Working paper that aims to remove the confusion surrounding what place-based approaches are, the rationales behind their use, the development of this approach to public service reform in Scotland and the future challenges presented by austerity and welfare reform.

This working paper sets out the essentials of the evaluability assessment approach, which What Works Scotland has identified as one of its key approaches to improving the use of evaluation and evidence by community planning partnerships. The paper describes how evaluability assessment has been used to date, with a focus on examples relevant to Scotland, and suggests how it may be used in future.

This document summarises the key policy development stages and timeline for the Community Planning model in Scotland.

This working paper sets out how What Works Scotland, at the start of its programme, aimed to address key issues in using evidence to inform change through the development and extension of existing ways of working, and the development of new resources and approaches.

This 2016 working paper describes an example of collaboration between a group of public service leaders to develop a learning and development ‘offer’ to support collaborative leadership in public services, called the Enabling Collaborative Leadership Pioneer Programme.

Short report exploring the What Works Scotland knowledge partners’ Evidence to Action activity in the context of public service delivery to provide an overview of the evidence approaches provided.

The four briefing papers presented at the 29th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement in January 2016 to stimulate discussion about what educational research might learn from other disciplines.

This working paper describes the approach followed by the What Works Scotland team in carrying out a ‘mini-inquiry’ exercise to develop the What Works Scotland collaborative action research framework.

This working paper sets out What Works Scotland’s early thinking on using the capabilities approach, as a conceptual framework to assess what communities want from their public services, and explains why and how capabilities is a useful approach to evaluate public service reform in Scotland.

This working paper explores the potential for applying synthetic control methods to place-­based interventions within Scotland, making use of the increasing availability of routinely collected data. Summary Synthetic control methods are a novel approach to comparative case study research using