Proof of concept in social sciencesResearch evidence generated from social science does not necessarily see its way into policy or programme development. And often, where research informs policy, the context in which it stands to be implemented is not always taken into consideration. Consequently, even after expending financial and human resources, some programmes may not show an effect. In other situations, projects, which from conception took scientific findings into account that were not tested in the field for effectiveness, may be scaled up. But this will lack that one step needed to demonstrate the feasibility of the evidenced-based intervention in a real life setting, even though this may be crucial to the effectiveness of the programme and the outcome. South Africa has major social problems that require implementation of evidencedbased effective interventions. Solutions to crime, poverty, HIV and AIDS, education and service delivery may be eluding us because we are implementing interventions that have not been shown to work. It is up to social scientists to assist policy-makers and other decision-makers in testing the effectiveness of proposed interventions in communities. The time has come for us in the social sciences to translate knowledge into practice in an organised manner. This new approach would entail demonstrating firstly that a concept is working in a research setting, then implementing it, and eventually evaluating its effectiveness in a district with the aim of assisting government in scaling up the project. This implies that in addition to the usual approaches to research at the HSRC, we will now be testing the knowledge, generated through research, in real life settings. The idea is to use science to curb violence, generate jobs, improve quality of education, reduce new HIV infections, and improve the quality of services provided. It is towards this end that the HSRC is establishing centres that will serve as demonstration sites for science-based projects. The first of these, to be implemented on 1 April, are: - The Centre for Education Quality Improvement (CEQI), to be led by executive director Dr Anil Kanjee.
- The Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth (CPEG), to be led by executive director Dr Miriam Altman.
- The Centre for Service Delivery (CSD), to be led by executive director Dr Udesh Pillay.
CEQI (previously the National Education Quality Initiative) will continue its function to support the government and other key role-players in enhancing decision making that could contribute to improving educational quality. For this purpose it received significant funding from the Royal Netherlands Embassy to support collaborative research and intervention programmes on quality education in numeracy and literacy. This funding was augmented by an allocation from the national Department of Education. CPEG (previously the Employment, Growth and Development Initiative) will continue to focus on developing evidence-based employment scenarios, demonstration projects, and contributions to monitoring and policy formulation. It will retain the policy impact objective to identify how AsgiSA’s 2014 targets of halving unemployment and poverty could be met on a sustainable basis. Discussions with a high-level reference group, project-level reference groups, and stakeholder support work will continue. CSD will be spun off from the Urban Rural and Economic Development (URED) research programme. It will formulate a set of strategies to help mitigate the service delivery problems in South Africa; not only understanding and explaining the requirements and dominant trends in service provision for human development, but also analysing and generating practical solutions to problems of planning and implementation. More information on these new developments will soon be available on this website http://www.hsrc.ac.za/index.php.
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