What are Prompts?
- Prompts are a responsive service published twice a year on the research in practice web-site. All Prompt content is written by Susannah Bowyer.
- Prompts draw together three main types of evidence - research, policy documents and practice examples. Web publication provides an ideal format for presenting evidence drawn from a range of sources and allows us to incorporate downloadable copies of key documents and live links to useful resources
- Research evidence is gathered through searching the electronic and print literature as comprehensively as possible within the time constraints set for publication in order to summarise key current evidence on the chosen topic and provide an overview of what the evidence is saying
- This material is presented as a series of linked sections. These are designed to be easily navigable, inter-connected elements that together make up the Prompt as a whole. The mapping the field section is the best place to start
Who are Prompts aimed at?
- The target audience is second tier officers in Children’s Services. Prompts provide a means for research in practice to respond quickly to Partner agency’s needs for data on emerging issues and to inform local policy and strategy development.
- Prompts make use of the unique access we have to current examples of excellent practice from the front-line of Children’s Services through our Partnership Network
How do we decide on Prompt topics?
Prompts address topics identified by second tier officers in our Partner agencies. Three times a year we request suggestions for topics that:
- Relate to the Every Child Matters agenda
- Address multi-agency/partnership working issues
- Address a priority operational issue where there is a) room for performance improvement b) recent policy or practice change
We compile a shortlist from the topics suggested, and after a preliminary scoping search of the literature, we decide on the topic with which to proceed.
Prompts – Methods
- Identify topic and formulate a research question
- Develop a search strategy. Search terms are devised and refined; inclusion criteria such as date parameters are set. Prompt literature searches focus on published material. We concentrate on UK research findings though we use data from other countries for comparative purposes or to augment the evidence base where there is little UK material available. Only English language materials are included.
- Keyword searches are conducted on social science, social care and education databases (e.g. SocialCareOnline, Ingenta Connect etc). References and abstracts are collected, the quality and relevance of identified articles is assessed and articles are selected. Systematic reviews and studies with a robust comparison group design are favoured for inclusion
- Internet searches are conducted of websites of research units working in the field, government departments, children’s charities, voluntary organisations etc
- Examples of evaluated best practice are gathered through databases searches, following up examples cited in research literature and by making requests for examples of best practice through our Link Officers email network
- The findings are brought together in the mapping the field section of the Prompt
- Messages from the evidence are organised under the Prompt section headings: key messages section and emerging practice section
- Internet resources (links to publications, full-text documents available free of charge, links to relevant voluntary organisations and charities etc) are made available in the resources section
- The draft Prompt is reviewed by research in practice policy staff, edited then sent out to a number of external readers with professional expertise as Children’s Service practitioners and academic researchers. The readers’ comments are incorporated into a final draft which is then loaded to the website. The whole process takes approximately four months.
The Prompts method provides a means to produce a thorough and practitioner friendly mapping of key literature and resources on the topic under investigation. Prompts are not full scale systematic reviews – which comprehensively search all available published and unpublished literature on a given topic and typically take at least six to twelve months to complete. The time taken to prepare each Prompt limits the scope of the data search, but it is done ‘as comprehensively as possible’ given the time and resource constraints.
Prompts methods have a good deal in common with the methods for conducting Rapid Evidence Assessments as defined by the (Government Social Research Unit) GSRU and the caveat below draws upon the one given by the GSRU:
Given that Prompts are less comprehensive than full scale systematic reviews they may fail to identify potentially important research or other sources of evidence. Prompts should not be considered a definitive statement on what is known about a topic, but as ‘the best provisional understanding of the evidence’ given the time and resources that have gone into them. The conclusions of any Prompt may be subject to updating and revision in light of future systematic and comprehensive reviews of the evidence base.
