How Agencies Adopt New Evidence-Based Practices: State of the Field and Our Current Study

• In Event: Evidence Adoption in Community-Facing Agencies: Preparing Community Supervision and Victim Services to Implement Evidence-Based Practices

Abstract

Though numerous implementation science theories, models, and frameworks have been developed and examined across multiple fields, there is still a gap in rigorous research on the efficacy of actionable practices to achieve EBP uptake in practitioner settings. The Urban Institute’s Justice & Safety Division, in partnership with the American Probation and Parole Association and the National Center for Victims of Crime, is conducting a study to advance the evidence-implementation capacity of two types of criminal justice system agencies that directly interact with people in the community: 1) community supervision  agencies that supervise people on probation and parole in the community who may have caused harm and 2) victim services providers that assist people in the community who have been harmed. We intend to conduct a rigorous, evidence-to-action demonstration project to understand how frontline and supervisory decision-makers in these two types of “community-facing” agencies learn, adopt, and implement evidence-based practices, following an implementation science framework derived from the National Implementation Research Network. In this presentation, we discuss the state of the literature on the adoption of evidence-based practices. We then discuss how the currently planned study will address gaps in our understanding of practitioner adoption of evidence-based practices. 

Author

• Walter Campbell, Urban Institute