ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a number of examples of actual research in public management practice. Based on actual public management research projects, these examples serve to make research skills more concrete and illustrate the importance of each specific skills set. Evidence-based practices in the public sector can be defined this way: public management and/or policy decisions should be based on a fair, neutral assessment of the best available evidence rather than preconceived ideological notions about preferred solutions or other non-rational bases. The contemporary evidence-based medicine movement is a reaction to concerns about these decades-old practices. Evidence-based medicine in practice creates a health care system that practices evidence-based medicine and forces people to rethink the way we teach doctors and nurses and even what it means to be a medical practitioner. Education has also been an area of professional practice that has adopted the call for evidence-based practice after its recent resurgence in medicine.
