy makers and research communities over the past decade. This paper aims to address the significance of QoP factors in attracting and/or retaining global talent by presenting the findings and implications of a study into the relocation decisions of expatriate workers in Suzhou, China. Findings from a survey questionnaire indicate that global talent moving to Suzhou have been driven primarily by career-related opportunities instead of QoP factors. However, binary logit analysis shows that QoP factors have contributed positively towards the retention of global talent in the city.

Building smart cannabis policy from the science up

Social attitudes and cultural norms around the issue of substance abuse are shifting rapidly around the world, leading to complex and unpredictable consequences. On the positive side, efforts to more intensely disseminate the scientific evidence for the many connections between chronic substance use and the emergence of measurable and discrete brain dysfunctions, has ushered in an evolving climate of acceptance and a new era of improved access to more effective interventions, at least in the United States. On the negative side, there has been a steady erosion in the public perception of the harms associated with the use of popular drugs, especially cannabis. This worrisome trend has sprouted at the convergence of several forces that have combined, more or less fortuitously, to effectively change long-standing policies away from prohibition and toward decriminalization or legalization. These forces include the outsized popularity of the cannabis plant among recreational users, the unflagging campaign by corporate lobbyists and patient advocates to mainstream its medicinal use, and the honest realization in some quarters of the deleterious impact of the drug war and its draconian cannabis laws, in particular, on society’s most vulnerable populations.Updating drug policies is a desirable goal, and significant changes may indeed be warranted. However, there is a real concern when policy changes are hurriedly implemented without the required input from the medical, scientific, or policy research communities. Regardless of how well intentioned, such initiatives are bound to magnify the potential for unintended adverse consequences in the form of far ranging health and social costs. To minimize this risk, science must be front and center in this important policy debate.Here, we review the state of the science on cannabis and cannabinoid health effects, both adverse and therapeutic. We focus on the prevalence of use in different populations, the mechanisms by which cannabis exerts its effects (i.e., via the endocannabinoid system), and the double-edged potential of this system to inspire new medications, on one hand, and to cause short and long term harmful effects on the other. By providing knowledge of cannabis’ broad ranging effects, we hope to enable better decision making regarding cannabis legislation and policy implementation.