Developing Evidence-Based Co-production: A Research Agenda

Bovaird, Tony; Loeffler, Elke

This chapter discusses how a more evidence-based approach might be taken to co-production. It outlines a range of developments which mean that public policy and practice urgently require a richer knowledge base and suggests that a fuller understanding of co-production must embrace its key characteristics, namely that it is holistic, contextual, multi-faceted, bridge-building, creative, dynamic, complex, emergent, behaviour-influencing and tacitly understood. It summarises key research recommendations from each chapter of the Handbook, highlighting the potential for a long-term systematic research programme into weakly-evidenced aspects of co-production. It then outlines how co-production might be evaluated, focusing on the whole causal chain from co-production inputs to outcomes. Finally, it explores a more creative approach to this research agenda, incorporating action research and tapping of tacit knowledge.