Dimensions of Organizational and Personal Evidence Use by Senior Managers in Private Child Welfare Agencies

Scholars know little about how human service agency leaders use evidence to improve organizational performance. We draw on interviews with 27 private child welfare administrators in six states to examine how senior leaders use evidence, the types of evidence they use, and specific organizational processes established to support evidence use. Results suggest evidence use in private agencies takes diverse forms, including the analysis of internal data, the use of external research, and evidence-based interventions. We identify actions taken by senior leaders to promote various types of evidence use, including modeling, requiring evidence use in decision-making, establishing performance measures, and developing infrastructure and processes to support the analysis and interpretation of different types of evidence. We organize these findings into a managerial, practice-informed framework for how human service managers may promote evidence use in their agencies and increase the diversity and utility of evidence use to achieve desired outcomes.