What is the EPPI-Centre?
The role and work of the EPPI-Centre
1. Online Evidence Library
The EPPI-Centre conducts systematic reviews across a range of topics and works with a large number of funders. Major areas include:
Education and social policy
Health promotion and public health
International development
Participative research and policy.
The reviews on these topics can be found in our Online Evidence Library, which provides full reports of specific reviews conducted or supported by the EPPI-Centre. The knowledge pages provide overviews of the evidence available from multiple systematic reviews for broad topic areas.
2. Collaborative partnerships
Our work at the EPPI-Centre is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), several government departments and charities and national and international partners. We are proud to have links with two international collaborations concerned with policy-relevant reviews of research evidence: the Cochrane Collaboration in health care and the Campbell Collaboration for social interventions. To find out more about our partners in this work see the Reviewers, Funders and Collaborations page.
3. Methods, tools and database development
One major area of our work is the development of methods and tools for conducting systematic reviews of public policy. Most of our projects involve methodological development and we are the node in Methods for Research Synthesis (MRS) of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) National Centre for Research Methods. The EPPI-Centre has learnt from the model of systematic reviewing which has been widely developed in healthcare to address a wider range of questions and methodologies relevant to public policy research such as statistical, narrative and conceptual synthesis.
In addition to our online evidence library that provides access to EPPI-Centre reviews, we develop and maintain databases of other research evidence, including primary research and evidence reviews, many of which have been used in EPPI-Centre systematic reviews. For more information see the Methods, Tools and Databases page.
4. Teaching and learning
The EPPI-Centre provides training and workshops on methodological and practical aspects of systematic research synthesis. For more detailed information on the types of training, including our MSc in Evidence for public policy and practice, see the Teaching and Learning page.(More on our teaching and learning activities)