Section 4: Other Key Considerations

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Evaluation

How do you know if your KTE/KMb work is going well? Are your KTE/KMb strategies having the intended impact, or any impact at all? How are your partners, knowledge users and collaborators feeling within the KTE/KMb process?

These are important questions to consider around KTE/KMb and one way to begin to answer them is through examining your KTE/KMb work and impact via evaluation. A broad understanding of evaluation comes from Mark et al. (2000), stating that evaluation is the rigorous collection of valuable, reliable, and useful information about a program or project for the purposes of one or more of the following: programs and organizational improvement, oversight and compliance, assessment of worth, and knowledge development. According to Patton (2008) – one of the leaders in the field of utilization-focused evaluation, evaluation involves “the systematic collection of information about the activities, characteristics, and outcomes of programs, for use by people to reduce uncertainties, improve effectiveness, and make decisions” (p. 39). Beyond these definitions, evaluation refers to the systematic process of ensuring that your work had the impact that it intended to have, looking for any unexpected impacts, and understanding why (or why not) your project had the outcomes/impacts that it did. As noted by Mark et al. (1999), evaluation can be thought of as “assisted sensemaking” (p. 179) which may help you understand where things are going well and where you may need to make some changes within your KTE/KMb work.

But how do you incorporate evaluation within your KTE/KMb work? There are numerous evaluation frameworks for KTE/KMb, and a full discussion of evaluation goes beyond the scope of this chapter, but below is a non-exhaustive list of some evaluation resources relevant for KTE/KMb. An excellent resource to start developing a general understanding of evaluation with the KTE/KMb process is by reviewing the Evaluating KMb section of the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health’s online KMb Toolkit, which is available here. When reviewing the below resources, it is important to remember that the level, scope, and type of evaluation work needed for KTE/KMb is specific to each project, and not all KTE/KMb will have large evaluation components.

Resources – Budget and Staffing Considerations

Another important consideration within KTE/KMb work is the resources needed to fully carry out KTE/KMb plans. Two key resources are budget/funding and staffing.

Budget

Budget/funding generally refers to the cash and/or in-kind support to cover all of the expenses related to a project. Budget considerations are very specific to an individual project and may include various items such as:

• Salary/support for staff (see point below for more resources/information on staffing);
• Compensation for involvement of community partners/stakeholders (e.g., compensation or honoraria for time involved in KTE/KMb);
• Meeting costs (e.g., rental space, food, travel, facilitation etc.);
• Costs for developing and disseminating KTE/KMb projects/resources (e.g., creation, design, distribution, online hosting, event planning, etc.); and
• Conference and publication costs, including open-access fees.

KTE/KMb should be planned and budgeted for within any relevant grant/funding application, and there are often KTE/KMb specific funding opportunities available from external funding agencies and within university and other institutional Research Office internal funding portfolios. Two examples of KTE/KMb specific funding include SSHRC’s Connection Grants and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) KTT Mobilization Initiatives. Additionally, it is important to consider potential in-kind support from the institution where the research is based and partner/stakeholders around supporting KTE/KMb work (e.g., Marketing and communications support from your home institution’s centralized marketing and communications team, or design support for KTE/KMb materials from a designer at a partner/stakeholder organization, etc.).

When planning a KTE/KMb budget, consider any rules and restrictions that may be in place by the funding source for a project. Working with your institution’s research support team (e.g., Office of Research Services) may be helpful when determining the policies in place around allowable/relevant KTE/KMb costs and budget.

Staffing

Within the budget, salary and support for staff needs to be considered. Staffing for KTE/KMb work requires hiring the appropriate number of people with the appropriate skill sets to support a given project. The number and type of staff needed will differ from project to project, and will often fluctuate depending on the stage of KTE/KMb that a given project is in. For example, if a team is focusing on end-of-grant KTE/KMb, then they may not need KTE/KMb staffing until much later in a project, whereas a team focusing on integrated KTE/KMb would need KTE/KMb staffing support throughout. There are various roles within the broader KTE/KMb and communications sphere, and it is important to work to ensure that you have the correct type of staff/roles assigned within your own KTE/KMb work (Barwick et al., 2014). Funding for staff may come from external and/or internal resources, but once again, it is important to work with your own institution to understand the policies in place around funding for staff.

Careers in KTE/KMb

The expansion of KTE/KMb has led to new roles in the field. Consider how the KTE/KMb field may fit with your career planning.

Barwick and colleagues (2014) describe the following four general grouping of roles that are often mentioned within discussions of KTE/KMb and communications:

Beyond the above groupings, there are two typical avenues for careers that directly involve KTE/KMb:

1. The first avenue is academic careers, whereby you would be employed by an academic institution (e.g., a university or college) and would either focus on KTE/KMb within your broad area of research, or would research KTE/KMb as a concept (e.g.,  Vicky Ward). An example of this would be the Research Based Knowledge Translation Practitioner described above. To progress in this area, it is generally recommended that academics work to build their capacity for KTE/KMb through training and continuing education, and have a direct focus on KTE/KMb within their research/projects.
2. The second avenue is non-academic careers, whereby you would be supporting KTE/KMb at an institution or organization. For example, an Institutional Knowledge Translation Practitioner as described above (e.g., a staff member tasked with guiding and informing KTE/KMb practices at an organization). Non-academic careers that include KTE/KMb are becoming increasingly available across sectors such as education, government/policy, social services, public health, and health care. To progress in this area, it is generally recommended that individuals work to build their capacity for KTE/KMb through training and continuing education, and connect with others in the field.

Summary

This section outlined three broad key considerations for KTE/KMb work, specifically evaluation, the resources required to carry out KTE/KMb plans, and KTE/KMb roles for career planning. Evaluation generally refers to the rigorous tracking of the impact (expected and unexpected) of your KTE/KMb work. Several resources to support evaluation were listed within this section. The two resources described in this section were budget considerations (e.g., the funding needed) and staffing (e.g., the human capacity and skill sets needed). In terms of KTE/KMb roles, there are various avenues that one can explore to integrate this area into their careers.

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