13 November 2025. 1-5.30pm, University of Manchester Arthur Lewis Building 2.016/2.017 Boardroom, in-person only.

The focus of this workshop is on the roles that qualitative evidence synthesis may play in evidence-based policy. Examples of questions that are relevant are: Can approaches such as meta-ethnography provide evidence of the effectiveness of a policy, and if so, how? Do qualitative syntheses mitigate the shortcomings of quantitative meta-analyses, or do they provide evidence for some kind of policy-relevant claim on their own? The workshop will discuss how these approaches to research synthesis can and should be used in evidence-based policy.



Programme

Please note that the draft programme below is subject to change.

1pm Coffee

1.30-2.30 Corrado Matta, Rosa Runhardt & Jon Williamson. Meta-Ethnography and the Effectiveness of Educational Policy: An Evidential Pluralism Perspective

Evidence-based policy is typically grounded in a narrow conception of evidence, one that prioritizes comparative studies and quantitative meta-analyses as the preferred base for establishing causal claims. However, this prevailing theory of evidence—often implicitly adopted in policy contexts—faces serious limitations when it comes to capturing the complexity of social interventions, particularly in fields such as education.
We argue that this narrow conception ignores the extensive volume of knowledge that is generated in research fields such as educational meta-ethnography. Far from being epistemically inferior, we contend that meta-ethnographies could make an essential contribution to the evidential base for policy. By analysing meta-ethnography using the Evidential Pluralism framework (which scrutinises evidence of mechanisms alongside evidence of correlation), we show that meta-ethnographic studies can be fruitfully reinterpreted as providing evidence of a mechanism complex. This evidence can play a crucial critical role, as meta-ethnography shows how the complex enables, reinforces, or counteracts a policy of interest. We will illustrate this potential use of meta-ethnography using an example, Holly Craggs and Catherine Kelly’s qualitative meta-synthesis of adolescent experiences of school belonging (2018). While the article focuses on educational research in particular, we finish by laying out the circumstances under which our results may generalize to other fields, including other professional studies (that is, studies aimed at application, such as nursing and organizational studies).

2.30-3.30 Kate Flemming. TBC

3.30 Coffee

4.00-5.00 Andrew Booth. TBC

5.00-5.30 Round-table discussion, led by Alexandra Trofimov



Registration

Registration is free and everyone is welcome.

Register by email to attend.



Acknowledgements

The workshop is organised by Corrado Matta, Rosa Runhardt and Jon Williamson. It is an event of the Interdisciplinary Systematic Review UKRI project.