Barriers to and facilitators of social policy trials identified with interviewees
| Levers | Barriers |
| Personal contacts/researcher policy contact/serendipity | Poor communication by researchers; ambivalence/hostility by researchers and research brokers |
| Potential for good cost-benefit information | |
| Independence of evaluators from policy/politicians | Problems if policy initiative to which politicians have committed themselves shown not to work |
| Funding for new initiatives tied to good trial evidence/accountability | Cost/complexity of running a trial |
| Advocacy by those whose trials have shown an effect in other countries | Ambivalence/hostility by some researchers and research brokers |
| Good dissemination skills by trialists; willingness to avoid too many caveats when presenting results | Over-enthusiasm by some trial proponents |
| A lot of good research on what the problems are; less on what to do about them | Pejorative use of term ‘experimentation’ |
| Convincing trial welcome to politicians | Lack of high-quality trial applications |
| Support from key government departments (eg, Treasury) | Moral and ethical concerns/equipoise |
| Lack of researcher experience in social policy trials | |
| Recruitment problems | |
| Timing (in relation to policy development)/political desire to get things up and running quickly | |
| RCTs more suited to clinical research | |
| The line of least resistance not to carry them out | |
| Culture of advocacy, case study, precedent and anecdote |
RCTs, randomised controlled trials.